History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)

Book Description

Recorded history is a finely-woven magic fabric of intricate lies about events predating the sixteenth century. There is not a single piece of evidence that can be reliably and independently traced back earlier than the eleventh century. This book details events that are substantiated by hard facts and logic, and validated by new astronomical research and statistical analysis of ancient sources.

Customer Reviews:

Calculations are only as good as your numbers.......2007-08-03

Yes, we can all agree that mainstream history is nearly 100% BS due to politics, economics, ego, problems with dating techniques, and various conspiracies. Agreed. But, I've been researching the distinct possibility that human history (in terms of civilizations) are much more ancient than we've been told, so coming across this book was very interesting to me. I wondered how Fomenko could be wrong (if at all) because he is very persuasive in his presentations. Then it dawned on me. If at previous times in prehistory, due to the various catastrophies that are well documented (comets, asteroids, planetary disruptions, plasma discharge, pole reversals, etc) the Earth was in a different position in relation to the sun, different tilt on its axis, different orbit, different rotation (in terms of velocity and DIRECTION), and the continents were in different positions, then would this not cause the ancients to see the sky (constellations) differently? In other words, is Fomenko making erronious assumptions about the physics of the Earth in pre-history, which then corrupt his data with regards to dating the relevant astrology? The last event to seriously disrupt our planet occured roughly 3500 years ago, according to other good researchers, so is it possible Fomenko has been confused by this? The vastly different physics of our planet in the not so distant past may explain this confusion, which is not to say the "mainstream" version of history is correct; on the contrary. I am not an expert in these fields, but wanted to see if this idea could spark discussion.

Pants on fire?.......2007-07-19

Will people ever read before spamming? Yes, Jesuits could not rewrite world history alone, they had help. Anyway, Dr Prof Acad A.Fomenko does not point to jesuits as the driving force of world wide history manipulation in published volumes 1,2,3;, actually he barely mentions the poor devils. Check it with 'Search inside' feature, please. China is rarely mentioned either, in fact, Dr Fomenko is completely eurocentric. Right, his theory contradicts all mainstream schools of history, because in their actual state they are all built on blatantly erroneus chronology. You don't need a mysterious cabal (conspiracy) to falsify history, the falsification is its modus operandi. It is inherent to history(ians) to falsify (distort) events, as it is inherent to humans to boast as it is inherent to power (authority) to legimize itself by referrring to glorious past made to its own order. Dr Prof Fomenko and team have identified scores of instances of such manipulation in Russian, European, etc.. history, and delivered valid statistical proof thereof. His own 'reconstruction' is completely another story. Forget c14 as a valid method of dating. W.Libby has initially discovered a brilliant method of INDEPENDENT dating. Too bad, c14 method has become a joke after a forced marrige with dendrochronology with consensual chronological scale inbuilt. Radiocarbon method can't stand blind tests, but is so very productive as a rubberstamp.

Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed. .......2007-04-09

There is no doubt that history as most know it is a sham, & institution's version of History both University & Church is fradulent & inaccurate. Everything was established with an agenda, The real "Dark Ages" are now when we have access to incredible amounts of information past authorities & more important 'common folk' didn't have but our institutions & educators are slow to evolve because of what has ignorantly & arrogantly been taught for too long. This is on many subjects not just Chronology.

For anyone to question "Why would a Mathematician have anything credible to say of History?" The answer is from Dr. Fomenko's preface in the book: "It would be worthwhile to remind the reader that in the XVI-XVII century Chronology was considered to be a subdivision of Mathematics." These volumes could possibly be some of the most important works to date & should be read by everyone with an interest in History, especially professors & educators who have a duty to the public. I have read both books & must say that 'Chronology 1' has some very eye opening & revolutionary information. Even if these volumes are part true the implications are profound & opens the doors to further investigations & questions which must be done. I speak several different lanquages & must say the logic Dr. Fomenko uses with "inflection" of words & words being read from left to right in one region & right to left in another then written backwards, the removal of vowels & get down to basics of words, or different cities & locations having the same name etc. is correct. Vowel usage has always been optional & varied, actually complicating linquistics & study. The first thing one has to understand is that words never had a fixed spelling in history like we do now, the spelling of words was mutable & regional, as well as names & titles of people were vast, varied & changed, NOTHING WAS FIXED or understood linear. Matters of Life & Death as well as financial profiteering yesterday & today were & are made with ignorant, illogical & conspiratorial views of history & reality, it's time people get closer to the Truth & society collectively grow up.

