Bob Flanagan
|
|
Bob Flanagan (December 27 1952- January 4 1996) was an American writer, poet, performance artist, and comic. He was also a sufferer of cystic fibrosis who used BDSM to convert his pain into pleasure, and into his art. He was the subject of the documentary SICK: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist.
Flanagan is featured in the widely banned music video for the song Happiness In Slavery by Nine Inch Nails. In the video, he plays a character who straps himself to a torture machine that ultimately rapes and kills him.
While some of his performances were notable for acts of extreme masochism (on at least one occasion he hammered a nail through his penis, while cracking jokes), he also wrote rather clever, humorous songs, many of them intended as much for children as adults.
Partial bibliography
- The Wedding of Everything (1983)
- The Kid is the Man (1978)
- Slave Sonnets (1986)
- Fuck Journal (1987)
- A Taste of Honey with David Trinidad (1990)
- Bob Flanagan: Supermasochist (1993) (interviews)
- Pain Journal (unpublished)
External links
- Capsule biography (http://www.bfi.org.uk/videocat/more/sick/flanagan.html)
- Obituary (http://hnv.nin.net/hnv6/flanagan.html)
- From the Poetry Journal (http://www.poetryproject.com/newsletter/nl_flana.html)
- Excerpts from Flanagan's Pain Journal (http://vv.arts.ucla.edu/terminals/flanagan/flanagan.html)