Strange Theatre
by Brady Tighe
“That sure looks like it fucking hurts.”
That’s the thought that ran
through my mind when I stalked
into Inside Out Tattoo Works. There’s
a picture on the foyer’s far wall of a
man in shorts with a number of metal
hooks threaded through his skin.
The hooks are attached to something
that’s holding him in midair and he’s
hanging by the strength of his skin
alone. I slide myself onto one of the
comfy leather couches and drink
in the picture some more, marvelling
at it as though it were a work of
art. The man in the picture also appears
to have a long, slender needle
punched through his cheek. I start
counting the hooks, digging on the
Euro Techno that’s blasting from the
store speakers.
The man in the picture is Damien
Kenny. He’s a man who hasn’t just
tested the waters of human pain
tolerance and mental strength; he’s
dived right the fuck in and discovered
he has gills.
Kenny, 30, is a visual marvel
of a human being. Simply looking
at him is like looking at a painting
or a mural—your eyes don’t know
where to dart to first. His arms and
legs are a criss-cross of tattoos. Almost
every inch of skin is covered.
The top of his head is shaved and tattooed;
the forehead area is punched
with dermal piercings. His earlobes
are stretched wide. But the art that’s
covering his body isn’t what I’m
there to talk to him about today.
I’m here to talk about another form
of expression that Kenny performs
live and at home—the kind which
is depicted in the picture hanging in
the lobby.
Suspension, as Kenny puts it, is
“putting hooks in your skin and suspending
yourself from the ground.
There’s[also]flesh pulling, or energy
pulling as some people call it, but
that doesn’t involve you leaving the
ground.”
I asked how one goes about doing
such a thing, suspending oneself
with hooks. He skimps out on
explaining the cleanliness aspect of
such a procedure, saying that it’s a
given. Kenny then hands me one of
the hooks he uses in his show and
explains that they come in various
sizes. He details that he has “some
larger and thicker [than the one
he handed me] and some that are
thinner. I use piercing needles. The
needle goes on the end of the hook
and then into the skin.” He explains
the method of threading the hook,
demonstrating where to put your
fingers on it, “then you pinch the
skin between your fingers and then
pierce using the needle on the end.”
He moves his hand in a curving motion
as he does this.
Now, how many hooks? In how
many places? Kenny says it depends
on the person, and there are many
different techniques and set kinds of
suspensions that one can do. “Different
people have different ideas
on how many hooks and wherever
they go, and you can basically do it
from anywhere. There’s traditional
positions: behind the knees; suicide,
which is from behind the upper
back; chest; resurrection; superman,
with many hooks all over your
body; crucifixion.” As he lists them
he points to the places on his body
where the hooks would be inserted,
rattling them off and moving his
hands around as if he was describing
something simple. “Those are
quite common ones that have been
around for quite a long time. But
you can suspend from anywhere,
really.”
I ask a question that has been
nagging me since I walked into the
building and drank in that picture
adorning the entranceway. One that
I assume would have an obvious answer,
but I’m curious to hear from
an expert.
“So, does it hurt?”
“It hurts less and less,” he says,
and then adds, “For me personally,
it hurts.” He then goes on to explain
that threading hooks through his
knees no longer hurts, possibly because
Kenny has done it so many
times that the nerves are toast. “But
putting them in here [he points to
the side of his midsection] hurts. It’s
the worst place I’ve found.”
He goes on to explain that the
pain continues through the lifting
part of the suspension, where
the weight is being taken on. But
once one is suspended in the air,
“It doesn’t really hurt anymore.” Although
he quickly adds, “Coming
down hurts as well.”
Kenny got into suspension back
in 2003, in Australia, where he ran
into a dude from Finland—a circus
performer. “I was getting tattooed
in the shop where I worked, and
he came in. We got to talking. He
owned a piercing shop in Finland.
He told me he did suspension, and I
knew what it was and told him that I
was really interested. So I helped him
suspend a girl, and then I told him
that I wanted to be suspended.”
He describes his first time as being
“weird,” and recalls having to
mentally psych himself up for the
whole gig itself, telling himself, “I’m
not going to die. I just saw someone
do it. The hooks aren’t going to rip
out of me. I’m not going to die. So
just fucking don’t be a wuss. Your
brain is just going overdrive.” He
tells the story with a chuckle under
his voice. “And then you do it, and all
the stress goes away and you realize
‘Wow, here I am.’”
The show that the Finnish circus
performer is in, Snake Oil Inc.,
is currently touring with Kenny’s
own performance show. “The show
that he is in remains my major influence.”
“I met a guy, thought what he
was doing was cool. Gave it a try,
and yeah, here I am.”
