Pleading in the Blood ─ The Art and Performances of Ron Athey

Ron Athey is a central figure in the development of performance art since the early 1990s, and this is the first book devoted to his practice.Pleading in the Blood foregrounds the prescience of Athey’s work, exploring how his visceral practice foresaw and precipitated the central place afforded sexuality, identity, and the body in art and critical theory in the late-twentieth century.

Ron Athey is an iconic figure in the development of contemporary art and performance. In his frequently bloody portrayals of life, death, crisis, and fortitude in the time of AIDS, Athey calls into question the limits of artistic practice. These limits enable Athey to explore key themes including: gender, sexuality, SM and radical sex, queer activism, post-punk and industrial culture, tattooing and body modification, ritual, and religion.

This landmark publicationincludes Athey’s own writings, and commissioned essays by maverick artists and leading academics. It showcases full-colour images of Athey’s art and performances since the early 1980s, including extensive documentation of solo performances and ensemble productions, and his photographic collaborations with other visual artists.

Pleading in the Blood includes three newly commissioned essays on different aspects of Athey’s work by Adrian Heathfield, Amelia Jones, and Dominic Johnson. These scholarly essays are complemented by shorter texts by Homi K. Bhabha, Jennifer Doyle, Tim Etchells, Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Matthew Goulish, Lydia Lunch, Juliana Snapper, Julie Tolentino, Alex Binnie, Catherin (Saalfield) Gund, Bruce LaBruce and Catherine Opie. The book will also include Athey’s own writings, including new pieces and hard-to-find archival texts. The publication also includes an interview with Annie Sprinkle and Fakir Musafar, conducted by Athey. The publication will be lavishly illustrated with full-colour images by photographers including Catherine Opie, Manuel Vason, Elyse Regher, Slava Mogutin, Dona Ann McAdams, Bruce LaBruce, Rick Castro, Sheree Rose, Edward Colver, Jennifer Precious Finch, and others. Antony Hegarty (Antony and the Johnsons) has written a foreword to the publication.