Ron Athey
Encyclopedia
Ron Athey is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 performance artist associated with body art
Body art
Body art is art made on, with, or consisting of, the human body. The most common forms of body art are tattoos and body piercings, but other types include scarification, branding, scalpelling, shaping , full body tattoo and body painting.More extreme body art can involve things such as mutilation...

 and with extreme performance art
Extreme performance art
Since the beginning of the Dadaism in the Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich in 1916, many artists have experimented with extreme performance art as a critique of contemporary consumer culture. Some have used bodily fluids such as blood, faeces and urine. Other times they perform self mutilation. In the...

. He has performed in the U.S. and internationally (especially in the UK and Europe). Athey's work explores challenging subjects like the relationships between desire, sexuality, and traumatic experience. Many of his works include aspects of S&M in order to confront pre-conceived ideas about the body in relation to masculinity and religious iconography.

Life and work

Athey's work frequently explores religious subjects. For example, Athey concluded his 2005 operatic performance Judas Cradle (performed in collaboration with Juliana Snapper of the band Cypher in the Snow
Cypher in the Snow
Cypher in the Snow were an all women queercore band from San Francisco.One of the band's first appearances was at the Dirtybird Queercore Festival in San Francisco in 1996. This historic festival also featured Tribe 8, Sta-Prest, Behead the Prophet, No Lord Shall Live, The Need and many others...

) by speaking in tongues, and his theatrical multi-media performance Joyce unpacks the feverish environment of his religious upbringing. He has staged himself as a modern era St. Sebastian. Some of these performances were re-staged for the photographer Catherine Opie
Catherine Opie
Catherine Opie is an American artist specializing in issues within documentary photography. Throughout her work she has investigated aspects of community, making portraits of many groups including LGBT community; surfers; and most recently high school football players. She is also interested in...

.

Athey also engages directly with the ideas of queer
Queer
Queer is an umbrella term for sexual minorities that are not heterosexual, heteronormative, or gender-binary. In the context of Western identity politics the term also acts as a label setting queer-identifying people apart from discourse, ideologies, and lifestyles that typify mainstream LGBT ...

 philosophers and artists like Georges Bataille
Georges Bataille
Georges Bataille was a French writer. His multifaceted work is linked to the domains of literature, anthropology, philosophy, economy, sociology and history of art...

, Pierre Molinier
Pierre Molinier
Pierre Molinier was a painter, photographer and "maker of objects". He was born in Agen and lived his life in Bordeaux . He began his career by painting landscapes, but his work turned towards a fetishistic eroticism early on.Molinier began to take photographs at the age of 18...

 and Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini was an Italian film director, poet, writer, and intellectual. Pasolini distinguished himself as a poet, journalist, philosopher, linguist, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, newspaper and magazine columnist, actor, painter and political figure...

. Athey's performance Solar Anus refers directly to one of Bataille's essays, and in 2002 Athey curated an endurance/performance festival inspired by Pasolini's work. The Solar Anus performance is included as part of Athey's starring role in the Danish feature film HotMen CoolBoyz
HotMen CoolBoyz
HotMen CoolBoyz is a Danish adult film directed by Knud Vesterskov and starring Ron Athey and Billy Herrington.It was produced by Puzzy Power/HotMale, the adult arm of Lars von Trier's company Zentropa, also known for the Dogme95-manifesto and such projects as Dogville starring Nicole Kidman,...

(2000), directed by Knud Vesterskov
Knud Vesterskov
Knud Vesterskov is a Danish film director who originally made his mark with a long string of experimental art films. He later wrote and directed two highly unusual hardcore feature films, Constance and HotMen CoolBoyz , both produced by Lars von Trier's company Zentropa Entertainments based in...

 and produced by Lars von Trier
Lars von Trier
Lars von Trier is a Danish film director and screenwriter. He is closely associated with the Dogme 95 collective, although his own films have taken a variety of different approaches, and have frequently received strongly divided critical opinion....

's company Zentropa
Zentropa
Europa is a film directed by Lars von Trier. Released in 1991, it is von Trier's third theatrical feature film and is the final film in the Europa trilogy....

. The film was nominated for five GayVN Awards, including a Best Solo Performance nomination for Ron Athey.

He has also, with Vaginal Davis
Vaginal Davis
Vaginal Davis is an American genderqueer performing artist, painter, independent curator, composer, and writer. Davis's name is a homage to activist Angela Davis.-Life and career:Davis is often associated with the formation of the Queer-Core Zine Movement...

, curated performance art festivals in the U.S. and in Europe. These include Platinum Oasis (Los Angeles), Visions of Excess I (Birmingham, UK) and II (Ljubljana, Slovenia). A further co-curated event, Re-Visions of Excess, with Lee Adams
Lee Adams (performance artist)
Lee Adams is a London based performance artist, curator and experimental film maker. Much of his work has been influenced by the ideas of French dissident surrealist and philosopher Georges Bataille.-Life and work:...

