Bob Flanagan (December 26, 1952 – January 4, 1996) was an American

performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

ist and writer known for his work on

sadomasochism Sadomasochism ( ) is the giving and receiving of pleasure from acts involving the receipt or infliction of pain or humiliation. Practitioners of sadomasochism may seek sexual pleasure from their acts. While the terms sadist and masochist refer ...

and lifelong struggle with

cystic fibrosis Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a rare genetic disorder that affects mostly the lungs, but also the pancreas, liver, kidneys, and intestine. Long-term issues include difficulty breathing and coughing up mucus as a result of frequent lung infections. O ...

Biography

Early life

Flanagan was born in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

on December 26, 1952 and grew up in

Costa Mesa, California Costa Mesa (; Spanish for "Table Coast") is a city in Orange County, California. Since its incorporation in 1953, the city has grown from a semi-rural farming community of 16,840 to an urban area including part of the South Coast Plaza–John Wa ...

, with his mother, Kathy; father, Robert; brothers John and Tim; and sister, Patricia. In childhood, Flanagan was diagnosed with

. His sister, Patricia, died at age 21 of the same illness, which also claimed the life of second sister, who died soon after birth. At age 14, in 1967, Flanagan was named the first

poster child A poster child (sometimes poster boy or poster girl) is, according to the original meaning of the term, a child afflicted by some disease or deformity whose picture is used on posters or other media as part of a campaign to raise money or enlist ...

for the North

Orange County Orange County most commonly refers to: *Orange County, California, part of the Los Angeles metropolitan area Orange County may also refer to: U.S. counties *Orange County, Florida, containing Orlando *Orange County, Indiana *Orange County, New ...

chapter of the National Cystic Fibrosis Research Foundation. Flanagan graduated from

Costa Mesa High School Costa Mesa High School/Middle School is a public secondary school serving grades 7 through 12 in Costa Mesa, California. It is part of the Newport Mesa Unified School District. Campus In 2009, the Newport-Mesa Board of Education approved pl ...

, and studied literature at

California State University, Long Beach California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) is a public research university in Long Beach, California. The 322-acre campus is the second largest of the 23-school California State University system (CSU) and one of the largest universities i ...

and the

University of California, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a public land-grant research university in Irvine, California. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, UCI offers 87 undergraduate degrees and 129 graduate and pr ...

. He moved to Los Angeles in 1976.

Death

On January 4, 1996, Flanagan died from complications of

at 43. He was survived by his wife and close artistic collaborator Sheree Rose. The final years of Flanagan's life, including his death, are the subject of the

Kirby Dick Kirby Bryan Dick (born August 23, 1952) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor best known for directing documentary films. He received Academy Award nominations for Best Documentary Feature for directing ''Twist of Fait ...

documentary '' SICK: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist''. Flanagan's participation in the film was contingent upon his death being part of the completed project.''SICK: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist'' DVD Commentary Track

Career

Flanagan began reading his poems around Southern California in the mid-1970s, and was part of the poetry community at

Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center is a literary arts center located at 681 Venice Boulevard, Venice, Los Angeles, California, founded in 1968.http://beyondbaroque.org/ The center is based near the beach in Los Angeles's old Venice City Hall, ...

. He published his first book, ''The Kid is the Man'', with Bombshelter Press in 1978. Flanagan met Sheree Rose in 1980, and collaborated closely with her for the rest of his life. Through the 1980s, Flanagan and Rose focused on

BDSM BDSM is a variety of often erotic practices or roleplaying involving bondage, discipline, dominance and submission, sadomasochism, and other related interpersonal dynamics. Given the wide range of practices, some of which may be engaged ...

community education and organizing, and were founding members of the Los Angeles chapter of the

Society of Janus The Society of Janus is the second BDSM organization founded in the United States (after The Eulenspiegel Society) and is a San Francisco, California based BDSM education and support group. The Society of Janus is nonprofit, volunteer run and is ...

. Their work in performance art began with the 1989 piece ''Nailed'', presented in conjunction with the release of the

RE/Search RE/Search Publications is an American magazine and book publisher, based in San Francisco, founded by its editor V. Vale in 1980. In several issues, Andrea Juno was also credited as an editor. It was the successor to Vale's earlier punk rock fanz ...

publication '' Modern Primitives''. In ''Nailed'', Flanagan nailed his

penis A penis (plural ''penises'' or ''penes'' () is the primary sexual organ that male animals use to inseminate females (or hermaphrodites) during copulation. Such organs occur in many animals, both vertebrate and invertebrate, but males do n ...

and

scrotum The scrotum or scrotal sac is an anatomical male reproductive structure located at the base of the penis that consists of a suspended dual-chambered sac of skin and smooth muscle. It is present in most terrestrial male mammals. The scrotum cont ...

to a board while singing "

If I Had a Hammer "If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song)" is a protest song written by Pete Seeger and Lee Hays. It was written in 1949 in support of the Progressive movement, and was first recorded by the Weavers, a folk music quartet composed of Seeger, Hays, ...

