Artist Profile: FUTURE_DEATH_TOLL

Banks Violette is a douche.

By now, most of you in Portland have probably seen an exhibition or performance by FUTURE_DEATH_TOLL.  Oh, you haven’t?  Fuck you.  For the uninitiated, FDT describes itself as a “throbbing mezz of noize that eats technology and shits performance art.”  In my opinion, virtually all performance artists shit performance art regardless of what they eat, but there’s something a bit more interesting about these boys and I aim to prove it.  This past Sunday, I had the pleasure of meeting the boys at the horseshoe pits in Laurelhurst Park.  We shared some  blaze-orange sodas and played an intense round of bocce ball to boot.  What I learned was that not everybody making art in Portland is a fucking pussy… in fact, some of them might even be considered men with dicks and balls.

Tanner Dobson & FUTURE_DEATH_TOLL / April 2010

First of all, let’s address their primary influence: SLIPKNOT.  Both FDT and SLIPKNOT are from states known for a ubiquity of corn (Nebraska and Iowa, respectively).  Further, both groups have a major hard-on for group aesthetics.  But while SLIPKNOT‘s members all wear gay masks that look like prop rejects from Saw IV, FDT takes a more classy approach, donning blaze-orange do-rags over their faces.  And there are considerably fewer members of which to speak involved with FDT.  By this critic’s estimate, there are something like thirty-seven members in the band SLIPKNOT (thirty-two of whom are percussionists of some sort).  But FDT keeps it intimate, limiting their membership to resemble the great power-trios of rock history.  The parallels to the power-trio are not lost on these boys either.  When I asked them what they considered to be their favorite Rush song, they replied in unison: “Besides Tom Sawyer?  Definitely Closer to the Heart.”  You can’t fake that kind of synchronicity; these horse farmers are the real deal.  And I’d like to also point out that while SLIPKNOT focuses on making commercial pop-metal thinly veiled as Midwest Doom for rural retards, FDT‘s sound is considerably more abstract and improvisational.  You can listen to a few of their compositions here.

Looks like a recipe for Social Practice!

FDT‘s members met in an undergraduate sculpture class at University of Nebraska, Lincoln sometime in the mid-oughts.  When I first arrived to the park on Sunday, we sat down for a bit and discussed their history and what brought them to Portland.  I attempted some tough, straight-from-the-hip questions at first, but they were giving me obnoxious responses bragging about how Nebraska is the Kool-Aid state.  To say that they suffer from a collective case of ADHD would be a massive understatement akin to claiming that Pedro from the first season of The Real World suffered from the common cold.  Strangely though, as they began to sip their blaze-orange sodas, their focus increased ten fold and our interview really grew wings.

Nebraska City, where they called home before Portland, wasn’t exactly a culturally rich town.  Apparently, the boys spent a lot of time traveling outside of the state to do exhibitions and performances in places like Chicago and Denver.  But they don’t necessarily consider themselves to have been a touring band at any point, or a band at all for that matter.  Rather, they’re a tight-knit and compact artist collective whose diverse interests allow them to navigate adeptly between sound, sculpture, video, performance and technology raping.  But they’re savvy and understand the marketability of a smaller, oranger SLIPKNOT.  You see, FDT has produced what some might call albums and also CD/DVD combos that feature abstract sound compositions, manipulated digital video, and documentation of their performances.  One might assume that this means that they have some kind of background as Ebay Powersellers or some shit, but they don’t.

DAVE / ED / TODD

It’s not really my place to identify these enigmatic gentlemen by name, but their website does, so fuck ‘em.  Before moving to Portland, Todd Robert Beaty claims that he worked as an “Oats Preparator” at a farm in Nebraska.  The other two members of FDT quickly point out that Todd actually shoveled manure.  I find this to be a very American job and therefore commendable.  David Ian Griess worked in landscaping, which is actually more Mexican than American, but is still a man’s job, so I’ll give him two points for the sweaty balls.  And finally, Edward G. Sharp was a web developer, which makes absolutely no fucking sense whatsoever if you’ve actually visited the aesthetic atrocity that is their website.  When I asked them why they decided to move from Nebraska, which many consider to truly be God’s country, Todd quickly responded, “All of America is God’s country.”  Fuckin’ A, Todd, fuckin’ A.  I had a feeling I was really going to like these guys.

While we crushed our blaze-orange sodas, I started to prod a little deeper into what makes FDT tick.  One of my favorite blindside questions to ask people during interviews is, “What do you think about painting?”  I posed this to the boys, and Edward promptly responded, “Well, there’s a lot of it.”  After Todd’s insightful comment about America being the Lord’s land, I figured that these boys were on the level.  My suspicion was validated by Edward G. Sharp’s response to my intentionally vague question.  It was, well… sharp.  Their reluctance to align themselves with any particular art movement was something I wanted to know more about, especially after we’d just dragged painting out of its house and fucked it in the street.  “We witness events in the world and then translate them into a visual experience,” said David.  The others nodded in agreement.  It would seem then that FDT isn’t interested in limitations resulting from a given medium or political agenda.