, was presented in Birmingham in 2007. As a curator, Athey has brought together a diverse range of artists, including Bruce LaBruce
Bruce LaBruce
Bruce LaBruce is a Canadian writer, filmmaker, photographer and underground gay porn director based in Toronto, Ontario.-Biography:...

, Ann Magnuson
Ann Magnuson
Ann Magnuson is an American actress, performance artist, and nightclub performer who first gained prominence in the 1985 film Desperately Seeking Susan...

, Marisa Carnesky, Slava Mogutin
Slava Mogutin
Slava Mogutin is a New York-based Russian artist and author, who works across different media, including photography, video, text, installation, sculpture and painting.-Life and work:...

, Udo Kier
Udo Kier
Udo Kier is a German actor, known primarily for his work in horror and exploitation movies.-Early life:...

, Rick Owens
Rick Owens
Rick Owens is an American fashion designer hailing from California, celebrated for his avant garde and subversive eye.He is married to Michele Lamy.Since 2003, Rick Owens has lived in Paris.-Biography:...

, Ming Yuen S. Ma, Kira O'Reilly
Kira O'Reilly
Kira O'Reilly is a performance artist based in the UK. She graduated from Cardiff School of Art in 1998, and has participated in a number of performance art festivals throughout the UK and Europe, including at the Bonington Gallery, Nottingham Trent University 1998, the National Review of Live Art,...

, Nicole Blackman
Nicole Blackman
Nicole Blackman is a New York City-born performance artist, poet, author, and vocalist.-Literary career:Blackman is involved in the North American goth, spoken word and transgressive literature scenes....

, Franko B
Franko B
Franko B is a London-based performance artist. He studied fine art in London at Camberwell College of Arts and Chelsea College of Art . His work was originally based on the bloody and ritualised violation of his own body...

, Ernesto Tomasini
Ernesto Tomasini
Ernesto Tomasini is an Italian actor/singer/writer living in Britain. Best known for his more recent forays into contemporary music, he has behind himself a 20 year career on the stage.-Early performances:...

 and OTHON.

Athey has been a regular contributor to magazines and newspapers including Honcho and the L.A. Weekly, and occasionally teaches performance studies. He is currently living in England, in the London area.

NEA Controversy

In 1994, Athey became the target of controversy over the use of federal funds to support art work with visible gay content. In a performance of an excerpt from Four Scenes in a Harsh Life at the Walker Art Center
Walker Art Center
The Walker Art Center is a contemporary art center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is considered one of the nation's "big five" museums for modern art along with the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Hirshhorn...

 in Minneapolis, Athey made cuts in co-performer Divinity Fudge's back, placed strips of absorbent paper towel on the cuts and then, using a pulley, hoisted the blood-stained cloths into the air. Local art critic Mary Abbe (who had not witnessed the performance) wrote a sensationalizing story about the performance which appeared on the front page of Minneapolis Star-Tribune. That story was picked up the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...

 and quickly made national headlines. Widespread anxiety about AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...

 created a perfect storm as critics and lawmakers including Jesse Helms
Jesse Helms
Jesse Alexander Helms, Jr. was a five-term Republican United States Senator from North Carolina who served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1995 to 2001...

 falsely described his performances as exposing audience members to HIV
HIV
Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...

-infected blood.

Although this 1994 performance was supported only indirectly (via the Walker Center) by $150 from National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...

, Athey's name was frequently invoked in criticism of the NEA. Athey was not alone - performance artists Tim Miller
Tim Miller (performance artist)
-External links:* *...

, John Fleck
John Fleck
John Fleck is an American actor and performance artist. His guest roles include Silik on the television series Star Trek: Enterprise, several characters on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and the pilot to Babylon 5, The Gathering . He starred as Gecko on the television show Carnivàle, and as Louis on...

, Karen Finley
Karen Finley
Karen Finley is an American performance artist, whose theatrical pieces and recordings have often been labelled "obscene" due to their graphic depictions of sexuality, abuse, and disenfranchisement...

, and Holly Hughes
Holly Hughes
Holly Hughes is a Republican National Committee member from the State of Michigan, in the United States. She is also a Member of the Michigan House of Representatives for District 91.- Political career :...

 would become the NEA Four
NEA Four
The "NEA Four", Karen Finley, Tim Miller, John Fleck, and Holly Hughes, were performance artists whose proposed grants from the United States government's National Endowment for the Arts were vetoed by John Frohnmayer in June 1990. Grants were overtly vetoed on the basis of subject matter after...

 as they fought a case regarding funding for their work before the Supreme Court
Supreme court
A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of many legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, instance court, judgment court, high court, or apex court...

. Unlike these other artists, Athey has never applied for federal funds to support his work. Nevertheless, in many ways the controversy of this incident continues to shape public perception of his work.

External links

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