Ron Athey has been working in a physical, philosophical, and esoteric performance practice ranging from solo work to 40-person operas. Evolving out of Los Angeles underground music scenes, he started showing Premature Ejaculation in 1981, influenced by performance legend Johanna Went, noise pioneers Throbbing Gristle, the Viennese Actionists, and post-porn modernist Annie Sprinkle. His 1990s response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic created a trilogy of company work that resonated first person in that disastrous time period. When under heat from the mid-1990s culture wars in the US, Athey made second homes at the Institute of ICA- London; Kapelica Gallery, Ljubljana; and Ex Teresa Arte Actual, Ciudad de México, as well as first development residencies at the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, and Kampnagel, Hamburg. Embracing and fighting labels such as abject, AIDS, and post-porn, Athey considers archetype work the connecting thread through each era. He has collaborated on vocal-based projects with Juliana Snapper, Opera Povera, and has an upcoming non-lingual vocal project with Carmina Escobar (Vox Clamantis). In 2021, the Amelia Jones–curated survey show Queer Communion: Ron Athey opened at Participant Inc, New York, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, with performances, workshops, talks, and screenings. Hermes Pittakos is a Cypriot sculptor, performer, and coach for creatives. He studied Fine Art in Manchester, before moving to London where he received his BA in Character Development & Prosthetics makeup for Performance at London College of Fashion. His research is deeply invested in esoteric works, philosophy, and classic myths, reading them as guides to understand our present and mold our journey ahead. His work is also rooted in themes of transformation and rebirth, mythology, rituals, and the psyche’s healing abilities. In 2011, in London he met and collaborated with Athey, creating a strong artistic bond and friendship with him that carries through to today. Acephalous Monster (2018) was their first major performance collaboration, which Hermes art directed and performed. After which they continued collaborating, producing show props, masks, and sets together, a collection of which were on show at the Athey survey show, Queer Communion. Since then they have been making films and have produced Darkness Visible, a 10 day performance making Workshop/bootcamp . Hermes has also produced sculpture work for Peaches that was shown at Kunstverein Hamburg, collaborated with movement performer Federica Duari, and directed and made costume prosthetics for MOLT, a performance shown at No New Idols, in Riga, Latvia. Christos Tejada (b. 1989, Los Angeles, CA) Proudly trained outside the academy, Tejada traces his performance lineages to an immersion in the rich queer underground performance scenes of Los Angeles and his thick web of collaborators. Tejada's parallel practices of tattooing and performance are concerned with thresholds of the visible and invisible expressed through the body. First-generation Angelino of Mexican/Salvadoran descent, Christos' practice creates sensory experiences of identity symbolism with a focus on western esotericism, particularly through sound.

Willendorf Ron Athey

Murmurs

Los Angeles, CA