I asked them about their personal politics and they remained reticent… until I mentioned President Obama.  “What is he? Mr. Moneybags?” quipped David back at me.  Once again, a sly smile crept over the face of this critic as I realized that a powerful meeting of the minds was presently occurring, not unlike some kind of underground Freemason workshop.  We bantered back and forth about all the art currently being made in Portland, and I brought up a few other collectives who’ve also been receiving some attention: the Oregon Painting Society and Paintallica.  It had always seemed to me that Portland artists are made of big, fat vaginas and never have the audacity to publicly shit on one another… and I wanted scandal.

“Would FUTURE_DEATH_TOLL be willing to start a public feud with Jason Traeger and the rest of Oregon Painting Society?” I asked.  Smirks and silence.  I was baiting FDT into talking shit, but they weren’t biting.  I rephrased the question, “Would FUTURE_DEATH_TOLL be willing to engage in a public rumble with Oregon Painting Society to establish the alpha-collective in Portland?”  They liked this much better.  Immediately, they perked up and began to ask specifics like whether or not weapons would be allowed and where the location of the fight might be.  Mulling this over for a minute, I concocted a scenario that I thought would make an even playing field for the two groups.

“The fight will take place on a weekend evening at DISJECTA during an exhibition of large scale sculptures by Jenene Nagy.  You can use any of her sculptures in the fight, but other than that it is all fisticuffs.”  They all concurred that they would waste the living shit out of Oregon Painting Society, which seemed pretty obvious to me because several of the members of OPS are girls.  Todd insisted that his signature move would be an elbow drop out of the massive rafters at DISJECTA that would crush the spines of any dwelling below.  David and Edward suggested carving ad hoc shivs out of pieces of Nagy’s work to cut bitches.  It sounded like FDT were no strangers to a good, healthy rumble.

“When you break someone’s nose,” said Todd, “you learn a lot about them.”  I couldn’t agree more.  Edward brought up the fact that if the fight were a more conceptual contest, like who could get into the Tate Modern first, then FDT would have already lost.  “Well,” pointed out David, “they haven’t actually traveled there yet.  We could still beat them to it.”  Todd and Edward agreed, then claiming they they, like psychotic members of PETA, intended to show up to the opening at the Tate with buckets of blaze-orange paint that they would throw all over OPS’s exhibition.  We were considering at this point debating a battle between FDT and Paintallica, but then we realized that nobody gives a fuck about Paintallica.

Officially 500 times more interesting than spraypainted, cardboard totem poles.

Our talk shifted into a more esoteric realm after the fight conversation.  We discussed the salaries of undercover police officers, which they insist are remarkably high (“Look at Eddie Murphey’s Detroit Lions letter jacket in Beveriy Hills Cop“).  We waxed philosophical about Shaq’s recent curatorial effort in New York (“Fuck that.  Shaq should just set up like a million backboards and hang all of the art he owns on them and then slam dunk on every one to shatter the backboards and the art”).  We talked briefly about why it is unwise to fuck with Juggalos (“Juggalos cut off people’s buttholes”) and if they are a legitimate sub-culture (“Have you ever seen a Juggalo co-op?”).  We also debated the validity of musical theater and I asked them point-blank what the best musical of all time was (“None of them.  There’s not even one.  Well, Cats was cool”).

My balls were yellow.

After this chat, we mounted up and got down and dirty on a game of bocce ball.  I must say, this was my first experience ever and the boys were more than willing to teach me the ropes.  We were playing with a vintage bocce set that Edward’s grandmother had given him as a child, so I felt especially bad after I chucked one of the balls and it smashed into an aluminum fence pole, tearing a chunk from it and spitting yellow particle board all over the grass of the park.  Edward though was more than polite, acknowledging the accident although I suspect his non confrontational nature was more a result of him tripping balls on pot.  We were having such a good time that halfway through we realized that we weren’t even keeping score anymore.  After the game, we sat down near the restrooms and enjoyed another blaze-orange soda.  The cool, sweet beverage was like Christ’s tongue slipping down my throat.  I’d worked up a bit of a sweat, and I noticed that they were also glistening in the mid-afternoon sunlight.  It must have been a spectacular sight to behold for all in the park – a handsome group of young American men cooling off after hot talk and even hotter play.  FDT has my stamp of approval, something reserved for a very select few.

I’d encourage you to mark your calendars and check them out.  They’ll be at Performance Works Northwest on Friday, April 30th and Saturday, May 1st alongside Weird Fiction.  And you can catch them performing on First Friday, May 7th at Worksound Gallery.  Don’t make them have to ask, “Where are the fans?” ever again.

SEE MORE VIDEOS: FUTURE_DEATH_TOLL ON VIMEO