Very Interesting.......2007-03-07

It is a good proposal and I believe it will mature into something even better in the future. I think it deserves to be read.

History as Science Fiction.......2007-01-10

Anatoly Fomenko has written a very intriguing book, full of pictures, charts, and computer 'proof' of his thesis: backwards of AD900 we don't really know what happened or when. Between AD900 and AD1600 there is more certainty, but there is still a lot of fuzzy ground, and things don't get reliable until we get past the 1600's where the printing press made it very difficult for the perpetrators of this timeline manipulation to change anything that had been committed to print. The Dark Ages did not happen. Books were burned for a reason. One organization has doubled the actual length of its existence by expanding the real chronology. Read why.

I had always wondered why Christ died about AD33 and yet men waited until the 11th century to form the Knights Templar, the Cathars, etc and go after the Holy Land by force. Why the 1000 year gap? Turns out there wasn't more than a 10-12 year gap and he proves it using astronomy. This also implies that the planet is not as old as we have been told, and current Christian and other creationist scientists are already championing that idea without being aware of Fomenko's book. The two groups, creationist scientists and the Russian mathematical analysts corroborate each other. Fascinating.

Of course, all this flies in the face of what we have been told traditionally is the 'proper' chronology of western civilization, and most readers will experience 'cognitive dissonance' in reading this book. It means that our history going backwards from AD1600 becomes progressively more incorrect and unreliable until it cannot be trusted at all... in the space of 700-800 years.

Naturally, the curious, open-minded reader will want to know WHO did this, WHY, and did any of the events we think of as really ancient ever happen?
Dr. Fomenko is a respected scientist/mathematician at Moscow State University who has already answered these questions to the satisfaction of his initially skeptical colleagues. Most of them are now believers, a few still refuse to believe (the usual diehards), and of course the western press has ignored Fomenko's work -- for obvious reasons when you read the book. The ones who perpetrated this chronology ruse have a lot to answer for. They are still with us. That's why this book is a well-kept secret.

I gave the book a 4-star rating because I was unable to check out some of his claims; those I checked were as he said. But if even 1/3 of his claims are true, this punches a big hole in what we think is our history, the meaning of western civilization, our educational process (for repeating the ruse as gospel), and the trustworthiness of the organization that perpetrated this ruse, well-intentioned or not.

This book relates to current research into a Young Earth paradigm, to John Keel's discoveries about our planet, and Fr Malachi Martin's insights (in his now out-of-print books). We are indeed sheep who are manipulated and kept ignorant -- for a reason. While knowing what these men have to say may be the "booby prize" (as in: 'what can you do with this knowledge?'), it will provide interesting reading. Didn't someone say: "...and the Truth will set you free."?? For you to judge if this book contains the truth.

The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World

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Fascinating and Flawed
Helpful in Working With Torture Victims
Densely written but rewarding treatise
Good but limited insights
Profoundly intriguing!

The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World
Elaine Scarry
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0195049969

Book Description

Part philosophical meditation, part cultural critique, The Body in Pain is a profoundly original study that has already stirred excitement in a wide range of intellectual circles. The book is an analysis of physical suffering and its relation to the numerous vocabularies and cultural forces--literary, political, philosophical, medical, religious--that confront it. Elaine Scarry bases her study on a wide range of sources: literature and art, medical case histories, documents on torture compiled by Amnesty International, legal transcripts of personal injury trials, and military and strategic writings by such figures as Clausewitz, Churchill, Liddell Hart, and Kissinger, She weaves these into her discussion with an eloquence, humanity, and insight that recall the writings of Hannah Arendt and Jean-Paul Sartre. Scarry begins with the fact of pain's inexpressibility. Not only is physical pain enormously difficult to describe in words--confronted with it, Virginia Woolf once noted, "language runs dry"--it also actively destroys language, reducing sufferers in the most extreme instances to an inarticulate state of cries and moans. Scarry analyzes the political ramifications of deliberately inflicted pain, specifically in the cases of torture and warfare, and shows how to be fictive. From these actions of "unmaking" Scarry turns finally to the actions of "making"--the examples of artistic and cultural creation that work against pain and the debased uses that are made of it. Challenging and inventive, The Body in Pain is landmark work that promises to spark widespread debate.

