On Edge: Performance at the End of the Twentieth Century

The Rumble in DUMBO

• • • The Rumble in DUMBO It was a beautiful night for a knockout-that is, for reality to set in. House packed, energy high, humidity almost low. There'd be nothing really sticky but the blood. David Leslie-performance artist, downtown daredevil, Impact Addict-went into Box Opera 3 hoping to lose big. He'd been staging these spectacle boxing matches since 1999, and according to his own self-imposed rules, he could not stop them until somebody beat him. As a long line filed toward the ticket tables at St. Ann's Warehouse in DUMBO, that "somebody" stood chatting out in the street: Gerry Cooney, the former professional heavyweight who fought champions like Larry Holmes before retiring in 1990 with a record of 28-3. Cooney, clad in Bermuda shorts and a madras shirt, looked more affable than menacing. But as festivities got underway, it was clear that he knew his role. "Nice to be here," he told the announcer ringside before snarling, "He is going down." The ex-fighter had his own agenda-to publicize and hopefully raise some money for F.LS.T. (Fighter's Initiative for Support and Training), an organization Cooney founded in 1998 to help boxers make the transition "from the ring to the real world." Leslie hadn't yet told Cooney that he hoped the ex-fighter would knock him out. Leslie is a boxing fan, but when he gets in the ring himself, he isn't as interested in the fight as he is in the peril. In his first stunt in 1986, Leslie propelled a little rocket off a fortyfoot ramp on Broome Street trying to fly over a pile of 1,000 watermelons and land in a net. But he was running inside the rocket-the Flintstone version of Evel Knievel-so naturally he just crashed. Later he said that that moment when he left the ramp had been the most exciting 346 FIN-DE-MILLENIUM of his life, the thing he'd been born to do. On Chinese New Year 1987, he wore a tiger suit fashioned out of 10,000 firecrackers, which exploded to reveal a rabbit suit underneath. In May 1987, he jumped from two stories up onto asteel plate in the courtyard of Cafe Bustelo, swathed in bubble wrap and white Christmas-tree lights. In June 1987, he went three rounds on the Staten Island ferry with heavyweight Riddick Bowe, who declined to knock Leslie out though the artist had asked him to. (Leslie called the piece Mismatched.) Then, in October 1987, he donned the bubble wrap once more for a Franklin Furnace benefit, dropped through the roof of a martial arts school set, and had the school members kick-slam him around the stage. In November 1988, announcing that it would be his final stunt before "retirement," Leslie jumped off the roof of P.S.122, five stories tall, onto what seemed a very small cushion. He actually cracked the wooden stage under the padding, suffering what he called "a bent rib." "1 loved getting up after hitting the stage that hard," he said. "It's my own private victory where I get to meet death and then escape it." He thought he finally had the Impact Addict out of his system. But of course, there's no escaping yourself. Eleven years of leading what Leslie calls a "provincial lifestyle" led to one disappointment after another, and "I just thought I've got to go run back to me, and the only thing that was really there, the core ofme, is that Impact Addict guy. Getting hit by a boxing glove or getting hit when you land off a buildingthose real impacts, they're just so unique to me. I don't want to kill myself , but I love getting close to that kind of peril. I just love surviving it." He doesn't spend a lot of time asking himself why. Maybe the"difficulties " he went through as a kid. "My dad was very rough with me." But Leslie doesn't think it's a matter of physical abuse; more a matter of "surviving a relatively unloving atmosphere." And "I'm going to survive whatever you throw at me." The catalyst for the Impact Addict's return was an encounter with writer Jonathan Ames, who, according to Leslie, challenged him to box. Of course, according to Ames, Leslie brought it up first, and all Ames said was "Can I spar with you sometime?" The conflicting...