Introduced by Dr. Sarah Jane Bailes (School of English)

In the United States Congress in July 1994, Jesse Helms, the late Republican Senator for North Carolina, introduced a series of pronouncements and actions against the performance artist Ron Athey, on account of Athey's performance of 4 Scenes in a Harsh Life (1994) in Minneapolis earlier in the year. In the final years of the ‘culture wars’, Helms would use Athey as a scapegoat to police the threat posed by what the religious Right deemed to be antagonistic, offensive, or indecent art. In the same month, when Athey and his company travelled to London to perform Four Scenes at the ICA, new problems ensured, in relation to a recent legal ruling concerning consensual bodily harm. By studying the reception of Ron Athey’s seminal performance 4 Scenes in a Harsh Life (1994), in Minneapolis and London, I show that disgusted apperceptions of a single work depend on contingencies at the local level. These contexts are seemingly beyond the aesthetic domain, yet condition the way a work of art makes meaning.     

Dominic Johnson is the author of Glorious Catastrophe: Jack Smith, Performance and Visual Culture (2012); and Theatre & the Visual (2012). He is the editor of four books, most recently Pleading in the Blood: The Art and Performances of Ron Athey (2013); and Critical Live Art: Contemporary Histories of Performance (2013). He is Associate Editor of the journal Contemporary Theatre Review, and guest-edited a special issue on ‘Live Art in the UK’ in 2012. He is a Senior Lecturer in the School of English and Drama, at Queen Mary, University of London.

By: Matthew Knight
Last updated: Thursday, 27 February 2014