Details

A collaborative performance in two parts, Ron Athey and Dominic Johnson explore Self-Obliteration, Inner Pigginess, and Mystical Grandiosity. Starting with a palate of ideas about sex, death and sparkle, they take these themes into the California deserts in the heat of August, to create rituals of transubstantiation in magickal excess. In 1996, Ron Athey and Lawrence Steger began researching the collaborative performance, Incorruptible Flesh. Like wax dummy saints blessed with the miracle of incorruptible flesh, the thought was that there was much injecting and powdering to be done to fight off corrosion. The morbidity of the piece was driven by the shared, long-term HIV+ status of Athey and Steger, healthy and sick respectively. The intercut performance vignettes liberally used camp and melodrama, and a righteous submersion in Stegers drollness. In 2006, Steger now dead, Athey continued the project displayed as a living corpse in Incorruptible Flesh (Il Luminous), and again as Incorruptible Flesh (Dissociative Sparkle). Continuing the collaborative process, Athey presents Incorruptible Flesh (Inner Pig). Oracles never speak: only echoes of messages, too vague to discern. The flesh is quickening with love's neglected waters. Against rigid landscapes, the pains we carry tighten into brilliance. Dominic Johnson has been collaborating with Ron Athey to explore self obliteration, inner pigginess and mystical grandiosity. A calm, soft spoken performer, Dominic the direct prodigy of Ron's work, adds a sombre, naturalistic approach to the theatrics of Ron's style. An intellectual approach to the work Ron does has been displayed by Dominic, who performers here and in Europe and also lectures at Queen Mary, University of London.

Cast/Performers

Dominic Johnson