MONTREAL/January 20, 1999—
Internationally known artist and AIDS activist Ron Athey will speak at Concordia on Thursday, January 21, at 5:30 p.m., in room H-110 of the Henry F. Hall Building (1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. West), as part of University's HIV/AIDS lecture series. He will then perform his one-man show at the Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts (5170 Cote St. Catherine St..) on Saturday, January 23, at 8:00 p.m.
Ron Athey is the internationally-acclaimed, controversial US PWA performance artist. In 1992, he began staging his highly contentious performance trilogy: Martyrs & Saints, 4 Scenes In A Harsh Life, and Deliverance. The trilogy, which depicts ritualistic uses of blood and body scarification, sparked off much-heated debates over art-funding by the National Endowment for the Arts. Deliverance, commissioned by the Live Arts Department of the ICA London, is the first commission of a non-UK resident by the ICA.
Throughout 1998, Ron Athey and company are touring Deliverance. And this summer, the documentary film Hallelujah!, by New York filmmaker Catherine Saalfield, which features Ron Athey & Company premiered at the New York Film Festival. It played this fall at Montreal Image and Nation, and the Festival du Nouveau Cinima et Vidio.
Additionally, Athey is writing a book based on his Pentecostal upbringing. As well, in collaboration with Chicago-based artist Lawrence Steger, he is developing Incorruptible Flesh in residency at the CCA Glasgow, to be premiered in the US in 1998.
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