At A Glance Author Stormchaser Contact Stormchaser@bme.anon IAM Stormchaser When Three months ago Artist Meself Studio At home Location Vienna Since my arm-piercing project ended with the left shoulder I want to describe first this piercing procedure and second how to live with these 4 special piercings. In particular which things can happen, what could have been done better what is OK.
First some words to the procedure of the left shoulder chain in January this year: After 10 chain piercings and lot of implants a little bit routine was here. It was a thing like usual to take a shower (to have clean skin) to use disinfection solutions on the material (needle, cord, chain) and the skin. The most difficult thing was finding the right entry point as it should have been mostly symmetric to the right shoulder. I learned that it was not no good idea not to hold both hands in the same way while marking. So I went 2cm too deep - which I found out is a better place to heal as it's not so near to the place were the muscle grew onto the bone. Stabbing through the skin was amazingly painless, there is no compare with the biceps horror 2 months before. So it was a easy thing to penetrate the muscle and to go deep into the shoulder. One time it went dangerous - when I started to do the U-shaped curve to the exit point I felt a odd dump feeling in the arm. Probably I was near a nerve and did some pressure on it. So I stopped, decided the U-shaped piercing a bit less deep and it worked well. Without much pain I stabbed the needle from the inner side of my arm through the skin. With some rude force I was able to pull the chain through the arm and I was lucky not to pull the other end of the chain through too as I did a bit too much of the good.
After exact placement of the chain (very important, when healed the position can never be changed) it healed very fast and quite stable in less than two weeks. This is the initial quite infection sensitive healing - it needs more than one year, to get it fully healed.
But how it's to live with these 4 chains, all part of important muscles? The first positive thing is that they don't disturb the muscle's function. No matter if I need to do powerful work or not, I can do it without problems. The skin around the biceps chains is forced to move with the muscle (despite 2 cm extremely flexible chain as clearance between muscle and skin), but the skin got used to it. After some stressy movements like bending the arm to the maximum with lot of power the chain was often irritated in the first year (two times leading to considerable and painful infections), meanwhile the flexibility and tolerance of the skin is increased. Nevertheless I also learned that anti-inflammatory ointments can prevent bigger secondary damage when the piercing is angry (I use Voltaren ointment against sport injuries), so I never had bigger inflammations / infections with the left arm biceps piece. There is a quite interesting adaptation of the skin to the necessary flexibi lity: Round the right arm entry points small radial skin folds developed. I really like the feeling of the heavy flexible metal chains hanging of my arms - following all my movements. And I like it to feel these chains when I strain the muscles as a real artificial, irremovable body part of me.
A little bit more differentiated I have to talk about my shoulder pieces. Piercing through scar tissue was nice for testing the method (deep muscle piercing) itself, but there are very unwelcome side effects due to this tissue. This piercing is always sensitive against infections. It looks like there is some mechanical stress due to the placement at the muscle's onset near the bone, and the scar tissue seems to be a hiding place for bacteria. It slowly becomes more stable now, but I would never do a piercing at this placement again! The accidentally better placed left shoulder piece (penetrates the deltoid muscle at least 3cm below the skin) is still fresh but very stable, no danger of inflammation, infection!
So I can live all-day live without being disturbed by the chains, and I like to show them by wearing short sleeved T-shirts. People's reactions are often quite interesting - from friendly to shocked. And the thrilling thing is: Often young, fashionably pierced people react very intolerant against the unusual piece, while other usually not piercing friendly people are positively curious and accepting this as an art and individual part of me. People doing things only out of fashion are probably often quite intolerant to other non - fashion -following ideas. One thing for all day's live I really learned: The chains should never got caught accidentally as this could end really painful...