Ron Athey

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Ron Athey (born December 16, 1961 in Groton , Connecticut ) is an American performance artist and musician. With his body art , which is often interpreted in a queer context, he questions social norms around the body and masculinity , often using the symbolism of religious iconography . He is concerned with the representation of trauma; By inflicting pain he would like to trigger suffering in the audience and thus make his own traumas tangible.

life and work

Athey grew up in a suburb of Los Angeles in a conservative environment. His parents were Pentecostalists . He broke out of his family circle with his first friend Rozz Williams , experimented with LSD and was inspired by artists such as Patti Smith , Jean Genet and Charles Baudelaire . The departure from his religious upbringing was one of the reasons for his turning to extreme forms of art.

When Rozz Williams fell out with his band Christian Death , he and Athey formed the industrial band Premature Ejaculation from 1981 until his death by suicide in 1998 , with the band's live performances offering provocative performances. These were Athey's first performances.

Athey has been HIV- positive since 1985, which was a defining element of his early performance art in particular: "I always refer back to AIDS because I had a cloud of death over me from 1985, until I trusted that the drug cocktail was working" . His work is shaped by the experience of the AIDS epidemic among homosexuals in the 1980s as an " apocalypse ", as many of his friends gradually died.

His best-known appearances include those in the 1990s, which are considered to be his bloodiest. In St. Sebastian (1999) Athey forms arcs out of needles and gradually sticks them into her head, which leads to great blood loss. In the performance Torture Trilogy, consisting of Martyrs & Saints (1992), 4 Scenes in A Harsh Life (1993) and Deliverance (1994), Athey uses meat hooks, clips, branding irons and anal penetration. The Solar Anus (1998) is based on Georges Bataille, a reflection on the role of the anus in sexual practices. In his Contrasexual Manifesto , Paul B. Preciado cites The Solar Anus as an example of a sexual practice that rejects sexuality in its heteronormativity inscribed in the body and devises an alternative to it.

In 1994 a performance of 4 scenes in A Harsh Life caused a stir. A newspaper reported that viewers had come into contact with HIV-infected blood. As a result, it was almost impossible for Athey to continue to find gigs in the US, which is why he mainly limited himself to gigs in Europe.

Antony Hegarty , Bruce LaBruce and Lydia Lunch contributed to the monograph Pleading in the Blood: The Art and Performances of Ron Athey about his work, published in 2013 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Ron Athey. In: Witte de With Contemporary Art. Retrieved September 24, 2016 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e Amelia Abraham: Ron Athey Literally Bleeds for His Art. In: Vice. September 24, 2016. Retrieved September 24, 2016 .
  3. ↑ a b Ron Athey: An Interview. In: Video Data Bank. Retrieved September 24, 2016 .
  4. ^ Alison Young: Judging the Image: Art, Value, Law . Psychology Press, 2005, pp. 110 .
  5. ^ Karoline Gritzner: Eroticism and Death in Theater and Performance . 2010, p. 194 .
  6. ^ Dominic Johnson: Ron Athey's Visions of Excess: Performance After Georges Bataille . 2010 ( surrealismcentre.ac.uk [PDF]).
  7. ^ Paul B. Preciado: Contrasexual Manifesto .
  8. ^ Pleading in the Blood: The Art and Performances of Ron Athey. In: Unbound. Retrieved September 24, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Athey, Ron
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American performance artist and musician
DATE OF BIRTH December 16, 1961
PLACE OF BIRTH Groton , Connecticut