Ron Athey, born 1961, is a Los Angeles-based self-taught artist performing since 1981’s Premature Ejaculation noise/action collaboration with the late Rozz Williams. Influenced by the bands Christian Death, and Nervous Gender, Athey came into his own forming a performance troop in the 90s, making the so-called torture trilogy, 3 works that addressed the HIV/AIDS crisis in ritualistic, philosophical, and mythological stage scenes. Martyrs & Saints and 4 Scenes In a Harsh Life were development scene by scene in nightclubs, Deliverance (1995) was an ICA London commission. These works toured internationally including CCA Glasgow, Gallerija Kapelica Ljubljana, Eurokaz Zagreb, Inteatro XX Polverigi, Ex-Teresa CDMX, and Kampnagel Hamburg. In 1998 Athey began making solo work, premiering The Solar Anus at Galleria Kapelica Ljubljana, onwards through 20 cities until the pivotal Undercover Surrealism show at the Hayward Gallery in London, 2006. Since then Athey has moved between solos, opera collaborations, and a post-porn video project with Hermes Pittakos titled Pasiphäe, Witch Queen of Crete: A Gloryhole Origin Story, which showed in 2022 at the Long Beach Opera Film Festival via Dirty Looks. Two monographs have been printed on Intellect Press: Pleading in the Blood (2013) and Queer Communion (2021) to accompany the same-named Amelia Jones curated retrospective showing that year at Participant Inc. NYC and ICA-LA. Athey is a 2023 Creative Capital “Wild Futures” grant recipient, for The Asclepeion, a live art installation. April 19 Athey is facilitating Darkness Visible, a weeklong immersive 30 person performance workshop at Communitism in Athens, Greece, and has collaborated with Carmina Escobar on her sound recording concept, Vox Claimants, a non-lingual vocal duet filmed inside and out locations in California high desert locations. This is the second “plus-one” episode of Five Places Los Angeles. In each episode, we ask our interviewee to name someone whom they would choose to ask about the five places that define Los Angeles for them. As each interviewee invites a plus-one, our living documentary of the city grows and evolves. Author and artist Lisa Teasley, whom we interviewed in Episode Five, chose Ron Athey as her plus-one. To hear Lisa Teasley’s interview and read her bio, see E05.
(Note: "Athey" is pronounced with a long "A", as in "āi", as opposed to Emmanuelle's short "a" pronunciation in the intro. The episode was recorded in Dec. 2020 and includes mention of recent closings due to the pandemic.)
Show notes and Ron ’s five places
Also mentioned in this episode/ related links
Five Places L.A. LISTENER SURVEY!
Guardian article on the 2028 Olympics by Jules Boykoff and Dave Zirin: Los Angeles has already ceded too much power to the Olympic machine
The unincorporated community ofZzyzx, California.
Christopher Knight’s LA Times review of Athey’s 2012 show “Queer Communion: Ron Athey” at ICA LA: Review: ‘Queer Communion’ and the engrossing, squirm-inducing world of Ron Athey