The assembled audience watches in rapt attention. Even the drunkest have forgotten to put a beverage to their lips in the last few minutes, watching as the performance unfolds.
The assembled audience watches in rapt attention. Even the drunkest have forgotten to put a beverage to their lips in the last few minutes, watching as the performance unfolds.
Before them stand John Wayne and Black-Arm Burt of Ink Saints, a recent arrival to Grahamstown and the l’enfant terrible of the town’s more conservative establishment.
Wayne, watched slightly more intently by the crowd than Burt at this point, has four large hooks in his back and is minutes from being suspended above the ground by his skin.
As far as performance art goes, it would be difficult finding something to hold an audience’s attention more firmly. For John, it’s business as usual.
Putting his trust – and body – in Burt’s skilled hands, this is his ninth suspension. It’s not a sport for everyone, or as Burt puts it: “You have to be a certain kind of mad” to participate.
Yet it’s a madness that appears to be in ready supply on the Slip Stream Sportsbar dancefloor
as the crowd roars in support and appreciation.
The evening had began much earlier with Burt innocently breathing fire into the air on the outside deck to the delight of onlookers and two dozen hands with cellphone cameras. Corsetry came next – the bodices of old replaced by two lines of rings inserted down the back of a volunteer and threaded together with ribbon.
Every step of the process is visible to the gathered audience – a performance unequalled on a Grahamstown Friday night. Then come the hooks.
Then some rope, and a pulley. John’s back resembles a puppy being picked up by its neck as his feet leave the floor and he sways gently in the air.
A drunk latecomer arrives, mingling in the audience, unaware that tonight was not a dance party at Slip stream.
By the time he has brought the image of John suspended from the ceiling in front of him into focus, he has forgotten how to speak.
John seems ambivalent in the face of the man’s terror and the audience’s puzzled, worried, smiling and cheering faces.
Few realise the work required in preparation for such a performance. “We use surgical soap and alcohol to clean the services.
I was at Slip Stream two hours before the time to make sure the entire stage was sterilised,” Burt says, “It was a pain in the ass.”
The hooks are crafted from surgical steel and custom-made for the purpose, and even Burt’s black gloves are made of thicker than normal latex, designed specifically to resist the prick of the needles that his hands deftly wield.
John and Burt have been criticised in letters to Grocott’s Mail as being Satanists and drug users for their tattoos and performances, but they shrug off these opinions.
“To be honest, if anybody has an issue with this, we invite them to come in and sit down and we will have a
conversation with them,” says John, “If you want to debate on the topic, we will.”
