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Departure (An Experiment in Human Salvage) is a performance involving live tattooing on Dominic Johnson's hands, carried out by the renowned tattoo artist Alex Binnie. The tattoos function as permanent archival documents of performance, and as art works in their own rights. Pain and the wound are therefore incidental to the production of a striking permanent image on the body - in Departure as well as in tattooing as a traditional cultural practice more generally. How might disaster be represented or produced without recourse to sacred imagery? What might a new secular pantheon of catastrophic images look like? In Departure, the creation of a lasting image in performance mimics and explores the histories of tattooing and scarification as practices of body modification. Departure includes live performances by three guest artists: Mouse, jamie lewis hadley, and Traumata (Hellen Burrough); sound design by Mark Peter Wright; and lighting design by Marty Langthorne.