Light Source Presents- Ron Athey- Queer Communion.

Light Source Ron Athey- Queer Communion.  27th May 7pm GMT.

Tickets £10-On Zoom, talk 7pm GMT.

As our finale talk as part of our Light Source Night School we have the legendary Ron Athey for this very special zoom talk live from the USA. Ron will be discussing the use of queer ritual within his practice of  'Queer Communion', as we continue our Light Source series conversations around Witch Hunts, Queer Ritual and the Artist as Shaman. 

Ron Athey has been working at the vanguard of performance art for 25 years. Self-taught, his work developed out of post-punk/pre-goth scenes and begins with Premature Ejaculation (PE), an early 1980s collaboration with Rozz Williams. Their approach to performance art was informed by the club actions of Johanna Went and the formulation of Industrial Culture, the idea of psycho/neuro acoustics in sound performance. In the 1990s, Athey formed a company of performers and made Torture Trilogy, a series of works that addressed the AIDS pandemic directly through memorializing and philosophical reflection.

This work is characterized by the physical intensity of 1970s body-art canon, such as COUM Transmission, Carolee Schneeman and the Viennese Actionists, which toured internationally. The trilogy’s final chapter, Deliverance, was commissioned and premiered at the ICA London. In the 2000s, Athey developed genre-stretching theatrical works like Joyce and The Judas Cradle, and a series of major solo performances such as The Solar Anus, Sebastiane, Self-Obliteration Solo and Incorruptible Flesh, a series of solo performances that reflect Athey’s collaborations with the late Lawrence Steger.

Gifts of the Spirit: Prophecy, Automatism and Discernment is Athey’s vision for an automatic writing machine brought to life in collaboration with composer and opera director Sean Griffin. Athey has been writing Gifts of the Spirit since 1980 when he moved away from the Pentecostal and Spiritualist practices in which he was raised. These writings describe his experience of growing up as a “living saint” within an environment of abuse, vibrating with the energy of the otherworldly and doing so without faith.

Currently Athey is presenting Acephalous Monster, is a performance with projections, readings, lectures, appropriated text and sound. Largely inspired by the secret society of Acéphale, Andre Masson’s design of a mascot, and drawing parallels between pre-Occupation 30s Paris with pre-Operation Spanner UK, the work is an attempt to make sense of a current reality where neo-fascism is mutating, creeping, and marching

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Light Source is a program of talks exploring Witch Hunts and Ritual Performance hosted by artist Amy Kingsmill.

This is our 10th talk in a series of 12 monthly talks and workshops on these themes, please check back at our website as we announce our full list of speakers and dates.

Light Source brings light to lost histories of persecuted people- primarily women, and honours them. It explores and expands the use of body performance techniques and contextualises them within the practice of queer people and women, creating a space to share these techniques & histories.

This talk is will be an online Zoom lecture- you will receive details of how to join the lecture online via email. 

This project is funded by the Arts Council England.