Needle Foot Torture
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Needle Foot Torture
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foot torture Published: Nov 23, 2016
comment what you think of it! I wan comments about those soles tortured and what next?
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Love it. I just wished she had pantyhose on with the reinforced toes. Love to see a women's pantyhose legs skewered. Lying on her stomach place wooden 3/4 " nails through her thighs and calf muscles. A 1/2" wooden nail through the bottom of her soles. Wow!!
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Watch 1,000+ talks, performances, artist profiles, and more.
Throughout the run of Radical Women , we offer weekly gallery talks by artists, scholars, and writers who discuss specific works from the exhibition that inspire and provoke them. In the post below, Myriam Gurba recaps her talk .
"The purpose of torture is not getting information. It’s spreading fear." — Eduardo Galeano
A needle pierces a bare foot. An iron skims close to an exposed elbow. A woman attempts to hang a blouse, and herself, in a closet. These images are among the aestheticized representations of torture, which confront viewers of Leticia Parente’s video art. While the violence in these works unsettles, their ambiguity provokes. Torture is dualistic, a non-volitional dance between perpetrator and victim, but Parente’s work bucks these categories. In her videos, the artist seems to torture herself on behalf of the state, on accident, and while in a state of zombie-like submission. In doing so, Parente mimics the behavior of those navigating, surviving, and dying of Brazilian state-sponsored terror in the 1970s. These videos are experiments in moral theatre.
While their action unfolds in domestic interiors, the videos’ threats of torture summon the specter of the state. Its presence demonstrates the inescapability of Brazilian terror. No safe space exists in Parente’s theatre, not even in the private sphere. Neither the public nor the private sphere, however, serve as Parente’s crime scene. Instead, torture turns the body into its crime scene. American State Department documents chronicling Brazilian abuses in the 1970s are among “the most detailed reports on torture techniques ever declassified.” Methods cited include being stripped naked and made to sit in a dark cell, prolonged electric shocks applied to the feet, cattle prod attacks, and the pau de arara , a punishment once reserved for slaves wherein a victim would be tied and suspended by their arms and legs from a bar. Execution sometimes brought relief from torture. The three Parente videos discussed below feature aestheticized, yet minimalist, reenactments of some of these techniques.
Marca registrada is Parente’s most notorious work. Created in 1975, this silent black and white video opens with a close-up. Bare feet walk to a chair. Hands thread a needle. For the rest of the video’s duration, the needle inscribes "Made in Brasil" into the seamstress’s foot. The seamstress thus becomes a garment, conflating the notions of perpetrator and victim. The bodily location of Marca registrada’s logocentric torture mimics a standard technique used by the Brazilian military in the 1970s—prolonged electrocution applied to the soles of the feet. Needlepoint brands Parente’s skin, turning her sole into an economic broadside, and both form and content tie this work to an even older tradition of Brazilian torture—branding practiced by slave traders and owners. Traders branded slaves on specific body parts to communicate their ownership. Masters branded fugitive slaves with the letter the F. They also severed fugitives’ Achilles tendons, bringing us, once again, to the appendage that abets escape: the foot.
Parente’s work simultaneously alludes to modern branding. A registered trademark popularly associated with Brazil is Volkswagen (VW). Accusations of human rights violations have long dogged VW. In Germany during the Second World War, the company used slave labor culled from Nazi concentration camps to produce vehicles. VW opened its first plants in Brazil on the heels of that war, and Brazilian employees of Volkswagen do Brasil allege abuses that, yet again, tie the brand to state-sponsored terror. Workers assert that during the 1970s, VW spied on its employees and reported suspected subversives to the government. Of his experience former employee Lucio Bellentani said , "I was at work when two people with machine guns came up to me. They held my arms behind my back and immediately put me in handcuffs. As soon as we arrived in Volkswagen's security center, the torture began. I was beaten, punched and slapped."
Subtler violence replaces branding in In , a video from 1975. In features Parente, clad in white, approaching a wardrobe. She climbs into the closet and without removing her blouse, tries to hang the garment from a hanger. Her persistence generates absurd horror. She seems determined, suicidally so, to hang her blouse and, coincidentally, herself. This situational absurdism suggests the execution of journalist Vladimir Herzog. Brazil’s military regime viewed Herzog as an enemy of the state, and on October 25, 1975, in response to a summons, Herzog appeared at army headquarters in São Paulo. Officials detained him. Herzog died while in custody.