Customer Reviews:

Fascinating and Flawed.......2001-05-07

The Body in Pain includes many interesting ideas and theories that could be made into engrossing analyses, yet Elaine Scarry manages to even make torture boring. Her frankly very intelligent observations would be much better suited to a 20 page scholarly essay than a 300 plus page repetitive rant that seems to care more about displaying her verbal acuity than proving a point, let alone attracting readers. I have counted the number of times she uses the word "sentient" and "sentience": some pages include these terms more than 8 times. One would think that an author so obviously bent on proving her intelligence would deign to consult a thesaurus. Perhaps "feeling" is too plebeian a term for her....

Helpful in Working With Torture Victims.......2001-03-05

I have worked with several individuals who suffered extreme physical torture sometime during their lives. Scarry's work helped me to understand the internal world of the sufferer in ways I would never have even begun to approach. Each one of these individuals lacked the language to discuss their experiences. What they were left with was inarticulatable images, physical sensations, emotions, profound helplessness and alienation. Scarry's book helped me find language to give to my patients -- language that helped to normalize their reaction to, and experience of inexplicable events. Her exploration of the abyss of human destruction is accomplished such original, humane, and thoughtful detail. Her book is an ingenius work of art.

Densely written but rewarding treatise.......2000-07-11

Elaine Scarry's "The Body in Pain", an influential study on the relationship between pain, torture, warfare and creativity is a stunning achievement, from the standpoint of Marxism. I confess that I have not read the sections on the structure of warfare, but I was extremely impressed with the passages on torture. Scarry's central premise is that pain, a radically subjective, hence inexpressible and incommunicable experience, results, during the process of torture, in destroying, or deconstructing the victim's voice (his or her power of articulation) and by extension, the victim's world. It is the prisoner's pain, incommunicable because unsharable, which is denied by the torturer as pain but translated as the wholly illusory phenomenon of power, that of the torturer and the regime he represents. These parts of the book are expounded with considerable insight and sophistication, in dense and convoluted prose. The second part, dealing with how pain is converted to creativity, explains how the radical subjectivity and inexpressibility of the sufferer's pain is mitigated into the objective (hence sharable and communicable) activity of work, which is a self-imposed, milder and socially more profitable form of pain. This treatise is absolutely vital reading for any one who aspires to seriously dabble in literature, psychology or philosophy. A tour de force.

Good but limited insights.......1999-12-20

What an odd and wonderful book! It attempts to address three topics -- pain/torture, warfare, and creativity. On the subject of pain/torture it is remarkably acute. The description of what pain is and what it does to consciousness and life's enjoyment is terrific and, in my experience, unprecedented. Similarly, its description of torture and what torture means is stunning in its immediacy. However, when it goes from torture to warfare, the book goes off the rails. It is clear that Ms Scarry has a limited knowledge of warfare and a very limited understanding of what it means and how it is carried out. Warfare is usually a last resort and often involves activity by those who are free against those who are trying to create and perpetuate some form of slavery. (see the work of Victor Davis Hanson, e.g., The Soul of Battle.) This applies whether the war is conventional or nuclear. Her idea that taking the process of war to the civilian population is somehow a function of nuclear war is simply wrong. This approach to war is thousands of years old and, as Hanson points out, important and -- in some contexts -- virtuous. War is a horror, but it is better than slavery, torture, or conquest plus annihilation. Scarry doesn't address this. This book makes the experience of pain clear, but offers a wooly and uncertain explanation of war. Its Marxist approach to creativity is shallow and forgettable.

