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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (March 21, 2008)
4ojustout MARCH 21, 2008 ART ON THE EDGE OF ENDURANCE EXTREME PERFORMANCE ARTIST RON ATIIEY COMES TO PORTLAND BY TONY LETIGRE here are many ways to say merge the profane with the profound, to mix the ment funding for the arts. In question was $150 “hallelujah.” Sqch is the motto beautiful and the repulsive, the demonic and the that made its way to Athey as part of a block grant divine in such a way that we no longer see them and modus operandi of Ron as polar opposites, but as points on the same con Athey, a man who has been tinuum, or even as indistinguishable from one an dubbed “America’s most con other. Through troversial performance artist.” Athey, whose last the alchemy of art, Athey spins the syllables straw and of shit of his macabre life into a pecu name is pronounced like the first two liar and challenging kind of gold. “atheist,” has lived the sort of life that might have “If the inside of your head gets pummeled with landed him an appearance on The Jerry Springer Show. Fortunately, he aimed higher, choosing to enough emotional blunt force trauma to splinter that tfe Walker Aft Center had received through the National Endowment of the Arts. U.S. Sen. T Call the friendly Audiologists I at Bridgetown Hearing Clinic for your FREE 10-day, no-obligation on the back of fellow performer Divinity Fudge, with art rather than exploiting them for the low that fleshy prison which houses the pain,” Athey dabbed the blood with white cloths and hoisted brow masses hypnotized by daytime television. waxes eloquent in an excerpt from his online bi them over the audience on a pulley. A sensational The “hallelujah” mantra is appropriate for a man who was trained as a child to be a Pentecostal minister by a family for whom the adjective “dys ography. “The sight of your own blood, brought forth from your hand, is a violation that you your self now control.” account of the performance that appeared in the I WGGG // ‘.DG.V REPÀ B • RGPE T ' GRAZING • W EAT H £ R S T R ' P R eaboduction S ashes . • F •. sh C aape ;*, tp <« C jS’Gv C ab •, e ’ c , z CONTACT US 503.453 6301 who had not attended, created ripples that even tually led to the NEA’s annual budget for fiscal PROFOUND PROFANITY year 1996 being slashed nearly in half. Athey To say that Athey is an HIV-positive gay artist ing impact on him is plain to 1 wk 866 *n rellSlous iconog- ■ raphy he employs (and an is like saying that Cirque du Soleil is a circus that In commenting on the hoopla, Athey’s criti doesn’t have any animals. It’s true as far as it goes, cism is directed less at the religious right, whom but it doesn’t begin to encompass the magnitude he takes for granted as detractors of his work, than of its subject. Athey’s body of work—in his case, at the NEA and conservative figures in the art an eminently apt pun—stretches over the past world who are quick to disassociate themselves from artists whose work foments controversy. “I Athey how to tran couple of decades, during which he has managed to shock many, offend some and impress others substantiate with the freaky intensity of his singular vision and taboos, to willingness to make his own body his canvas. His work has enshrined and lifted to the level of high www.bridgetownhearing.com SASH & CARPENTRY Co. Minneapolis Star Tribune, written by a reporter fed to him as a youth, its continu nihilates) in his work. It would seem that no one knows better than Ron w w w. 2 "Test j d e o w Drive" o r ! d. c o rr TODAY! PHONAK EAST PORTLAND with HIV-positive blood. During a scene in the performance called “The Human Printing Press,” Athey, who had spoken frankly of his HIV-positive status, carved designs the psyche, you develop ways to punish the body, • long ago rejected the crazed faith force- 503-528-6849 jection on rumor that audiences were assaulted transform and exorcise the traumas of his early life functional” is altogether inadequate. Although he Bridgetown Hearing Clinic 825 NE 20th Ave, Suite 230 Portland, OR Jesse Helms, R-N.C., and others based their ob art all sorts of behaviors normally associated with I REA; CAN”] SEET DIFF BETWE GOING T WATC S THEI BASH IN THE BQXIN RING. proved a convenient scapegoat. see amazing things in Europe that are government funded, that are too expensive for the box office to pay for, that will never come here,” Athey says. “The government can have a place in arts fund ing, but there can’t be that decency clause.” the extreme subcultures that thrive on the kinky outskirts of society: bondage and sadomasochism, * A IIARSH LIFE bloodletting, mock castration, self-mutilation, branding, flogging and genital stapling. (“The in every way. He was bom in Groton, Conn., scrotum tissue really isn’t that sensitive,” he in 1961, but by age 2 was living in Los Ange avers. “It’s just like a quick pinch.”) Athey’s life, like his work, has been extreme les, where he has been based ever since. By the Athey’s name belongs in a pantheon age of 10, “Ronnie Lee," under the aegis of a of names you may or may not have heard: schizophrenic mother and her devoutly deranged Lydia Lunch, Helen Spackman, Andres household, was speaking in tongues and had been Serrano, Bob Flanagan, Gina Pane, Karen sainted as a budding prophet messiah. His child Finley, Vaginal Davis, Annie Sprinkle, hood years were spent in and out of revival tents, Franko B, Bruce LaBruce. It’s a rogue’s gal where his tears were urged and coveted by the lery of underground anti-celebrities, the congregation, hands were laid on him and he wit outsider artists of stage, screen and gal nessed faith healings at least once a week. Add to lery. They’re not household names, and this an aunt suffering from hypersexualized mania they’re probably OK with that. Athey who believed she would marry Elvis Presley only concedes that his work is “certainly not mass popular culture.” But just as his after giving birth to the second incarnation of Christ; a grandmother given to channeling extra venues have changed from seedy clubs dimensional spirits through the mediums of auto to august art galleries, his name and work have bubbled up from the fring matic writing and Aktion paintings; and a general belief that Athey’s family had been “chosen by es to the mainstream. As a writer and God to kick off Armageddon,” and your uncon editor, his byline has appeared not ventional childhood starts to look entirely unre just in Infected Faggot Perspectives markable by comparison, now doesn’t it? and Virus Mutations but also in LA Weekly, Details, The Advocate and For 15 years Athey weathered this psychic onslaught before running away from both church the venerable Village Voice. and family. But the loss of faith left him with a Then there was that little inci void that he attempted to fill with self-mutilation dent in 1994 for which Athey may and drugs. He spent about a decade as a junkie, be most notorious, when the reli during which time he made several overt suicide gious right, foaming at the mouth in attempts in addition to the slow, passive suicide that many would argue heroin addiction itself rep the wake of the Clinton presidency, zoomed in on Athey as an easy tar get in its quest to curb govern resents. Now, 46 years old and having been diag nosed with HIV 20 years ago, his days as a junkie
