Myriapodus Films

A documentary edited from ORLAN's seventh surgery in the The Reincarnation of Sainte-ORLAN series which aired live, vis satellite from New York in 1993.

A documentary covering the rebirth of St.Orlan from 1991 through most of the decade.

This film tells the story of the president of a fictitious African nation who spends a sleepless night playing checkers with a pot-smoking vagabond who claims to be the all-round champion. However, the rules of the game entail the opponents howling vulgar and foul obscenities at one another. The champion proceeds to insult, and trounce, the President. His reward, and his fate, will not surprise anyone.

Performance artist ORLAN undergoes one in a series of surgeries that would give her “the chin of Sandro Botticelli’s Venus in The Birth of Venus, the nose of Francois Pascal Simon Gerard’s Psyche in Le premier baisser de l’amour a Psyche, the eyes of Diana in the sculpture Diane chasseresse, the lips of Gustave Moreau’s Europa in L’enlevement d’Europe and the brow of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa to draw attention to received Western notions of beauty and femininity.