." ''Visiting Hours'', first shown at the

Santa Monica Museum of Art The Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA), formerly known as the Santa Monica Museum of Art (SMMoA), is a contemporary art museum in Los Angeles, CA. As an independent and non-collecting art museum (or kunsthalle), it exhibits the ...

in 1992, combined text, video, and live performance, and explored the convergence of illness and SM. It was Flanagan's most widely toured museum exhibition. In the center of the gallery, Flanagan lay in a hospital bed and interacted with museum visitors for the duration of the exhibit. According to curator Laura Trippi, "The installation is designed like a crazy stage set of a children's residential hospital, replete with a torture chamber lurking amidst the institutional cheer." In 1996, Flanagan received the Steve Maidhof Award for National or International Work from the

National Leather Association International National Leather Association International (NLA-I) is a BDSM organization, based in the United States with chapters in various cities in the United States and Canada. It was founded in 1986 as the "National Leather Association" (NLA), as a nationa ...

Music videos

Flanagan is featured in the widely banned music video for the song "

Happiness in Slavery "Happiness in Slavery" is a song by American industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails from their extended play, '' Broken'' (1992). It was released in November 1992 as a promotional single from the EP. The song takes its title and refrain from Jean ...

" by

Nine Inch Nails Nine Inch Nails, commonly abbreviated as NIN and stylized as NIИ, is an American industrial rock band formed in Cleveland in 1988. Singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer Trent Reznor was the only permanent member of the band ...

. In the video, a nude Flanagan is bound to a mechanical torture device which pierces his flesh, pulls on his nipples and penis with pincers, crushes his genitals with a paddle, and ultimately kills him. Apart from his onscreen "death", all of the acts inflicted on Flanagan in the video are unsimulated. In 1993, Flanagan appeared in the video for the Danzig song " It's Coming Down". In the uncensored version of the video (near the ending), Flanagan pierces his upper and lower lips together and then he hammers a nail through the head of his penis before bleeding on the lens of the camera recording him. Flanagan also had a small role in

Godflesh Godflesh are an English industrial metal band from Birmingham. The group formed in 1982 under the title Fall of Because but did not release any complete music until 1988 when Justin Broadrick (guitar, vocals and programming) and G. C. Gree ...

's " Crush My Soul" video, as an upside-down suspended Christ, hoisted on to the ceiling of a church by Sheree Rose.

Selected works

* ''Visiting Hours: An Installation by Bob Flanagan in collaboration with Sheree Rose'',

and the

New Museum The New Museum of Contemporary Art, founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker, is a museum in New York City at 235 Bowery, on Manhattan's Lower East Side. History The museum originally opened in a space in the Graduate Center of the then-named New Sc ...

, 1994 * ''A Matter of Choice'', in collaboration with Sheree Rose,

Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions Located in Hollywood, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) is a nonprofit exhibition space and archive of the visual arts for the city of Los Angeles, California, United States, currently under the leadership of Sarah Russin. History In th ...

, July 1992 * ''Bob Flanagan at the Movies'',

Artists' Television Access Artists' Television Access (ATA) is a non-profit art gallery and screening venue in San Francisco's Mission District in the United States of America. ATA exhibits work by emerging, independent and experimental artists in its theatre and gallery ...

, San Francisco, April 18, 1992 * ''Bob Flanagan's Sick'', Art in the Anchorage, New York, August 1991 * ''Tell Me What to Do: An Improvisational Reading and Performance'',

, Venice, August 14, 1987

Partial bibliography

* ''The Kid Is the Man'' (1978) * ''The Wedding of Everything'' (1983) * ''Slave Sonnets'' (1986) * ''Fuck Journal'' (Hanuman Books, 1988) * ''A Taste of Honey'' with

David Trinidad David Trinidad (born 1953 in Los Angeles, California) is an American poet. David Trinidad was born in Los Angeles, California, and raised in the San Fernando Valley. He attended California State University, Northridge, where he studied poetry wi ...

(1990) * ''Bob Flanagan: Supermasochist'' (1993) (interviews) * ''Pain Journal'' (1996) * ''The Book of Medicine'' (manuscript, never published)

References

External links

* Obituary:
ONE Archives at the USC Libraries: Bob Flanagan and Sheree Rose Collection

''Why'' (poem answering the question of Flanagan's lifestyle)Bob Flanagan
in the

Video Data Bank Video Data Bank (VDB) is an international video art distribution organization and resource in the United States for videos by and about contemporary artists. Located in Chicago, Illinois, VDB was founded at the School of the Art Institute of Chic ...

* (in French
Philippe Liotard, "Bob Flanagan: ça fait du bien là où ça fait mal, ''Quasimodo'', n°5, 1999
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Flanagan, Bob 1952 births 1996 deaths BDSM writers BDSM people American performance artists Deaths from cystic fibrosis American erotica writers Burials at Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery California State University, Long Beach alumni University of California, Irvine alumni Performance art in Los Angeles Outlaw poets 20th-century American poets 20th-century American musicians Songwriters from California 20th-century American male writers