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Ron Athey: An Interview

Video Data Bank

2014 00:34:46 United StatesEnglishColorMono16:9HD video
Tags:
Body, Performance, VDB Interviews, Visiting Artists Program

Description

In this interview, extreme performance artist and 1990s culture warrior Ron Athey (b.1961) discusses the genesis of his provocative performance style and the memories and desires that continue to motivate his practice. Athey describes how his particular approach to performance developed dually from his religious upbringing and exposure to devotional theater, as well as from his later interest in the DIY grandiosity of the Los Angeles punk scene.

Athey shares how the urgency and assertive presence of these two worlds informed his later involvement in queer culture and the global body modification scene. Athey concludes by describing his relationship to his audiences, focusing on the ways in which intimacy and control are circulated and exchanged. –Kyle Riley

Interview conducted by David Getsy in February 2014.

The Video Data Bank is the leading resource in the United States for videotapes by and about contemporary artists. The VDB collection features innovative video work made by artists from an aesthetic, political or personal point of view. The collection includes seminal works that, seen as a whole, describe the development of video as an art form originating in the late 1960's and continuing to the present. Works in the collection employ innovative uses of form and technology, mixed with original visual style to address contemporary art and cultural themes.

Founded in 1976 at the inception of the media arts movement in the United States, the Video Data Bank is one of the nation's largest providers of alternative and art-based video. Through a successful national and international distribution service, the VDB distributes video art, documentaries made by artists, and recorded interviews with visual artists, photographers and critics.