MORBID INK - The Human Memorial Tattoo

  • 2 reviews
  • Brompton Cemetery

Description

  • Something A Little Different, Theatre/Arts and Walks & Tours
  • Tickets from £12.00
  • Fulham
  • n/a
  • Sat, 19th Oct 2019 @ 13:00 - 15:00
  • 13:00 - 15:00

In 1891, Samuel F. O’Reilly of New York, NY patented the first “…electromotor tattooing-machine,” a modern and innovative device that permanently inserted ink into the human skin. O’Reilly’s invention revolutionized tattooing and forever altered the underlying concept behind a human tattoo, i.e., the writing of history on the body. Tattooing of the body most certainly predates the O’Reilly machine (by several centuries) but one kind of human experience remains constant in this history: the memorial tattoo.

Memorial tattooing is, as Marita Sturken discusses the memorialization of the dead, a technology of memory. Yet the tattoo is more than just a representation of the dead. It is a historiographical practice in which the living person seeks to make death intelligible by permanently altering his or her own body. In this way, memorial tattooing not only establishes a new language of intelligibility between the living and the dead, it produces a historical text carried on the historian’s body. A memorial tattoo is an image but it is also (and most importantly) a narrative.

Human tattoos have been described over the centuries as speaking scars and/or the true writing of savages; cut from the body and then collected by Victorian era gentlemen. These intricately inked pieces of skin have been pressed between glass and then hidden away in museum collections, waiting to be re-discovered by the morbidly curious. The history of tattooing is the story of Homo sapiens’ self-invention and unavoidable ends.

Tattoo artists have a popular saying within their profession: Love lasts forever but a tattoo lasts six months longer.

And so too, Dr. Troyer will add, does death.

Tickets £12 including a Hendrick's gin cocktail.

Dr. John Troyer  is the Director of the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath. His interdisciplinary research focuses on contemporary memorialization practices, concepts of spatial historiography, and the dead body’s relationship with technology. Dr. Troyer is also a theatre director and installation artist with extensive experience in site-specific performance across the United States and Europe. He is a co-founder of the Death Reference Desk website (http://www.deathreferencedesk.org), the Future Cemetery Project (http://www.futurecemetery.com) and a frequent commentator for the BBC. His forthcoming book, Technologies of the Human Corpse (published by MIT Press), will appear in 2020.

Offers

Promotions

Tickets/Times

Ticket Event time Cost
Immortal Passion Ticket
Includes a delightful gin cocktail
13:00 - 15:00 £12.00

Location

Address

Brompton Cemetery, SW10 9UG

Area

Fulham

Nearest Station

Fulham Broadway (Tube)

Organiser

A Curious Invitation and Antique Beat
This year Antique Beat and A Curious Invitation will be hosting The London Month of the Dead, a series of 36 different events investigating the capital’s relationship with its deceased residents. Events will include a private view of the Museum of London’s bone archive, taxidermy workshops, macabre walking tours and private views and a programme of weekend death salons with talks on subjects ranging from public dissection and body snatching to reincarnation and funereal folklore. Each salon will feature a pair of speakers, authorities in fields such as osteology, forensic pathology and the paranormal, who will offer their own perspectives and insights on mortality in the city. Each year the London Month of the Dead donates 20% of all ticket revenue to one of London's magnificent seven cemeteries. In 2017 all of the death salons and concerts will be hosted at the Dissenters and Anglican chapels at Kensal Green. In previous years the month's programme has centered around Brompton Cemetery but the chapel is now undergoing important restoration work, a project the London Month of the Dead is proud to have supported. The London Month of the Dead has been curated by a Curious Invitation and Antique Beat to inform, entertain and provoke on the subject of death and London cemeteries.

Venue

T&Cs

1. The ticket holder voluntarily assumes all risks and danger incidental to the event for which the ticket is issued, whether occurring prior, during or after the event. The ticket holder voluntarily agrees that the management, venue, event participants, DesignMyNight (WFL Media Ltd) and all of their respective agents, officers, directors, owners and employers are expressly released by the ticket holder from any claims arising from such causes.
2. Tickets are issued subject to the rules and regulations of the venue.
3. Please check your tickets, as mistakes cannot always be rectified.
4. Occasionally, events are cancelled or postponed by the promoter, team, performer or venue for a variety of reasons. If the event is cancelled, please contact us for information on receiving a refund from the responsible party. If the event was moved or rescheduled, the venue or promoter may set refund limitations. It is your responsibility to ascertain the date and time of any rearranged event.
5. The venue reserves the right to refuse admission and may on occasion have to conduct security searches to ensure the safety of the patrons.
6. Every effort to admit latecomers will be made at a suitable break in the event, but admission cannot always be guaranteed.
7. We regret that tickets cannot be exchanged or refunded after purchase.
8. Tickets are sold subject to the venue or promoter's right to alter or vary the programme due to events or circumstances beyond its control without being obliged to refund monies or exchange tickets.
9. If this ticket is re-sold or transferred for profit or commercial gain by anyone other than the promoter, venue management, DesignMyNight or one of their authorised sub-agents, it will become voidable and the holder may be
refused entry to or ejected from the venue.
10. The venue may operate a No Smoking Policy.
11. The promoter, venue management and DesignMyNight accept no responsibility for any personal property.
12. The event listed on the purchased ticket is strictly for ticket holders who are over 18 years of age. Identification may be required.

Customer Reviews (2)

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