Weisman went into the marathon on three hours of sleep. The night before, while setting up his rig, he was asked if he wanted to play a bit. So he did. Starting the next morning and continuing through the day, night and following dawn, he gave everything he had without compromise.
“All these times that I feel that my lack of self-belief precluded me from accomplishing something, it just floated through,” Weisman said. “Then I realized that’s not who I am anymore.”
He was emotional throughout the set, tearing up from a mix of exhaustion and motivation — both internal and external.
Around the fifth hour, fatigue hit. But a friend showed up to support him, and that little spark fired him up again. By hour 12, still without a sip of caffeine — despite many offerings of Red Bull — he knew he was going to make it. The surprising strength he felt was enough to carry him to the end.
Weisman draws inspiration from performance, conceptual and endurance artists, especially Serbian artist Marina Abramović. He referenced Abramović’s endurance piece “Rhythm 0,” in which she stood still for six hours while the audience was invited to use any of the 72 objects she provided on her.
“To be able to endure, I think, is so beautiful,” Weisman said. “I wanted to make this an art piece rather than a DJ set. Endurance art is about putting yourself in that place of suffering and overcoming the struggle, embracing the tension. I think you can transcend when you can put up with things like that.”
Born in Thailand and raised “in the humble cornfields of Lebanon, Ohio,” Weisman has a Tibetan Buddhist background. In high school he discovered anti-art and became immersed in Dada and Fluxus. He checked out library books, printed articles, and stayed up late reading about their philosophies.
“I would just get this insane feeling… it sounds crazy and manic, but just vibrating, sitting in my room, reading what they were about and why they were doing this,” Weisman said. “It just made me feel like, finally, someone understands what I’m about.”
Music has always been a part of his life. He played cello for years. He became obsessed with the intensity of metal bands like Slayer and Lamb of God. He even played guitar in a French technical death metal project, which he insists “was not as important or organized as it sounds.” Metal carried him through to college, where he discovered electronic music in 2022, nearly a decade after dubstep’s peak.
The name he eventually chose, Man Dies. — with a period — is more than a DJ alias.
“Tibetan Buddhism talks a lot about death and that makes me reflect on mortality,” Weisman said. “There’s that element of, like, this is my only shot, and I don’t want to leave anything in the tank at the end, you know? I don’t want to have any regrets. And I want to know that, regardless of how it turned out, I did it my way, authentically to me.”
Performance art, he said, takes away the concept that art must be purchased or hung on a wall. Weisman sees himself following in the lineage of endurance artists. Having struggled with panic disorder, he views performing as “a middle finger” to it — going all in, in front of an audience, for liberation.
By hour 22, he realized how close he was. For the final two hours, he went as hard as he could on three hours of sleep and nearly a full day of continuous deejaying and dancing.
He wasn’t going to quit just because his feet hurt.
“I’m not guaranteed the opportunity to do any of this,” he said. “I use whatever ability I have to do anything, and then I go beyond that. I really crave intensity. I want to do things my way. I want to push the envelope so hard and see what the limits are, and then push beyond those.”
His next goal: collaborate with b2b DJs for a straight week of techno.
At 6 a.m. Saturday, the owner of Belmont Billiards stood beside him as the marathon ended. Though the bar was closed, Riley Weisman thought of all the people who came to support him. He said it would’ve been impossible — or at least far more difficult — without them.
Proceeds from his performance were donated to Gem City Market, the Dayton grocery co-op. The entire set was live-streamed.
“Mentally, when you do anything hard, as soon as you start to feel the pain, you feel like it’s gonna last forever,” Weisman said. “I want to do something with my life, that I’ll know forever that it wasn’t possible for me to give even one more ounce of effort.”
The pain was only temporary.
Brandon Berry covers the music and arts scene in Dayton and Southwest Ohio. Reach him at branberry100@gmail.com.
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