Profoundly intriguing!.......1999-11-10

This book will change the way you see the world. A must for all art professionals and material culture theorists!

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Questions on Torture? Read this!
Excellent resource
Torture from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib

Torture: A Collection

Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0195306465

Book Description

Torture is perhaps the most unequivocally banned practice in the world today. Yet recent photographs from Abu Ghraib substantiated claims that the United States and some of its allies are using methods of questioning relating to the war on terrorism that could be described as torture or, at the very least, as inhuman and degrading. In terror's wake, the use of such methods, at least under some conditions, has gained some prominent defenders, notably from within the White House. In this revised edition, Torture: A Collection brings together leading lawyers, political theorists, social scientists, and public intellectuals to debate the advisability of maintaining the absolute ban and to reflect on what it says about our societies if we do--or do not--adhere to it in all circumstances. New to this edition are essays by Charles Krauthammer and Andrew Sullivan on the adoption in 2005 of the McCain Amendment, which explicitly bars the use of torture and other cruel methods of interrogation.

Customer Reviews:

Questions on Torture? Read this!.......2007-07-10

This book takes a broad look at torture, from its historical usage,its legality, current definitions, and philisophical thoughts on its usage. Can torture ever be justified? The book is well written enough that boths sides can find evidence and support for their side. As for me I agree with Camus, "Torture one feels, is never warrented; one should never fight for a good cause with evil weapons."

Excellent resource.......2005-08-26

To the torture apologists: You need to ask Mandel Al Jamadi and Diliwar about their "humiliation." Oh that's right, you can't because they're dead, hung from the ceiling and beaten to death.

Canadian Maher Arar survived his torture but American Sean Baker (you apologists really need to google this one) suffered permanent brain damagage.

You apologists need to un-bury your head from the sand and help steer our nation back toward the course of liberty, justice, and respect for the U.S. Constitution.

Torture from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib.......2005-05-23

Torture A Collection, by Sanford Levinson (book review)

Sanford Levinson the editor has been and is an eloquent voice against torture and his intention in drawing together this collection is clearly to educate and raise awareness of a difficult subject to think about let alone put into written words. His introduction acknowledges that lawyers can only go so far in speaking about the reality of torture and he laments the fact that he could not get a professional Army investigator to contribute to this collection.

Much of the writing in this book is post 9/11. This terrible event brought home to United States citizens their vulnerability to horrific terrorist attacks on a grand scale. Since terrorists by definition operate in secret, preventing attacks relies heavily on information gained before an attack. That raises the question, how to get the information? One of the ways is through interrogation of suspects who might have knowledge of imminent attacks. But if time is of the essence what is to be done with potential suspects in custody. If they will not voluntarily provide information can they be forced to give it up through pressure, coercive techniques or even torture, physical or mental. Sanford's book is intent on exploring this issue from as many sides as possible: i.e., political, philosophical, legal, moral, historical, even theological. The sincerity of the editor-author and contributors is further underlined by the fact that all royalties from this book will be donated to The Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition otherwise known as TASSC International.

This is a book for scholars, students, and laymen and concerned citizens. Since Mr. Levinson contributors have different views on the legality and morality of torture, any reader will find much to agree, or disagree, with the different perspectives presented here. I support a Zero Tolerance for Torture policy, thus, I would take strong issue with the articles by Jean Bethke Elshtain and Alan Dershowitz.

Jean Bethke Elshtain for example purports to speak from a Catholic ethical point of view and introduces her readers to classic Jesuitical moral casuistry. My problem with her presentation is she is grounding her arguments on one strand of theological ethics and ignores an equally strong deontological strand of Catholic ethics which says some acts can be intrinsically evil and can never be permitted no matter what the circumstances. The Convention Against Torture and human rights advocates reflect this strand of Catholic tradition when they say that the right not to be tortured is nonderogable, meaning it can never be set aside no matter what the circumstances even in extreme emergency.

