In Conversation with Ron Athey
(2015)
author(s): Andrea Pagnes
published in: Research Catalogue
This recent conversation I have had with Ron Athey, one of the most outstanding ground-breaking performance artists of our times, has been made exclusively for LADA (Live Art Development Agency, UK) on early 2015. The agency, on behalf of its director Lois Keidan, is pleased to make it available for Research Catalogue members and readers.
The dialogue includes a discussion around the issues and concerns of contemporary Performance Art as well as an in-depth focus on the work of Ron Athey, past and present. With additional notes by Lisa Newman, a photo selection from the archive of the artist and Manuel Vason's, and Athey's "Devine's Funeral" monologue, originated from Jean Genet's novel "Our Lady of the Flowers".
Ron Athey is an iconic figure in contemporary art and performance. In his frequently bloody portrayals of life, death, crisis, and fortitude in the time of AIDS, Athey provides insights and calls into question the limits of artistic practice and research. These limits enable Athey to explore key themes including gender, sexuality, radical sex, queer activism, post-punk and industrial culture, tattooing and body modification, ritual, philosophy, literature, creative-automatic writings, spirituality and religion. The first monograph on his work, "Pleading in the Blood", edited by Dominic Johnson, is published by LADA and Intellect Books in their Intellect Live series.
Ghost Nature
(2015)
author(s): Caroline Picard
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
The predominant cultural tradition prioritises humankind and human culture above all other life forms – a linear, anthropocentric narrative wherein the human appears as the latest, most developed draft of life in a grand opera of consciousness; the opera begins with the origin of a universe that has since continued until now, forward from the darkest beginning of A to an elusive horizon of B: that spot in the distance that shall never be reached. The following exposition reflects notes, quotations, and autobiographical incidents that muddle this mythology. This assemblage of sources composes a constellation without beginning, centre, or end in an effort to enact a more general and omniscient intellectual environment that highlights the longstanding hierarchical expectations inherent in the Western world.
