./pro/RMP-03-019-A/review.bmezine.txt

Ten Years of Pain
by Håvve Fjell - Review by Shannon Larratt

"Being a fakir is not just about showmanship, it is a way of life, a 
philosophy. You can not learn the discipline if you are not born with the 
urge to explore the limits of the body." - Håvve Fjell

This may well be the best body play related book I have ever read (wow!). 
It is the first book in a long time where I’ve been felt an empathic 
connection with the content and been drawn deeper and deeper as I 
progressed. Not since I was a child reading science fiction on winter 
nights have I been so singularly possessed by a work of prose.

title:		Ten Years of Pain
author:		Håvve Fjell,
photographs:	Helene Fjell
author iam:	bleeding
author url:	http://www.painsolution.net/
pages:		180
publisher:	Hertervig Forlag, Norway
rating:		10/10
reviewer:	Shannon Larratt
isbn:		82-92023-12-7
purchase:	BMEshop
summary:	An intimate ten-year history of a modern fakir.

Håvve Fjell is the core of Pain Solution, a Norwegian performance art 
group — although it has also been a solo project for much of its 
existence. He exemplifies the modern fakir, both in the sense of 
performance, fine art, spirituality, and social consciousness. This book, 
photographed by Håvve’s sister Helene, is an intimate, unflinching, and 
deeply personal and engaging documentation of his first ten years — as 
Helene puts it, “Håvve is honest and he has something to say.” The book is 
written almost entirely in the first person, and its open style makes you 
feel like you’re reading Håvve’s thoughts.

Just over two years ago Håvve was asked to speak about self-harm at a 
Psykopp-organized lecture for psychiatrists, psychotherapists, and doctors 
— they were so drawn into the dialog that they approached him about 
producing a book on the subject. He begins this book by describing his 
childhood,

    "Each time I would try to aim a bit higher; cut a bit deeper, burn a 
bit longer or push more needles into my legs. Of course, no one around me 
would understand why I did these things to myself, and I could not 
explain. This led me to do my business in private and try to hide the 
results from family and friends."

Sound familiar?

In 1991 Håvve traveled to Brazil to develop his skills. In Brazil he met 
other performers, and did his first fakir show — to an audience who was 
not expecting or desiring his style of show, and jeered him with taunts of 
“disgusting”, “sick pervert” and “ugly”.

    "The rest of the night, I hid. I was too ashamed to see the organizers 
or talk to anyone. However, two good things came out of that particular 
night. That night, my girlfriend, Monica, conceived our first son, Kai. In 
addition, I learned an important lesson about performing in public: it is 
not what you do, but how you present it that matters."

His confidence returned along with his return to Oslo, where he put on 
another show with friends (much more successfully) and started thinking 
about combining the fakir element with performance and stage art. Along 
with his friends Eirik and Roberto he decided that maybe they could even 
make a little money if they built a show around fire, juggling, fakirism, 
and music, and in 1993 PSI (Pain Solution Inc.) was founded.

The first show was a success, but they quickly lost their backing band. 
The group shuffled members for a while, and Håvve took courses in street 
theatre, mime, clowning, and acting, and became more and more serious 
about the professionalism of his show. He returned to Brazil for some time 
and then back to Norway where he slowly re-tooled his shows for a broader 
audience — Pain Solution was getting TV gigs, many shows, and media 
appearances — and also worked with puppet theatre and other art-forms.

    "We were mostly doing fire stunts and I had padlocks sewn to my torso, 
this was quite new to me at the time and I was dancing wildly. It came to 
the point where I felt I was loosing contact with the floor, as if I was 
dancing without touching the ground. What I felt was pure pleasure. I 
watched the crowd from above and was about to fly up, and out from the 
stage. I do not know what really happened, but it was suddenly very quiet. 
A technical problem with the sound system had put an end to my almost 
leaving my body experience."

For Y2K Pain Solution was contracted to perform at the largest millennium 
event in Norway, a huge fire show on New Year’s even in Oslo. After being 
the pinnacle act in front of 200,000 people Pain Solution started getting 
larger contracts for custom performances, and Håvve began building a 
network of actors, contortionists, jugglers, and other performers to work 
with as shows dictated. Shows got even larger, and in 2001 Pain Solution 
co-produced Ringen with the Haugesund Theatre, a modern circus group. 
Large projects always put a lot of stress on a group, and Håvve decided to 
revert Pain Solution back to being a solo production.

He was then invited to do a series of performances for the Industrial Art 
Museum in Oslo, and presented them with a plan to do a sculptural or 
“poetic” suspension. They turned him down, saying that he would scare off 
their “elderly guests”. Håvve was furious — he’d been promoting the event 
for three weeks, and his art was being muted.

    "I saw no reason in arguing, nor did I see any reason to accept being 
excluded from the programme. I decided to hold a demonstration against 
censorship, at the museum on that given Saturday. I wrote a new press 
release explaining the situation. When I sent it out, I made sure they got 
a copy at the museum."

    "On the day of the event, I appeared at the Museum with a plaster cast 
from head to toe, with only holes for my eyes and nose, in a sculpture 
called Sensurert (Censored). As my assistants carried me out of the van 
and up the stairs outside the Museum, we were met with hostility; they 
would not let us set foot on their stairs and stopped us with brute force. 
Therefore I stood outside on the pavement for nearly two hours, with a 
supporting crowd, until the cold had made my limbs so numb that I had to 
give up my demonstration."