Like Alan Dershowitz who in his book, Why Terrorism Works, Elshtain supports an absolute condemnation of terrorist acts but somehow she becomes a utilitarian (with sadness) when it comes to torture. Her contribution purports to be theological but Elshtain bases her arguments mostly on the Machiavellian ruminations of Michael Walzer's essay, "Reflection on the Problem of Dirty Hands", not on the Beatitudes of Jesus. In fact there are no scriptural references in her essay. One saying of Jesus she might have to overcome is "what does it profit one to gain (or save) the whole world but suffer the loss of ones immortal soul." Is not this the real condition of the policy maker and those who carry out the policies of a particular government, the torturers themselves ? Do not the arguments of Walzer, Elshtain, Posner, and Dershowitz lead the reader to a theory of "just torture". Even if one thinks these writers are wrong, they can still serve as lighthouses in the darkness warning others to sail clear of the shoals.

My only qualification in praise of this book is the lack of deep reflection by any of the authors post Abu Ghraib. It seems to me the revelations of torture in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanimo and the revelations of renditions to other countries by the United States, takes the debate about torture and puts it in a context that is more troubling than the authors seem to understand. For Abu Ghraib stands to the world as 9/11 stands to the United States.

Now that we have seen what even Americans are capable of, we need to get this discussion off the academic and normative plane and into the empirical realm (to use a favorite Dershowitz distinction). Haven't we learned from all the ugly revelations of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq just how sadistic and corrupt human beings really can be? Can Judge Richard Posner say to Alan Dorfman, as he does in his essay, that Dorfman's absolute prohibition against torture is "overwrought in tone and irresponsible in content." In the empirical realm the President, the Vice President, the Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General and the Secretary of State have all made the argument that the war on terrorism necessitates different tactics than any previously fought war--though they still make the dubious claim they do not engage in torture or violations of the Convention
Against Torture.

Let Sanford's distinguished authors grapple with this issue directly as our leaders grapple with them. Our leaders see "ticking bomb terrorists" almost everywhere. Are they right or are they the ones who might be "overwrought in tone and irresponsible in content ? " After Abu Ghraib should we really struggle and then acquiesce to the distinction between torture and cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment as Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez seems to suggest in a recent interview in Houston where he said that most of what happened at Abu Ghraib does not rise to the level of torture.

Maybe Mr. Levinson will honor us with a second volume that connects the discussion in this book with what has happened since Abu Ghraib. Meanwhile I suggest that "Torture a Collection" is essential reading for anyone who thinks about torture as a possible response to terrorism.

Paul Ferris
(...)

Performing Race and Torture on the Early Modern Stage (Routledge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture)

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Performing Race and Torture on the Early Modern Stage (Routledge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture)
Ayanna Thompson
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0415957214

Book Description

Performing Race and Torture on the Early Modern Stage provides the first sustained reading of Restoration plays through a performance theory lens. This approach shows that an analysis of the conjoined performances of torture and race not only reveals the early modern interest in the nature of racial identity, but also how race was initially coded in a paradoxical fashion as both essentially fixed and socially constructed. An examination of scenes of torture provides the most effective way to unearth these seemingly contradictory representations of race because depictions of torture often interrogate the incongruous desire to substitute the visible and manipulable materiality of the body for the more illusive performative nature of identity. In turn, Performing Race and Torture on the Early Modern Stage challenges the long-standing assumption that early modern conceptions of race were radically different in their fluidity from post-Enlightenment ones by demonstrating how many of the debates we continue to have about the nature of racial identity were engendered by these seventeenth-century performances.

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Caustic reality.

Saddam City
Mahmoud Saeed
Manufacturer: Saqi Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0863563503
Release Date: 2005-02-10

Book Description

One morning Mustafa Ali Noman, a teacher in Baghdad, was arrested as he reached the school gates. For the next fifteen months he was brutally interrogated, moved from prison to prison and barred from contacting his family; as he witnessed countless scenes of torture. It became clear to Mustafa along his journey through the desert gulags that the question of guilt or innocence was irrelevant. How do I know that I am not dreaming this? he asks himself, as, under intolerable pressure, his grasp of reality begins to weaken. Mahmoud Saeeds devastating novel evokes the works of Kafka, Solzhenitsyn and Elie Wiesel. It is a vivid account of the wanton and brutal treatment of the Iraqi people by Saddam Husseins feared secret police and of the arbitrariness of life under tyranny.

