The Eleusinian Projector: Screening + Discussion with Ron Athey

When: Sunday, October 27, 2024, 3:30 PM - 6:30 PM
Where: BLOC Cinema, Arts One Building, Mile End

Speaker: Ron Athey

In the new BLOC cinema, LADA and QMUL present a discussion between Ron Athey and long-time friend and collaborator, scholar Dominic Johnson. The two will screen and discuss video works that can be categorised as Mythological Post-Porn. Post-porn is initially defined in Athey’s 1995 Deliverance, wherein he is penetrated on a 9-minute double-dildo ride, while reading an almost-comical text about virtue grandstanding and HIV reinfection. Ron Athey followed this work with the solo performances Solar Anus and Self Obliteration, and is currently working with the myths of Pasiphae, Daedalus, and Asclepius.

All this and more will be discussed with Dominic Johnson, who edited the monograph on Athey’s work Pleading in the Blood (published by Intellect and Live Art Development Agency in 2013), and collaborated with him for the performance Incorruptible Flesh: Perpetual Wound (2017) at the Chelsea Theatre.

Screening programme.

Entering the Forest of Acephale, 2018. Video by Graham Kolbeins, jonjohn version filmed at MustacheII.

Pasiphäe, Witch Queen of Crete: A Gloryhole Origin Story, 2021. Video by Tyler Hubby, filmed at PRS, co-directed with Hermes PittakosIII.

The Hierophant, 2023Video by Ivan Neri, filmed in Athens, movement direction by Federica Dauri.

Join us from 3.30pm for a drinks reception. The screening will begin at 4.00pm, and will be followed by another short reception.

Documentation from Deliverance (1995), Incorruptible Flesh: Perpetual Wound (2017), and other performances by Ron Athey, is available in LADA’s Study Room. 

BIOS

Ron Athey has been making performance work since 1981. Self-taught, his is a research-based practice, in topics including esoteric christianity, ecstasis, archetype work, and immersive workshopping. Collaborators past and present include Hermes Pittakos, Opera Povera, Juliana Snapper, Julie Tolentino, Carmina Escobar, and the late Lawrence Steger. Upcoming projects include Athey and Pittakos’ Hierophant Workings. Ron Athey is a LADA Patron.

Dominic Johnson is Professor of Performance and Visual Culture at Queen Mary University of London; and in 2024 he is Fulbright Visiting Professor at Roski School of Art and Design at the University of Southern California. His books include Unlimited Action: The Performance of Extremity in the 1970s (2019) and Pleading in the Blood: The Art and Performances of Ron Athey (2013).

Image credit: Ron Athey, Solar Anus, (2006). Hayward Gallery, London. Photo by Regis Hertrich.