Servadio the Shaman

On a massage table he laid, rigid as a corpse, dressed only in chinos and trainers as a camera hovered above his eye-line, focused on his chest. A shoji screen shielded his feet as a student-flat party of scenesters in black satin, denim, leather and lace, gathered around his neck swilling wine from disposal cups, eager for the composer of this Frankenstein-esque scene to begin his work. Outside, on Dalston Lane, east London, equal numbers dressed black as a funeral procession buzzed like moths beneath the Sang Bleu sign as they sucked back cigarettes on a Monday evening in late February. Holding a tattoo machine like a scalpel Michele Servadio began to mark his canvas of flesh as a rumbling soundscape searched for a rhythm and the screens reflected his work. Like a jackhammer the gun dislodged pigment, setting off car alarms like a thief in a car park, shattering brick walls and whipping the air into gale force winds as the subject’s father edged through the crowd: “Sorry, that’s our son… I’m just wondering what they’re doing to him”, he offered, apologetically, as his boy became an instrument of industrial sound.Reaching a Mad Max climax the images on the screen reverberated as Servadio dug deeper, as if sawing-open the sternum with an angle grinder, fracking for his subject’s soul, as sonar sounds echoed and the procedure ricocheted across a dozen iPhone screens. Black rubber gloves smear black ink across the subject’s chest like a finger painting as the music climbs the high canopies of consciousness into metaphysical recesses and dreamscapes. The boy’s chin is high, his throat soft as tissues, as Servadio stands above him examining his work – an abstract scribble. Silence gives way to howling applause as his subject stands, slight as spaghetti, and poses for pretty girls with fancy cameras and a pink-haired lad with a gold retro cell phone charm earring who secures his skateboard like a baguette under his arm as he steals a few digital keepsakes of the evening. The subject’s dad gives a thumbs-up as the skater retreats into the crowd and tries to impress a girl with talk of having his dick inked. Reaching a Mad Max climax the images on the screen reverberated as Servadio dug deeper, as if sawing-open the sternum with an angle grinder, fracking for his subject’s soul, as sonar sounds echoed and the procedure ricocheted across a dozen iPhone screens.