Officers issued an autopsy certificate citing suicide as Herzog’s official cause of death. They publicly circulated a photograph of Herzog’s corpse to substantiate their claim. The photograph shows Herzog "hanging from a strip of cloth from the window of the cell in which he was being held…" ( Inter-American Commission on Human rights, Report No. 71/15, Case 12.879, p. 20, article 86 ). The rabbi who handled Herzog’s dead body found evidence of torture, and Herzog’s fellow detainees corroborated that suicide was an impossibility: belts, shoelaces, and anything which could be used to fashion a noose were taken from them. Detainees later testified that Herzog had been made to sit in an electric shock seat. A team of interrogators used an electric prod on him and eventually placed something in his mouth to choke his screams. He likely died during torture. In light of this case, and its timing, In may be read as a commentary on the absurdity of the Brazilian military’s lies surrounding Herzog’s impossible suicide.
Tarefa I, made in 1982, brings us back to branding. Parente, dressed in white, mounts an ironing board, flattening herself against it. Another woman stands beside her, wielding an iron. The woman proceeds to run the iron across Parente, seeming to iron the artist’s blouse and pants while she wears them. While Marca Registrada is the more famous of Parente’s video artworks, Tarefa I is more sophisticated. The viewer can only guess whether or not the experience is painful: whether or not the iron is actually hot remains unknown. Also, the victim/perpetrator dichotomy becomes even more ambiguous despite the material split between the two. While the woman holding the iron is, upon observation, the perpetrator, the victim courts violence by willingly climbing onto the ironing board. Like an automaton, she submits to the iron’s threat. As it moves across her, she remains very still, balancing her body, keeping still so as to avoid being tortured by a burn. This dance between perpetrator and victim, which is at times a dance with oneself, is rendered through exquisite yet plain visual metaphors.
As democracies around the world weaken, I hope that we can be reminded by work such as Parente’s that the price to be paid for letting them crumble is both painful and high.
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This is a good day! I feel like life is getting back to normal. With time for a little sewing, a couple of chores, and time to write blog posts; it is evident that the work of the move is behind us. The timing could not be better as it is time for the second annual Positivity Quiltalong, hosted by Sew Preeti Quilts and Needle and Foot. This quiltalong happened for the first time, last spring. At that time, life was getting crazy and it was difficult for me to focus on it. This is made most evident by the fact that I have not yet finished my quilt from that QAL. My incomplete quilt aside, Preeti has once again created a fun, easy to make pattern for all of us to create together.
In case this is new to you, Preeti Harris is a staunch supporter of a project I organize called Mercyful Quilts. Mercyful Quilts collects lap size quilts for patients who are at end of life at Mercy Hospital in Sacramento, CA. I have been coordinating this program for nearly four years now. You can read a lot of the details by clicking here. Countless quilts have been made for this project – each one given to a person who is saying goodbye to a loved one. The family uses the quilt to cover the person while in the hospital. When the person passes away, the quilt goes home with the family as a remembrance of this special family member. We have heard several very moving stories from families who received a Mercyful Quilt. These quilts serve to remind us how important it is to show kindness to everyone, even to people we don’t know. We are reminded that these acts of kindness and care might just provide a bit of extra support to a family going through a sorrowful time. This is why we make the quilts.
There are only a few requirements for Mercyful Quilts. The hospital serves adults only so no juvenile fabrics or themes. We always need male, female and gender neutral quilts so search your fabrics with that in mind. Lap size only please – no bigger or it becomes too difficult to store them.
Last year when Preeti asked if I would like to work with her on a quiltalong for Mercyful Quilts How could I say anything but yes?? Feeling we all needed a dose of positivity in our lives, Preeti designed a pattern, wrote very clear instructions and even gathered a few prizes. We all made a “plus” quilt together and if memory serves me, Mercy Hospital received over 20 quilts. There were a few others made internationally which were donated to causes closer to the quilter. After such a successful and fun time, she is at it again!
This is the pattern we will be sewing for the 2022 event. Preeti has put together a relaxed schedule (that I am hoping to actually adhere to!) There will be several Linky parties (hosted here at Needle & Foot) to share your progress along the way.
This will be a fantastic project to work on over the summer. I have an idea in my head for the fabrics I think I will use. How about you? Will you join in and make a quilt for Mercy Hospital with us? Preeti and I would love to have you join us! If you have any questions, please feel free to leave them in the comments. I am thrilled to, once again, be working with Preeti, gathering Mercyful Quilts and hanging out with all of you!
Life in western Washington is going well. The house is shaping up and starting to feel like home. I wanted to check in and share a bit about the past couple of weeks.
