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Erik 'The Lizardman' Sprague, showing off some of his modifications.

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An interview with Erik 'The Lizardman' Sprague

Why have you transformed yourself via various body modification processes? My physical appearance is part of a transformation project I began as an undergraduate working in body based performance art.

What is the transformation project? While in college I hit upon the idea of using body modification procedures (initially tattooing) for a body based art piece that would explore the idea of what it means to be human from a linguistic standpoint. I was working with philosophy of language and it occurred to me that some of the principles put forth by Wittgenstein in his later works offered an interesting potential for exploration in relation to the transformation ideas I had been working with in art. Broken down it goes something like this: (1) Wittgenstein suggested that one way in which we are able to apply one term to many different objects is because they share a sort of "family resemblance" (2) Focusing on how this principle related to the use of terms like 'human being', 'person', etc in the sense that people identify others as humans more based on observation of surface physical characteristics and behaviors I decided to modify those aspects of myself in manner which would significantly differentiate me from other 'human beings' (3) In order to achieve this differentiation I chose to use permanent body modification procedures because I felt that a permanent commitment to the artistic statement was preferable if not necessary.

Why a reptilian theme? I felt I should choose something that would work well for a total body theme (fit all areas, age well) and, even more importantly, something I would like for the rest of my life. After considering several options (mazes, stories, spots, stripes) I settled on the reptilian theme because I liked the look and it made a good fit with other ideas I had for the future at the time; like my split tongue and teeth, which did come to pass.

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