EVENTS
Ron Athey. Pleading in the Blood: Performing Sodomy, Glossalalia and Deathdrive
25/11/2008 – 27/11/2008
Ron Athey
Pleading in the Blood: Performing Sodomy, Glossalalia, and Deathdrive
November 25,26, 27.
In this seminar, Athey reveals the performer as a different kind of artist, one equally engaged in acts of defiance, and sacred roleplaying, and inherently generous. In elevating the work to passion play, he views the audience as one collective witness, who then color their own experience. Influences cited and topics explored include the experiential impact of staging a live sex act (minus pornographic intent); the writings of Georges Bataille, Lee Edelman, Jean Genet; using autobiography (the family, esoteric response to the AIDS pandemic), both in narrative and ecstatic traditions; the historical/Classical filter (which has resulted in a large body of earlier work, the reconstructing of martyr saints); and spirit-gifts from childhood: speaking-in-tongues is explained in terms of neuro-acoustics and modulated hysteria (as used in his opera, The Judas Cradle), entrée to trance states is achieved by auto-hypnosis technique.
Sessions
1.Dissociative Sparkle: Martyrology, Body Modification, and the polemics of Blood-letting in the time of AIDS
2.Incorruptible Flesh: Display of the Living Corpse, Live Sex Shows, and the Vision of Georges Bataille
3.No Future: Full Throttle Death Drive, Channeling Ecstasy, and Philoctetes Foul Wound
Biography
Ron Athey, born 1961, is a Los Angeles-based performance artist and writer. Ron Athey’s work has significant, recurring themes: dissociative sparkle, self-obliteration, and incorruptible flesh, each played out upon the historic body, the queer body, the AIDS body, the body in the grip of ecstasy or sorrow of death. Here, real physical actions stand in as a decoy for something to final too repeat.
Ron Athey began performing in underground galleries and nightclubs in 1981 with Premature Ejaculation, a collaboration with his partner and front person for the seminal goth band Christian Death, Rozz Williams. In the 1990s he formed Ron Athey & Company, and developed Martyrs&Saints, 4 Scenes In A Harsh Life, and Deliverance, a trilogy of works created in direct response to the AIDS pandemic. Solo works include Suicide/Tattoo, The Solar Anus, Sebastian Suspended, and the Self-Obliteration series. Other recent performances include Judas Cradle, an operatic duo-drama with soprano/musicologist Juliana Snapper; a remount of Solar Anus at the Hayward Gallery, London; and the six-hour durational performance Incorruptible Flesh: Dissociative Sparkle, presented at the National Review of Live Art, Glasgow and Artists Space, NYC. Athey’s visual art is represented by Western Project in Los Angeles.
Information and enrolment
Language of the Seminar: English with simultaneous translation into Spanish
CENDEAC is accessible for wheelchair users and people with diminished mobility. Whenever possible, we will strive to provide on request a transcript of papers for users with impaired hearing.
Auditorium Capacity: 140 people
Free entry to those who do not wish to receive an attendance certificate (paying users will be granted preferential entry if the auditorium reaches its full capacity).
In order to enrol and obtain a certificate of attendance, you need to:
- Attend all sessions of the course
- Fill in the enrolment form
- Pay the appropriate fee
Fee: 30 € professionals, 15€ students, unemployed and OAPs (proof of status will be required). Free for holders of a Friends of CENDEAC card.
In order to enrol online it is necessary to fill in the enrolment form and make a payment for the appropriate fee WITHIN TWO WEEKS OF ENROLMENT to CAJAMURCIA bank, Account Number 2043 0090 32 0200550928, specifying as a concept the name of the seminar and SENDING ONE COPY OF THE PAYMENT RECEIPT to CENDEAC (you can do this by email or fax in order to save time and avoid de-enrolment, however, if you are de-enrolled you will be enrolled again on receipt of your payment slip). Alternatively, you can enrol and pay your fee at the CENDEAC office (Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. and from 4p.m. to 8 p.m.).
CENDEAC
Antiguo Cuartel de Artillería. Pabellón 5.
C/ Madre Elisea Oliver Molina, s/n
30002 - Murcia (España)
cendeac@cendeac.net