The gesture reprised Four Scenes in a Harsh Life, the 1994 performance that made Athey a household name when it was demonized by Republican politicians in their attacks on the National Endowment for the Arts. Removing a sheet of paper from a surgical tray to his right, King pressed the parchment against AtheyвЂ™s wound, creating a print from his blood which he pinned to a clothesline and sent up towards the audience.

It was something of a pleasant surprise, then, when Athey was fastened into a bench by Paul King, who carved a Minotaur glyph, inspired by a stone statue from Knossos, into his bare chest. In these compositions, mannered, referential performance and detailed production design seemed to eclipse the grueling corporeality which first made the artist infamous in the 1990s. They began a dance of constraint, slowly shifting the pane above them, a heavy index of their bodyвЂ™s physical limits.ДЄthey has had a busy year, producing a large-scale operatic collaboration with Griffin at Vibiana Cathedral in Los Angeles and the Bataille-inspired Acephalous Monster at Performance Space New York.

A large pane of glass was ceremonially brought inside the circle and placed atop their chiseled musculature, creating a living human table. Another theatrical shift in light revealed CassilsвЂ™ nude body, stretched out on the concrete floor. In nods to both Ana Mendieta and Medea, she removed a sack containing that same dirt from the clod and dragged it methodically across the circle formed by the audience. The air was ripe with the diffused musk of fertilizer as Fanaa was extracted from a large mound of soil. вЂThe themes of mythology are not just archaic knowledge вЂ“ they are living actualities of human beings.вЂ™ A moment later, we were thrust back into the darkened lung. вЂThe myths and symbols of the past were attempts to articulate intimation of what is possible,вЂ™ Athey read. Initially, the reference seemed a convenient way to contain the workвЂ™s three disparate performers, but the reading deepened. BurroughsвЂ™ concept of the вЂcut upвЂ™, вЂEsoterroristвЂ™ (1980-88) argues that a certain logic lies behind the seemingly arbitrary. Musing on the structural integrity of William S. With a shift in lighting, this segued into a lecture, delivered at a podium by Athey, borrowed from texts by Genesis P-Orridge. Together we were led clumsily, one-by-one, into the unlit interior of a cylindrical domed structure called вЂthe LungвЂ™, where, after an extended moment in darkness, a Brion Gysin cut-up dance composition began, brusque and orderly, with the cadence of early 1990s industrial music. They had gathered for Cyclic, a robust and episodic performance composed by Ron Athey, Cassils and Fanaa, featuring Hermes Pittakos and Paul King, with direction by Sean Griffin. Courtesy: the artists and MOCA Tucson photograph: Adam Cooper-Teran for MOCA TucsonДЄ congregation of the devoted assembled around a grassy crater beneath BiosphereвЂ™s glass and white-painted steel architecture: performance scholars, goths and body modification enthusiasts from across the US, as well as some rather well-humored MOCA Tucson donors.

Ron Athey, Cassils and Fanaa, Cyclic, performance documentation, 2018. When the structure got a little too hippy for its big-oil funders, Steve Bannon was apparently brought in to break up the party. Infamous in the scientific community, I found that its mention solicited a kind of cultish awe. My destination was Biosphere 2: built in 1987, the vast greenhouse complex was an experiment in creating a self-sustaining ecosystem, should earth eventually prove herself uninhabitable. This past December, I hopped on a bus in a fit of art tourism.

Fanaa movie scenes