by Kenny Hughes

Photos by Kendra Jane B.

January 18, 2001 was the night where my performance art journey began and in many ways it’s what brought me to where I am today. My piercer at the time (and little did I know, soon to be mentor of a failed apprenticeship) asked me if I wanted to head to Houston to see some body suspensions. I’d already been doing research on the subject for many years via the internet and various publications, but never had the pleasure of witnessing a suspension in person. To say that 19 year old me was thrilled about going is a bit of an understatement. Entering the renowned #’s Night Club that night for the first time would leave me forever changed.

It wasn’t long after entering that I began to recognize faces that I had been stalking on BME over the last several years. These people may as well have been celebrities to me at the time, and actually just like today, I was too much of a weirdo to introduce myself. Soon there was some guy in a lizard suit on stage playing with fire and walking on glass… but it was no suit. This was my first time seeing the Lizard Man in person. We didn’t chat that night, but later he would help me and other members of the troupe with fire manipulation. Then there were the Jager Tour visits; that’s another story though. With a bit of a lengthy wait between sets, which would become a bit of an unfortunate trademark, I was a witness to the birth of CoRE. This was also my introduction to performance art in person.

The performers slowly came out and took their respective places. There were four separate suspension points for this mobile that represent the four elements: earth, water, air, and fire. I was enthralled by the tedious job of rigging the suspendees to their rigs. Nothing at all compared to the breathtaking rigging that can be seen today; it was nothing short of captivating. Soon we could hear the all too familiar gut-wrenching noise of the chain hoist over the music, but this only meant one thing it was time to take flight.

The suspensions that night were vertical (Suicide), horizontal face-down (Superman), horizontal face-up (Coma), and knees. I found each one more exciting than the previous. The swinging, the stretching of the skin, and the blood, all mixed with the performance; the makeup, and the music all held my attention until the last person was cut down.

I got so much more out of that night than I ever thought possible. I just expected to go see some guys hang from  hooks, but  unknown to me at the time, the performance aspect brought it all to another level. Until you witness it yourself (in person) for the first time, you will never comprehend the gamut of emotions that can run through you as you are a part of such an event. It can bring laughter and extreme happiness and then make you cry for no damn reason like you never have before. For the following decade of my life I had the extreme pleasure of making observers feel this way with some of the best people I’ll ever have in my life.

A few months later, the same friend took me to Taurian to visit with the director of CoRE and, at the time, the Vice President of the APP, the incomparable Steve Joyner. Steve had already had a big influence on me, and that only grew in the years after as I had the pleasure of working directly with him. This man has done more for the piercing industry than what seems possible for a single person and he will never be equalled. If there was some otherworldly super hero for piercers it would be him. Even though we may have our differences from time to time, it is an honor to call him a friend and colleague. This visit is also the first time I met the skinny, dreamy, dread-locked Byriah Dailey. Byriah was the owner of Taurian, the head engineer for CoRE, and would many years later become my mentor in body jewelry manufacturing and piercing. He is still to this day my favorite person on this planet and the best piercer I know. If I owed my career to any one person, it would be this man.

After some discussions of future piercings and other things we grabbed some fliers for an upcoming CoRE show and were on our way. It was after that second show that I contacted Steve again and discussed what I had to do to become part of the troupe. I was quickly invited to come to their meetings and see how we all got along. It wasn’t long before I was doing my first suspensions both privately and for performances.

Soon CoRE was travelling across the country and at times other continents to perform for the world. From small art galleries in Paris to performing in front of well over a hundred thousand people at music festivals and yes, there was that one night at the Playboy Mansion. One of my personal favorite shows was one where we were battling fire breathing robots. This also happened to be the occasion where a reporter asked Kali, everyone’s favorite S&M body piercer turned Christian revivalist, if he was crazy, to which he replied, “yes, and I have the papers to prove it.”

All of this became the jump start to my piercing career. I’ve had people from the other side of the world contact me and tell me how I’ve helped them accomplish things in their lives that they never thought possible. It was always my intention and still is to this day to show the world how beautiful you can be. By pushing our own boundaries in life and art, we inspire others to explore their own. With enormous amounts of blood, Houston, Texas sweat, and tears this is what performance art is to me.

We are CoRE.