Acephalous Monster is a solo performance with projections, readings, lec- tures, appropriated text and sound.

Largely inspired by the secret society of Acéphale, Andre Masson’s design of a mascot, and parallel making: pre-Occupation 30s Paris with pre-Oper- ation Spanner UK, trying to make sense of a current reality where neo-fas- cism is mutating, creeping, and marching.

Dionysus vs. The Cruficifed One, from P-Orridge’s Esoterrorist, “The themes of mythology are not just archaic knowledge — they are living ac- tualities of human beings.” The embodiment of the Minotaur, a queeny vampire standing in for Louie XVI (to celebrate the beheading).

The final scene, “Entering the Forest of Acéphale”, is in honor of the young artist, Jon John. As he lay dying, he imagined wearing fakir shoes, that would be like walking on a bed of nails. And a peacock feather butt plug, because he was that extra. Paul King, who would become the executor of Jon John’s estate, worked with the designer Jochen Kronier to posthu- mously make these objects. I had a deep relationship with Jon John, as he performed with me, and i mentored him in his. For this video that accompa- nies this scene, I felt inspired bring these objects into action.

In C.Carr’s book On Edge: Performance at the End of the 20th Century, she titled the Johanna Went chapter, “Learning to Love the Monster”. I feel there is more exploring to be done in actionism, word virus, and cut-up. I am deeply enriched by working closely with the artist Hermes Pittakos, the opera director Sean Griffin, and am still touched by attending, weekly, a year of seminars with the philosophy professor Johnny Golding.

From Georges Bataille’s The Sacred Conspiracy: He is not me but he is more than me; his stomach is a labyrinth in which he has lost himself, loses me with him, and in which I discover myself as him, in other words as a monster.

Gifts of the Spirit: Prophecy, Automatism and Discernment is Ron Athey’s vision for an automatic writing machine brought to life in collaboration with composer and opera director Sean Griffin. Athey has been writing Gifts of the Spirit since 1980 when he moved away from the Pentecostal and Spiritualist practices in which he was raised. These writings describe his experience of growing up as a “living saint” within an environment of abuse, vibrating with the energy of the otherworldly and doing so without faith. 

Athey and Griffin collaborate in the production of a living machine which uses the artist’s self-writing as a platform for improvised ecstatic communion—a layered action that yields a collectively authored text set to a live musical score performed by Opera Povera. 

This work represents a deep dive into queer sorcery. Athey and Griffin take inspiration from Surrealist writing methods such as automatic writing; the word virus and accidental editing of cut-up and fold-in techniques used by Tristan Tzara, Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs; Lilian Lijn’s Poem Machines; and the Enochian alphabet transmitted by angels to Court Astrologer and Magician of Elizabeth I, John Dee and his associate—the self- described spirit medium—Sir Edward Kelly. 

Ron Athey is one of the most important, prolific, and influential performance artists of the past four decades. A singular example of lived creativity, his radical performances are odds with the art worlds and art marketplaces that have increasingly dominated contemporary art and performance art over the period of his career.

Queer Communion, the exhibition and monograph, are an exploration of Athey’s career, refuses the linear narratives of art discourse and instead pays homage to the intensities of each mode of Athey’s performative practice and each community he engages. Emphasising the ephemeral and largely uncollectible nature of his work, the book places Athey’s own writing at its centre, turning to memoir, memory recall, and other modes of retrieval and narration to archive his performances.

In addition to documenting Athey’s art, ephemera, notes, and drawings, the volume features commissioned essays, concise “object lessons” on individual objects in the Athey archive, and short testimonials by friends and collaborators by contributors including Dominic Johnson, Amber Musser, Julie Tolentino, Ming Ma, David Getsy, Alpesh Patel, and Zackary Drucker, among others. Together they form Queer Communion, a counter history of contemporary art.