Tag: tattoo
Tokyo Vice
This interview was posted on Boing Boing last week but I’ve only just got around to reading it. Jake Adelstein is an American journalist who for the past twelve years has been a crime reporter for Japan’s largest newspaper.
Reading the introduction to the interview I wonder if describing his exploits as “crazy adventures” gives them a misleadingly whimsical air.
And as I turned my back to leave, he jumped on me. He started hitting me really hard and kicking me. So I ran to the corner of his room and got a golf club, and kept hitting his knee until his knee broke. I was just running around in circles aiming at his knee. Even after his knee broke, he was still crawling at me. I was like, god! Why don’t you just give up?
Tokyo Vice is out in the UK in July (and it probably makes my ‘had a bath with a heavily-irezumi-ed man’ story look pretty shit)
Escape Tools
A collection of photographs of homemade prison tools.
SHOTGUN made from iron bedposts; charge made of pieces of lead from curtain tape and match-heads, to be ignited by AA batteries and a broken light bulb. On May 21, 1984 two inmates of a prison in Celle, Germany, took a jailer as a hostage, showed off their fire power by letting go at a pane of bullet-proof glass, and escaped by car.
DAGGER disguised as a wooden crucifix; found in an inmate’s cell in Wolfenbüttel prison, Germany, sometime around 1994; intended for use in an escape or as a general weapon. At that time a lot of crucifixes were fashioned in prison woodshops until jailers finally dug their true purpose.
TATTOOING NEEDLE made from a toothbrush handle, a ball pen and an electric motor; confiscated in ‘Santa Fu’ prison in Hamburg, Germany.Tattooing instruments are a popular and common source of income among inmates but are banned as ‘illegal objects’ due to the danger of infection (Aids, Hepatitis, etc.).
It’s scary the things you can make.
Horiyoshi III
Hopefully Glen’s tattoo went well this afternoon – chatting about tattoos with both Glen and Alexis has made me think a bit more about whether I want a tattoo (which I’m pretty sure I do) and if so what I would want (which I am fairly clueless on).
Whilst scouting around for ideas I came across this interview with Horiyoshi III:
I think if I was to get a tattoo I wouldn’t quite have the balls to:
- Have it done with what appears to be a large screwdriver
- Have a full body irezumi
That aside his work is pretty amazing – reminds me of a guy I once saw in a Kyoto bathhouse.
More of his work from his website:
It appears you will also soon be able to buy Horiyoshi III clothing.
Wim Delvoye is a Belgian conceptual artist who by all accounts has done some pretty weird stuff. I’d not actually heard of him until I came across this post on Fabrik Project about his tattooed pig farm.
Delvoye started creating tattoos on pig skins from slaughterhouses and then began working on live pigs bred in a farm studio complex in China, using images such as the Louis Vuitton design and Walt Disney characters.
Wim Delvoye’s website has more of his projects (and is also one of those annoying Flash isometric town sites).