Modern Tribalism

On the highway of materialism, contemporary man has neglected his body, soul and history. Rituals, in every conceivable and inconceivable form, have to restore and expand the conscience of man and his solidarity with fellow human beings. Mimi George and Rick Kent show ways in which modern Americans try to regain their primitive self. Tattoo artist Big Mike brings ‘a little of the inside to the outside’ with his designs. Piercing guru Fakir Musafar considers himself and his perforating colleagues modern shamans and piercing a way of escaping the limitations of the body. Startling and terrifying are the films Fakir Musafar made of himself during his early experiments with ‘ripping flesh’. Each year, Larry Harvey organises the mega-art festival Burning Man in the Nevada desert, an eight-day refuge where people can make their spiritual and physical lumber go up in flames. And in Santa Fe Harold Gans organises the annual burning of Zozobra, ‘old man gloom’, and with him all things bad in man. The images of the various rituals are framed with comments by people like writer Tom Robbins and writer/medicine man Malidoma Some. The rituals are beautifully captured by cameraman Scott Jones, with the Burning Man art village, built on the arid desert land, superbly lending itself to spectacular fairy-tale pictures.