MORBID INK - The Human Memorial Tattoo
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2 reviews - Brompton Cemetery
Description
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Something A Little Different, Theatre/Arts and Walks & Tours
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Tickets from £13.20
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Fulham
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n/a
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Sat, 19th Oct 2019 @ 13:00 - 15:00
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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 |
|---|---|---|
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Immortal Passion Ticket
Includes a delightful gin cocktail
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13:00 - 15:00 | £13.20 |
Location
Address
Brompton Cemetery, SW10 9UG
Area
Fulham
Nearest Station
Fulham Broadway (Tube)
Organiser
A Curious Invitation and Antique Beat
Venue
T&Cs
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.
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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.
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refused entry to or ejected from the venue.
10. The venue may operate a No Smoking Policy.
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12. The event listed on the purchased ticket is strictly for ticket holders who are over 18 years of age. Identification may be required.