Customer Reviews:

Caustic reality........2007-10-10

As was suggested on the back cover, elements of this book did indeed remind me of other prisoner stories, such as those of Eli Wiesel ("Night") and also a novel called "The Prisoner", written by Jim McLehrer (about a group of United States bombadier squadron members shot down and taken prisoner in Japan, and the tortures they endured).

When Mustafa kept mentioning how the guards would screw up his last name, he didn't give. He would correct them, which I saw as a sign of his last refusal to become just another body in the jail. He identified which of his captors could be counted upon for humane treatment (which was relative to the circumstances).

In our country, of course, if you opened your mouth to express an opinion against the goverment, no one would arrest you. I attempted to imagine how it would be for the men of Baghdad, normally "secure" in their place as men, to be treated so terribly, as the women of their country had been for so many years (and still are treated). It would take the slightest act or demonstration of what might be percieved as a traitorous thought or deed, as Noman oft illustrated during his discussions with the other prisoners, to be thrown away by the corrupt ruling society.

Pissed me off, and made me sad. Even the character's last name.. Noman.. No Man.. there you go. His own heritage against him. His name that he passed onto his children, shared with his wife.

The part about being forced to join the Party, when it was clearly against his beliefs, though what else could he do-- imprisonment seemed inevitable, not a question of why or how but only WHEN.. reminds me too of the Von Trapp family, who fled Austria for the United States during World War II, eventually opening an inn.

For a slim book, it's still tremendously powerful and the messages regarding one's civil rights, freedoms, all of those ideas and images really spoke to me.

Torture Garden: A Photographic Archive of the New Flesh (Torture Garden)

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Bitter Fruit indeed
Happy Halloween in Hell!

Torture Garden: A Photographic Archive of the New Flesh (Torture Garden)

Manufacturer: Creation Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

The best-selling fetish photography collection, with over 350 original photographs and over 50 colour plates, a complete guide to the New Flesh.

Customer Reviews:

Bitter Fruit indeed.......2002-05-27

From virginal Eden to lascivious lavatory, this frightening photo-document exposes the moral corruption in its most vivid form. Consider yourselves warned!

Happy Halloween in Hell!.......2000-04-01

"Long live the new flesh!" This quote from David Cronenberg's cinematic playground of perversion, Videodrome, announces the theme of Torture Garden, the inimitable London nightclub established in 1990. We are not allowed to categorize it as simply a fetish club, because it is "multi-dimensional, ever evolving and mutating." One way to get a handle is to peruse the strict dress code on its website. Your look better be: burlesque, fantasy, theatrical, period costume, glamour, drag, alien, cyborg, cabaret, mutation, cybersex, fetish, SM, body art, rubber, leather, PVC, or uniforms. Sounds like the East Village on a Saturday night.

You take the Angel Tube to get to the current site of Torture Garden's monthly parties. You really do. These partygoers don't engage in much actual BDSM play, although there is some walkabout bondage. It's mainly a Stand and Model venue, a nightclub/dance scene. There's no room to swing a cane anyway. There's a floor show by some of the top out-there acts in the world. There are performance photos here of (among others) Miranda Sex Garden, the Genitorturers, Ron Athey, Medieval Magick, and Angel Grinders & Chainsaws, who use industrial equipment to send fountains of sparks gushing from the groins of troupe members.

