art

strut and
fret
YELLO DIABLO
Friday, November 2
Access Artist Run Centre
David Yonge, the man behind
the Yellowboy alias, made his
singular contribution to the
LIVE Biennial when he took on
the persona of an historic 1970s
Mexican wrestler and went
flesh to metal with a car outside
of an art gallery.

finally yielded to muscle and
the hood cracked free. The
testosterone team was in
extremis. Unable to contain
themselves, the lads rushed the
Camaro and had to be "booed"
off.
This wasn't contemporary
art practice—it was extreme
vaudeville, bending back to
shake hands with Harry

d a m a g e d
r a d i o

pie—the third art-damaged
whatnot had drawn a capacity
crowd. I snagged a perch oh a
coffee table next to some friends
while an act called Of Sex, Your
Body was on. Although the
frontwoman used a microphone, I could barely decipher
a word she was saying, but it
could have been something like:
"I'm so strange and arty that I

He slid to the ground, microphones shrieking, and attempted to
wrench off one of the doors, but the Camaro was stubborn.
Testosterone simmered, car-buffs whimpered and tactical matters
were debated.
Well before start time, a
twitchy crowd swelled onto
Carrall Street, where a Camaro
was lowered defiantly at the
curb. Fresh from a showdown
with a washing machine in a
Seattle cinema the night before,
Yonge sported a deep 3" gash in
his right palm but otherwise
looked to be in fine shape—all
lean, muscular and menacing in
flared jeans and a glitterencrusted balaclava.
He and a handler taped
eight microphones to his body
before he jumped onto the car,
ripped off his t-shirt and struck
a victory pose. The crowd
cheered—eager to play along
like trailer trash at a WWF
match. But in the first of several
contextual shifts that the 45minute performance would
make, audience engagement
became seriously real the
moment "Diablo" leapt into the
air and came down in a full
body-slam onto the roof as he
slid to the ground, microphones
shrieking, and attempted to
wrench off one of the doors of
the
stubborn
Camaro.
Testosterone simmered, carbuffs whimpered and tactical
matters were debated as a couple of rumble-ready lads who
probably thought they'd died
and gone to heaven kept offering to help.
When a very high stepladder was brought onto the scene,
the crowd groaned, its own
endurance already fraying. By
this time, the style-cramping
body mics had been jettisoned.
Besides, the arty embellishment
of a sound collage seemed
unnecessary here. Floating from
the top platform like a diver,
Yonge twisted in the air to land
with a sickening thud on his
side, barely making a dent in
the metal. As he repeated the
dive, I thought of mythic figures like Sisyphus and Wile E.
Coyote. Then he was under the
hood, trying to shoulder it off
its hinges, his back becoming
smeared with the soot of a thousand road trips. Muscle car

8 jancember 2001

Houdini. The early 20th century escape meister was, after all,
a performance artist who set
himself high-stakes challenges
in realtime, giving onlookers
some nail-gnawing entertainment in the process. And hanging in the air now, as it must
have been then, was the beautiful heroic pointlessness of the
act itself.
After the show ended, there
seemed to be a lengthy period
of audience disorientation. It
was as if in the heat of pure
spectacle, Art had melted down
and slunk away unnoticed,
leaving everyone to mill around
aimlessly in front of a floodlit
gallery.
And me? I just wanted to
give Diablo a massage.
ART DAMAGED CABARET #3
Saturday, November 17
Ms T's Cabaret
By 10:30, the bowels of 339 West
Pender were heaving with peo-

don't bother about mic technique. I'll just make my voice
arty and seductive and talk into
my collarbone and keep running my hand over my brushcut because that will give a sexy
touch to my deep artiness."
Came with two very seriouslooking sidemen on musical
instruments, Cabaret was horribly damaged by this. Shame on
art!
Things perked up with The
3 Bitches—old-school drag
queens who have suddenly
found themselves part of the
neo-cabaret scene. With every
show, they're a little more polished and theatrical with their
material. However, these gals
turn into raging workaholics as
soon as they get near a stage,
and reappeared so often
throughout the evening that
they risked diluting themselves.
A few less numbers would have
kept us wanting more!
Art Damaged regular, Evil

r annual 24-hour radio
experimentalist blitz:
January 17, 2002
noon ' t i l noon

Stevil, is developing a nice bit
of comedy shtick as a slackerclad, heavily-pierced grumbler
who disapproves of panhandlers, squeegy kids and bus
transfer hawkers. At the end of
his set, he strapped on an axe
and sang his catchy little
grunge ode to Kraft Dinner.
Man of many aliases, David
Yonge, played lion tamer to his
friend's beast in a chaotic circus

vignette as De Suza and De
Paula. Yonge's sinister, boxy
face mask nibbled at the edges
of Dada and the audience visibly receded as the act raged
against the front tables.
Still, I didn't see anything
that made my mind slip sideways until Nico Orgasmico
took the stage. Then I knew we
were onto something. She's a
great, zaftige young woman,

David Yonge in Yellow Diablo. Photo by Cedric Bomford.

further voluminized by two big
balloons under her pullover.
Nico and her two sidemen all
wore helmets and she carried a
red phallus on a stand. As she
slowly limped around with a
cane, her black-suited males followed solicitously, providing
backup to her salacious little
yelps. This was tilted, perverse
and outrageous. I really liked it.
Adding an MC to these
evenings was a wise choice, and
T Paul St. Marie was definitely
in command as he kept things
moving like a rockabilly Joel
Grey. He was also ready to slam
the audience with his own
potent spoken word when a
misplaced dildo or sudden wig
crisis caused a slight delay.
The producer of the series is
deeply buried within the persona of Satina Saturnina (or is
it the other way around?). This
unit is always intense, compelling and hilariously deadpan
about it. Their costumes are
works of art in their own right
and tonight, in the ultimate act
of frontwoman narcisism, the
boys in the band wore prosthetic headcovers moulded after
Satina's own face and hair-do.
Ms. Saturnina herself was packing a plush strap-on. Their
sound is slowed-down, oldschool punk with vocals which
suggest Siouxie, but listen to the
hypnoticall repetitive lyrics and
you'll know that Satina's got
her own fantasies going. The
band won many new fans on
this night, so get ready for #4. •