Incorruptible Flesh (il luminous)
As well as mentoring one of the 2006 Winter School courses Ron has been commissioned to produce a new durational work for the NRLA.
Sick boys: Exactly 10 years ago (Feb 96) in residence at the CCA, Ron Athey and Lawrence Steger (died 1999) developed a collaborative performance they called Incorruptible Flesh (In Progress). Responding to their own HIV-infected bodies and the maintained-incorruptible bodies of saints, Athey and Steger embraced the monster. Worked through layers of sarcophagus-like structures and costumes, grotesque makeup, and body-manipulating devices to end up as a pile of greasy flesh. Now, not so much a Still Here as a dissociative sparkle, Ron Athey continues with this meditation in a durational 6-hour performance.
In 1980, inspired by L.A-based artist Johanna Went, Ron Athey and his partner Rozz Williams formed Premature Ejaculation, a frantically paced noise ensemble, which hinged around ritualistic actions and self-mutilation. Largely responding to the climate of AIDS deaths, Athey staged the first instalment of what later formed the torture trilogy, Martyrs & Saints, at the LACE gallery in 1992, followed, thereafter, by 4 Scenes In A Harsh Life and Deliverance. Athey and company toured these pieces in the U.S, U.K, Europe and Mexico. Although not without troubles: the display of potentially HIV-infected blood was manipulated into right-wing propaganda for use in dismantling the U.Ss National Endowment for the Arts, while in the U.K, the continuing appeals of the Operation Spanner convictions made the issue of consenting to actual bodily harm in Atheys performance enough reason to be censored. In 1999, Athey premiered his first solo performance, The Solar Anus, followed by a residency at Kampnagel, in which he developed a multi-media performance, Joyce. This last year he has collaborated with soprano/musicologist Juliana Snapper on The Judas Cradle, an operatic touring project produced by the Fierce! festival.