The production package of Torture Garden, the book, is superb. Chaplin's candids capture the feverish ecstasy of a world where nothing is true and everything is permitted. They are brilliantly grouped and sequenced. Sivroni's mostly larger format portraits bring you face to face with folk in costumes far beyond fabulous, exuding the potency of their homemade personas. The Videodrome quote above is one of many at the bottom of every page. These provide a quick, painless introduction to the TG philosophy. A few favorites:

"...sadomasochism enjoys all the forms of religious piety - kneeling, praying, worshipping, sacrificing, invoking and punishing." -- Terence Sellers, The Correct Sadist

"The first duty of man is to become artificial." -- Oscar Wilde

"The body is both a pleasure palace and a torture chamber." -- Charles Levin, Body Invaders

"It's your body, play with it." -- Fakir Musafar, Modern Primitives

"Your body is a battleground." -- Barbara Kruger

At Torture Garden, the concept of costume is raised to extremes of creative imagination, transcendent otherness and disgusting repulsion. By the time you get through this volume, your own definitions of these categories will have been severely mangled. On one night a performer named Franko paraded through the crowd on crutches, accompanied by a nurse. He was nude except for syringes, catheters, rubber tubes and various medical receptacles containing various bodily fluids. On the same night, completely independently, a female partygoer appeared wearing a brassiere consisting of two plasma bags filling with her own blood.

Book Description

The Torture Garden follows up its first, club-based book with the sequel Body Probe, an anthology of interviews, features and images exploring the boundaries of the human body at the edge of the new millennium.

Contents include: David Cronenberg, Hermann Nitsch, Chapman Brothers, Orlan, Stelarc, Ron Athey, Della Grace, Nick Knight, Alex Binnie, plus alien abduction, sex in space, medical fetishism, robot art, mutation in fashion, self-made freaks, the cybernetic body and S/M art.

Body Probe confirms the Torture Garden's position at the cutting edge of the fetish, body art, and cyber technology scene. It contains over 100 black and white photographs, and over 50 full-colour plates.

Customer Reviews:

outer limits.......2004-04-27

a uniquely mind-opening work that deftly explores the "cutting edge" of severe anatomical explorations.

A forbidden work that surely upsets conservatives everywhere.

Blurring the lines between body, mind, and machine.......2001-04-23

This book contains interviews, essays, and art from some of the most cutting edge body artists, authors, and fringe culture critics from around the world. Stelarc, Franko B, Ron Athey, and Orlan all give their take on why they do what they do. Sex, cyborgs, freaks, and the eroticism of destruction are all examined. This is a book for those who think without boundaries. Only a few selections which drag or seem out of place keep this from being a 5 star work. For more content like this, also refer to 'Suture : The Arts Journal', edited by Jack Sargeant (also a contributor to this work).

not for the average customer.......2000-12-27

"Body Probe" goes beyond grotesque. This isn't about mere critiques of Stelarc's, Orlan's or Marina Abramovic's work. This isn't a book for the kind of people who'd wonder whether this is art or not, this isn't a book for the average reader. You have to seriously consider the human body as the most complex and beautiful art subject to enjoy this. You have to believe that the mutant flesh is about to become the next trend. After reading "Body Probe", you'll be sure the cyber culture is here for good and it has the most intimate ralationship with the flesh, an aesthetic revolution that has no turning back.

A Radical Exploration of the Body.......2000-06-02

Body Probe is an amazing collection of interviews and essays of radical performance art, s & m culture, cyborgs, and the films of David Cronenberg, among many other interesting things. The color and b/w pictures are well arranged. Stand-out features of the book include an interview with Mark van Saper, a leading fetish clothing designer, and an intriguing essay about sex in space, which includes some David Bowie lyrics. For those who dare to venture to the boundaries of free expression and the use of the body as an art form, then this book is highly recommended.

Collection of Torture Instruments from The Royal Castle of Nuremberg

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Collection of Torture Instruments from The Royal Castle of Nuremberg

Manufacturer: J.J. Little & Co.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000EOMRP8

Product Description

Illustrated Catalog of the historical and world-renowned collection of torture instruments from the royal castle of Nuremberg.

L'aujourd'hui des droits de l'homme (Collection Vie des hommes)

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L'aujourd'hui des droits de l'homme (Collection Vie des hommes)
Guy Aurenche
Manufacturer: Nouvelle Cite
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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ASIN: 2853130428

La torture: Des temoins contre le silence (Collection J'accuse)

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La torture: Des temoins contre le silence (Collection J'accuse)
Bertrand Solet
Manufacturer: Syros
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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ASIN: 2841461858

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