Kenny’s show, which goes down
on Sat. May 15, is a performance that
combines Kenny’s own group, The
Tale of Sweet Molly, with his influences
Snake Oil Inc. into a night of
insane human performance. In the
show, Kenny performs under his
stage name Mr. eKtion with an assistant
named Tawni Krystal. When
I was talking to Kenny for the interview
he ran down some of the things
he would be doing during the show,
such as juggling, piercing himself,
stapling things to himself, putting
hooks in his face, balancing on a
basketball, and of course, suspension.
If juggling sounded like the easy
one, it’s because I forgot to mention
he will be juggling while standing
barefoot on broken glass. Jumping
up and down.
“People want to see extreme shit
and freaky stuff. It doesn’t matter
what I'm actually delivering, I don’t
know how many people fully appreciate
exactly what it is I’m trying
to do.” Kenny goes into an analogy
about people viewing a suspension
performance, “If you scheduled a
car wreck, people would go see it.
But if you scheduled some kind of
artistic, choreographed style of car
accident, I don’t know if people
would really appreciate the timing
and the fucking skill that went into
it. They’d just be like, ‘Oh God, a car
wreck!’”
Kenny doesn’t just do extreme
things for his shows though. He
tells me that the girl who assists him,
Tawni Krystal, is both a dancer and
a mime, and that the show involves
shadow puppets, spoken word segments,
and poetry. “There’s a lot of
depth to the story. But still, people
will come up after a show and I’ll
ask what they liked and they’ll most
likely say, ‘When you stapled that
shit to your head, dude! Fuck!’ A
lot of people love the intensity of it,
and have no idea what the fuck it’s
all about.”
It’s clear that what Kenny does in
a show and in his spare time is something
that is immensely physically
and mentally taxing. One doesn’t
just casually self-pierce themselves
or walk on broken glass for simple
kicks where there’s nothing good
on TV. I ask Kenny if there is some
kind of motivation behind what he
does, or what the main message of
theme he wishes to get across with
his shows.
He says, “It’s always been the
limits to the human body. What it’s
capable of. I feel most people walk
around with their life half asleep.
Some people just want a mediocre
life—McDonalds and a paycheck. I
read something that said a few hundred
years ago, that 50 or 60 lashes
was a common punishment for minor
crimes. A person today would
die if they were given 60 lashes. People
have become softer. I think we’re
losing touch with what’s possible.
And I like to think that every time
someone sees my show they face up
to the fact that there is more possible
and you don’t have to consider
something minor as a debilitating
injury. You can do what appears to
be massive injury to yourself and in
two or three days you’re back to normal.
By strengthening your mind,
you can bring your body to doing
anything possible.”
He adds that in regards to his
mental state during a show, “I’m trying
to convey that my mind is still
all there, so that people don’t think
that I’m in some kind of crazy daze
where I’m some insane guy doing
crazy stuff. Completely with my faculties.
It’s possible for people to do.”
We talk briefly about Criss Angel
and the TV performers that do
some of these things. Kenny talks
about the intense theatricality that
some TV performers use, and bluntly
points out that it’s all just a bunch
of bullshit.
“They build this huge elaborate
and mysterious nature around what
they’re doing when it’s very simple.
There’s no trick to it; it’s simple. You
take this needle and stick it through
your face. It’s not so simple mentally,
but physically anybody can do it. If
you can lift and use your arm, you
can do it.”
This whole kind of approach of
mental strength has given Kenny a
valuable kind of life skill. He talks
about growing up and being timid
and shy—a small Irish immigrant
kid with a big mouth in an all-boys
school. Now, after putting himself
through some intense mental and
physical ordeals by choice as often
as possible, he says he remains pretty
calm at all times. That kind of Zen
ideal is something I’m sure everyone
would want to possess, and Kenny
agrees, saying, “To be honest, it’s not
like I like to hold back on recommending
it to anyone, but I think
the world would be a better place if
everyone did suspensions.”
We talk about rituals of passage
in modern Western culture. How
these things manifest themselves in
different ways. Kenny believes that
not everyone needs to go as far as
he does in testing their limits, since
everyone is different, but he thinks
that people should be testing their
limits in other ways. “I definitely
feel that I’m stronger every time, or
maintaining the strength.”
The only time anything has gone
wrong for Kenny was an incident
where he was doing a version of
the resurrection suspension, and a
hook embedded in his side ripped
out from being twisted the wrong
way. The wound remains pretty deep
and is still visible in his side. “I can
fit my whole finger in there,” he tells
me with a grin. “But, trial and error,
you know.”
Something like that doesn’t fall
into the usual realm of trial and error.
But Damien Kenny isn’t someone
stuck in any kind of bullshit
“usual” realm. He’s an artist, with a
purpose, an aim, and the guts and
charisma to back up whatever limits
he plans on pushing himself to. Not
to mention he does tattoos, piercings,
and scarification in his spare
time as a job. He’s a person of a rare
nature. And that’s just fucking all
kinds of legit cool.