On Athey’s performance at You Belong to Me: Art and Ethics of Presences in Riverside, California:
http://ieyoubelongtome.blogspot.com/2009/03/ron-atheys-self-obliteration-solo-1.html
“Ron Athey’s work should be seen as episodic - meaning, each performance belongs to a larger sequence of performance. This is true in several ways. Each performance of Self-Obliteration Solo #1: Ecstatic revises a previous performance, and so, as long as he performs this work, our notion of the work can expand to include each of its iterations.But also, individual performances grow from previous work - often quite directly. Incorruptible Flesh expanded ten years after its first iteration with Lawrence Steger when Athey developed Incorruptible Flesh: Disassociated Sparkle around its final image and also Incorruptible Flesh: The Perpetual Wound, his recent collaboration with Dominic Johnson (from which the above photo by Regis Hertich was taken). The performance I describe here is part of these performative “threads”. Of course, Self-Obliteration Solo #1 is more than enough to contemplate in and of itself.
As the lights came up on Athey, he took a brush in his hand and began to comb the long blond hair which cascaded down over his face and to the surface of the platform. The brush hit the platform’s surface hard with each stroke, and the brushing seemed to get increasingly violent as he went on. He then sat backs on his heals to backcomb and teasing the hair into a fright wig.
It was at this point we encountered the performance’s “reveal”: Athey took the wig off by removing needles which appeared to hold them in place. Nothing odd there, as wigs are normally pinned to the wearer’s hair. But of course, he has no hair - these surgical needles pierced the skin on his head. It was at this point the audience realized that there’s been a hidden level of violence to the brushing and combing of the wig.”
This article also includes a quote from Athey:
“How to negotiate my expression? I want to go back into the center of those paintings, golden and gangrenous, rays and beams and arrows, and absorb the violation. Take the dead and deflated, embed lifelike glass eyes. What am I then, a physical manifestation of a psychic disease? The Ecstatic, answers “An honored epileptic.” The Sensualist merely purrs, distracted in a tracing the concave and moist. Ever defensive, the Nihilist, upholds the ‘what the fuck?’ in all instances, while a name game begins, to identify all the possible pathologies (Exhibitionist, Messianic Complex, Freudian Death Drive urge to pre-birth non-existence, full-throttle Lacanian Joissance) that all ring true. Open wounds seep, or sprinkle, or tinkle the blood, without which, the body would be waxen, the golden light over-saturated and brassy, a dis-intoxicant.”
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