Wanna See Something REALLY Scary? Transfiguration by Olivier de Sagazan
Josh Millican
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“Wanna see something REALLY scary?”
To horror fans who came of age in the 1980s, the line above instantly evokes memories of Dan Aykroyd and Albert Brooks in the opening scene from Twilight Zone: The Movie. Now, on a bi-monthly basis, I’ll be asking, “Wanna see something REALLY scary?” with the goal of shocking you with chilling footage plumbed from the darkest corners of YouTube.
Performance art can be both captivating and terrifying. There’s an intrinsic in-your-face element to performance art that instantly puts the viewer on guard. Many modern performance art practitioners incorporate elements of self-mutilation through acts like suspension and sewing one’s lips shut. One of the most alarming and unsettling performance artists in history, however, Olivier de Sagazan doesn’t employ any extreme acts into his pieces; he inspires nightmares by layering his own body in paint and clay.
His shows caught the attention of documentarian Ron Fricke who included de Sagazan’s piece Office Man in the 2011 film Samsara. Have a look see:
Wanna see something REALLY scary?
De Sagazan’s best-known piece called Transfiguration, a 10-minute performance during which the artist takes forms resembling scarecrows, zombies, ghouls, and other unnamable monstrosities. His performance is like a sinister Rorschach Test that taps into an individual’s specific fear set. Transfiguration is so disturbing, it has actually inspired several creepypastas; clips without any context often circulate across social medias, eliciting astonishment and dread in equal measure!
Give Transfiguration a spin below and let us know what you think in the Comments section. Can you make it all the way through, or is it simply too unnerving to endure? Let’s discuss!
Got an idea for a future installment of “Wanna See Something REALLY Scary?” Hit me up on Twitter @josh_millican!
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