recorded performance text from PE to Acephalous Monster: autobiographic and “appropriated text” series, yom kipper liturgy, genet, bataille. New remix projects coming and more live shows. Pictured with guest vocalists Lisa Teasley at ltd losangeles gallery and Micaela Tobin (aka White Boy Scream) at the lethal amounts Phantoms event. I have a small amount of these in CD (old fashioned I know) for $25 while supplies last.

https://davidharrow.bandcamp.com/album/witness-2?fbclid=IwAR2w31yuQmELf1-p30nCMa7u2GjiI6Fk-uPKSjUFQkCpK2LUB2xJjo9Q7Pc

download or CD via the Bandcamp link!

long version with track details:

Witness draws from the entire history of Ron Athey’s performance texts, starting with PE, going through the torture trilogy, short narratives, characterizations, up to appropriated texts.  Athey and David Harrow have a history going back to the mid-90s London, when Athey was performing both at the ICA and including midnight shows at fetish/kink/sex clubs such as Torture Garden and FIST. This relationship continued to Harrow’s relocating to Los Angels, we have been recording these texts the last year, as a way of preserving them, of dislocating them from their original source, and making a new dialogue.  

Not believing this moment is without precedent, I’ve always needed to understand where issues sit in history. Issues of perversion, contagion, logic, role-playing.  PE starts it with a cycle of life and death and perhaps that just continues 40 years later with the inclusion of Bataille essays. The religious lens is never far. 

Atonement.  This text was taken from both the Confession Liturgy of Yom Kippur and the book of Isaiah, 56:3 “let not the eunuchs say, I am a dry tree.”  This was assembled for 1995s Deliverance, which was commissioned and premiered at the ICA London, as the third and final part of the torture trilogy, and HIV/AIDS Odyssey! The scene is an interaction between Athey (the yom kippur confession broke into sections), and Divinity Fudge, as the Old Testament God.  This was also shortly after the death of Leigh Bowery, so Athey wearing Leigh’s gown and beaded hood, nailed the concept of “Trickster Shaman.”

Divine is Dead.  From the appropriated text series, I took all the mentions of Divine’s sickness, death and funeral from Genet’s Our Lady of the Flowers, and edited them into this text. “The Eternal passed by in the form of a Pimp. The Prattle ceased.” 2014 Incorruptible Flesh: Messianic Remains, which was the fourth and final chapter of the Incorruptible series started in 1996, made in residence at the CCA in Glasgow. The choreography and look is inspired from Lucifer Rising-style Egyptology.

Holy Woman.  The opening to 1994 version of 4 Scenes In A Harsh Life, chapter 2 of the torture trilogy. Inspired by evangelist Aimee Semple McPhearson’s use of utilitarian clothes (nurse and female military) and illustrated sermon, the text is from Athey’s Pentecostal memoir, Gift’s of the Spirit. “You’ve been born with the calling on you life, Ronnie Lee.”

Psychic Surgery.  Opening scene of Deliverance, which sets up trickster actions as a way to question, What Is Healing? (not restoration…) a psychic manifestation of the disease and mock castration. This was just before the 3 therapy cocktail for HIV in 1996, and weariness, desperate measures such as blood boiling and injecting patients with typhus had been on the landscape. 

A Nurse’s Penance.  Martyrs & Saints, LACE, 1992.  This scene was made and initially performed summer of 92, in response to the death of David Wojnarowicz. “And the best are already dead.” A moment of extreme despair, loss, and acknowledging the role of women in this crisis.

Premature Ejaculation Life Cycle, 1981.  This is the beginning, when I co-wrote and cut-up text with Rozz Williams, for our actionist/noise project, PE.  That rare relationship that’s creating every waking our. this text was used for a performance-for-camera that was specifically done for NoMag. These tabloids, including Re/search, damage and Slash, were heavily responsible for how our culture developed in post-punk L.A. underground scenes. Yes, Burroughs/Gysin/Viennese Actionists infiltrated our death rock universe.

Pilgrimage of the Sick Man. 1995 opening to Deliverance. Filling a set with dirt and setting up the patheticness of the healing line. Self-Deprecating, melodramatic humility. Set up for the psychic surgery scene, carrying 25 crutches.

Hallelujah! “There’s so many ways to say, Hallelujah!” 4 Scenes In A Harsh Life, 1993.  The male minister on a high pulpit, the original of Gifts, Reinterpretation of False Prophecies, trying to make sense of message in a new context, officiating a triage “bulldagger” wedding. Looking for new rituals and new celebrations, presence of the queer body.

Suicide Bed. from 4 Scenes In Harsh Life. This was a solo scene, with Athey tossing and turning in a ragged single bed, self-mutilating, drawing on a few of the worst suicidal nights rolled up into on. Then.. a shift happens with a spirit dream of tattoo symbology. Yes it meant that much! 

Psychic Surgeons (The Graces) from Deliverance: initially recited by the 3 surgeons, again using the trickster mode of ambiguity. In this case, judgement. Healing meaning to be put out your misery.

My Mother.  George Bataille’s foreword to My Mother, used as a projection in Acephalous Monster 2019.  “Terror unendingly renews with advancing age”. As a motherless child, this mother that we seek!

Self-Mutilation and the Severed Ear of Vincent Van Gogh. George Bataille as a reading on the economy of self-mutilation.

Witness.  Jean Genet’s conclusion in his final book, the memoir, Prisoner of Love. Used as one of the librettos in the Judas Cradle, an operatic duo drama constructed and performed with Juliana Snapper, 2004. “In order to show the ‘why’ he sheds light on the ‘how’, a light sometimes called artistic.”