It has been many months since I sat at a sewing machine for any reason. No quilting, mending or sewing has been enjoyed since who knows when? Maybe January or February?
Clearly, this had to be fixed. I spent an evening shuffling bins and plastic totes around to create a path to the corner of the sewing room.
For the time being, I set up a folding table in the corner to hold the machine. I have a sewing table where I can drop the machine down which is great but it is currently in pieces and one of the pieces was damaged in the move. At some point Ray will fix it, but for now, this is good enough. I have a wonderful view of the yard and room to sew.
Currently I am working on matching summer dresses for H and A. After moving all of the fabric tubs to the wall, it became painfully clear how much fabric I have. So, time to use it up!!
I was honored to attend the Mother’s Day Tea at H’s preschool a week ago. She was so excited. My daughter-in-law has a very inflexible schedule and the preschool didn’t give enough notice for her to arrange to be there. So I was the substitute. A sign of the times though; I was certainly not the only Grammy filling in. For a class of 16 children, there were three grandmas in attendance. I had so much fun with this sweet girl.
Not that the guest bathroom is a very exciting topic to write about but I did want to show you how cute my rag rug looks in there! I knew it would fit somewhere. Also, isn’t that flooring cool? It is tile but looks like wood.
My sister and I met for a long walk and a coffee last week. It was gorgeous out. I had not seen these silly chairs before so we took each other’s picture in them. Who is thinking of Edith Ann now? Just showed my age there… ‘and that’s the truth.’
Springtime is here – at least as far as the azaleas are concerned. It has actually been quite cool and rainy. But these gorgeous shrubs are not bothered in the least. They are so pretty!
It took no time for the girls to make a mess in the play room last week. We had them for a short while when their parents were out buying some equipment for their latest hobby, beekeeping. H and A settled right in and we had a lot of fun. It is just nuts that we can do this all the time!!
I will be back soon to share the dresses I am working on. Hoping all of you are doing well. Feel free to leave me a comment and tell me how you are!
We have been in the new house since April 7th! Oh my gosh – we are in love with this Our neighborhood is quiet (other than a few dogs who like to bark a lot), the weather is strange (changes so fast from rain to snow to hail to blue skies and sunshine – all in the course of a couple of hours sometimes), the proximity to lots of beaches makes us so happy, and most of all – we are so close to lots of family members!
We had been here a couple of days when my son and these two silly girls came to spend a day. They had not seen the house yet. It was such fun. We had not unpacked much at all so they found some hiding places in the kitchen.
We didn’t yet have any toys available yet; all I could find for them was a stack of post-it notes and a pen. They were happy for quite some time. Simple pleasures.
While little sister was napping, we had some time to read. Luckily she had brought some books. If this isn’t reason enough to spend months on end packing and selling a house, buying a house, driving up and unpacking for days, then nothing is!
The day after the girls went home, I started feeling crummy and yep – they shared their cold with me. Sigh. This wasn’t great timing since we had loads of boxes arriving. So I got into a routine of unpack a bit, take a nap, unpack more and then nap some more.
By Easter Sunday, I was feeling much better. My son and his wife hosted a wonderful dinner. It was so fun to be able to see so much family for the afternoon. Big sister is now the proud owner of an old digital camera of her mom’s. She takes loads of pictures with it and set up this group shot (instructing us to have the short people in the front and the tall people in the back – hahaha). But then she took this one shot and everyone looks pretty darn good. How many times do we work so hard for a group photo, taking shot after shot and this five year old takes one shot, and it is a good one.
This room has been ignored since we arrived. There have been too many other things to work on. Hopefully this week I can begin to get it put together. The biggest issue is lack of shelving. I had built-in shelves in our last house. This is a bonus room so there isn’t even a bedroom closet. I am going to have to buy shelves, lots of shelves. Then I need to start using some of this fabric!!! I cannot wait – It has been months since I sat at a sewing machine. My sewing machine will sit in the corner by the windows. The view out those windows is of our back yard and it will be so nice to sit there.
Yesterday morning we had sunshine and no indication of rain. We took walk in the morning on a rocky beach about 20 minutes from the house. Ray and I are still in vacation mode when we walk on the beach. Seems like we should be heading home. Beaches have always been vacation places for us, not somewhere we can walk whenever we please!
Now you all have the latest and greatest from the Pacific Northwest where I am starting to feel at home. Yahoo!
You guys – we are close, so very close to being done with the house in California. We sign papers for the close next
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