The demonstration was a success and the publicity led the House of Artists 
to contract Håvve to perform Censored, as well as Floating, the project 
which had been censored. Since it was a six-week installation, Håvve 
expanded it to Kvintett, five performances of physical restrictions — full 
body casting, flesh sewing, buried in broken glass, a Chinese-water 
torture-type event, and a horizontal suspension. The book describes his 
experiences and encounters in all of these.

However, after this successful series of performances (with a great deal 
of media and critical attention), Håvve again found himself alone and in 
debt — for the first time in his life, he had to get a job. Of course, 
with no education or experience, the best he could do was two part-time 
jobs — and he feared that a full-time job could interfere with his ability 
to continue developing Pain Solution. Kvintett had given him a new area to 
explore as an artist and a fakir — his own personal approaches to pain. 
His performances became more esoteric, and Håvve became an explorer and 
researcher as much as an artist.

    "In the west, our culture brings us up to perceive pain exclusively as 
a negative experience. No matter how small the injury might be, the most 
important action taken is to comfort the child. I am not saying that is 
wrong, but in many cases parents end up teaching their children to fear 
pain. If a child is bleeding, the hysteria is even worse."

    * * *

    "Sometimes the pain is too strong to ignore, it is just impossible not 
to pay attention to it. In these cases, I try to put all my focus on the 
pain itself. I search for the centre of the pain. I try to figure out how 
it spreads, where the borders of the sensation are, and how it feels right 
next to where it’s hurting. By going into the sensation and exploring it, 
I find the focus is in studying the pain, instead of suffering it."

...which brings the specific history of Pain Solution up to date.

Håvve also communicated with Allen Falkner of TSD in Texas, and after 
doing a number of suspensions in private and in public (as mentioned 
above), beginning in 2002 he began co-organizing the annual Wings of 
Desire - Oslo Body Suspension Festival, an event similar to the SusCons 
hosted by various suspension groups around the world. He also talks about 
how hard it’s been for him to achieve spiritual experiences, largely due 
to the attention he must also pay to the stage aspect.

Addressing something too many amateur performers overlook, Håvve warns 
about some of the accidents that have happened on stage, including one 
horrific experience where he breathed in a lungful of paraffin, leading 
him to ten days hospitalization after the performance. Other shows left 
him with serious burns, and another with cuts in his hand that resulted in 
permanent nerve damage. Like many of us, he’s had last minute supply and 
preparation problems, rigging failures, and other mishaps. “Shit happens 
and the show must go on!”

The conclusion to the book contains commentary from many of the other 
members of Pain Solution mentioned in the book, both performers and 
technical staff. It also contains some interview excerpts and fine arts 
analysis of Håvve’s performances (“In search of a lost pain” by the Bureau 
of Contemporary Art Praxis, Rijeka, Croatia, and “Toward the aesthetics of 
pain” by Stahl Stenslie, Academy of Media Arts, Colgne Germany), 
commentary from Målfrid J. Frahm Jensen and Per Johan Isdahl (Ullevål 
University Hospital, Oslo) on the self-harm aspects, and from Siv Ellen 
Kraft (University of Tromsø, Norway) on the religious aspects. The book 
then finishes with a short FAQ.

This really is a remarkable book. My review does not do it the justice it 
deserves. I literally believe it is the only book that has been able to 
take such a snapshot. I do not believe that any body modification book 
collection can be called complete without this book, and I believe this is 
essential reading for anyone involved in performance or body art as well 
as those interested in art history and body-art/modification/play-history.

From a technical point of view the printing in this book is gorgeous. It’s 
large format (10”x10”) and full color with silver spot color throughout 
its 180 pages and almost every page has photos. The text is clear and easy 
to read and the photos are bright, crisp, and vibrant (all the pictures in 
this review are of course from the book). I have nothing bad to say about 
the book on a conceptual or artistic level, but I do have two complaints 
in the technical area:

  * Binding. Ten Years of Pain is softbound (I made the same mistake with 
    the ModCon book). As a result it damages easily; my copy got banged around 
    a bit in the mail and the corners are dinged — this book is such an 
    obvious collector and display piece that it should have been been printed 
    as a hardcover in my opinion.

  * Price. Printing a limited edition book is expensive — as a result, 
    Håvve’s book sells in Norway for 400 Kroners (about $60 US), which, once 
    you add distribution costs, gets up to the $70 US mark by the time it’s 
    made it to North America. That’s a lot to pay for a softcover; if it was 
    any other book I wouldn’t be recommending it so strongly.

I believe that this book will touch you. It might get banged up a little 
easier than it should, and maybe it costs a little more than is normal, 
but this book will touch you. For me, it’s worth every cent, and I believe 
that if you’re a regular BME reader and you appreciate what’s being done 
here in general, this book will reach you as well.

As far as I know BMEshop is the only place this book is available online. 
Because I believe in it so strongly I have given up all royalties and 
commission on its sale in order to ensure the best possible price for you. 
Please note that we only have a few in stock right now, so if you visit 
the page and it’s sold out, please be sure to add your name to the “tell 
me when it’s back” list.

Shannon Larratt
BMEZINE.COM