“Ron Athey’s asshole has its own place in the history of contemporary performance art... His body is both shown to be holy (inspired by a divine something, its potential transcendence forever yanked back to the immanence of holes and flesh) and enacted as a picture – but of what? Saying “queer body” or “queer subject” is not enough.” — Amelia Jones, ‘Holy Body’, TDR 2006
The ‘Self-Obliteration‘ cycle marks the “Post-AIDS” period of Athey's work, the use of objects is less symbolic and bordering on nonsensical, while the polemic is no less cutting. No passive corpse, Athey is activated; certainly abject but not morbid. The action in ‘Obliteration I‘ is repetitive brushing that conjures the Abramovic action, ‘Art Must Be Beautiful‘ not to mention bloody, while in ‘II‘, Athey challenges Lee Edelman's take on “jouissance” from his book ‘No Future: Queer Theory and Death Drive’,taking it step further with an auto/live/sex finale. Franko B. described this action as if "it was like watching Pamela Anderson, on acid."
Ron Athey's ‘Self-Obliteration’ cycle evolved out of a series of performances first staged in the 90s in which he replaced the incorruptible flesh of a saints body with his own, HIV-infected, body. This display of the living corpse appeared in ‘Deliverance‘ (Ron Athey & Co.), ‘Incorruptible Flesh‘ [In Progress] (collaboration with Lawrence Steger), both shown at Cankarjev Dom in 1997, and in interactive durational performances at Glasgow's National Review of Live Art and Artists Space NYC 2006. It also appeared in ‘Incorruptible Flesh: Perpetual Wound‘ (collaboration with Dominic Johnson), a Chelsea Theatre commission, London in 2006. ‘Self-Obliterations‘ have been presented in configurations of I, II or III at Arnolfini Galery, Bristol; Hebbel am Ufer, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; NRLA, Glasgow; and Arte de Accion, Madrid.
Ron Athey is a London-based artist from Los Angeles. He is currently working on an extensive monograph covering his performance work from 1981-2011 titled "Pleading in the Blood," as well as a 25-person collective unconscious experience, "Automatic Writing" to be presented later this year through the Centre for the Study of Surrealism and its Legacies in Manchester.
