Ron Athey, A.I.D.S. and the Politics of Pain
Mary Richards
Pain and restraint provide us not with an overtly political subversion but with the aesthetic subversion of the subject itself- prior to political possibilities, and thus all the more capable of subverting them. It is because the personal is the political - and, more to the postmodern point, because we can and must only resist power at the same microlevels at which it manifests itself - that the aesthetically shattered, postsubjective, ascetic, erotic, sadomasochistic body becomes politically subversive.[1]
Performances such as those of Ron Athey, that deliberately blur the boundaries understood to exist between 'pleasure' and 'pain', are often viewed with scepticism by the media in part because Western society is generally orientated towards using technology, science and industry to provide increasingly complex ways of cushioning the body from experiences of discomfort or disease and their association with disorder.[2] I wish to suggest that Athey, in blurring binary distinctions in relation to pain and pleasure, allows other traditional binaries also to be placed under scrutiny. In particular Athey's work underscores and parodies binary notions of masculinity and femininity.
Athey's performances may in addition be considered to focus spectators attention on how our acculturation in the West determines and prescribes the 'limits' of representation, that is, what is "unrepresentable" in Jean-François Lyotard's sense of the word:
That which denies itself the solace of good form, the consensus
of taste […] that which searches for new presentations.[3]
Athey's work, through the presentation of the 'unrepresentable' effects a socio-political agency of excess. This excess refers to that which is passed beyond or falls outside of categories in a way that draws attention to the limits of representation or the edge of the limit. In excess, Athey effectively performs in a territory that is, by definition, largely unmapped, but through his public occupation of this zone, he opens it up for definition and interpretation, so that the boundary shifts and the limit to be transgressed is relocated once more. In skirting around and through the limits of representation, I suggest that Athey's work offers a number of provocative means of resisting traditional representations of masculinity, pain, and pleasure as well as people living with A.I.D.S. or H.I.V. infection.
Ron Athey became a victim of the controversy surrounding the National Endowment for the Arts (N.E.A.) after a performance at the Walker Centre in 1994. In this performance Darryl Carlton takes part in a scene called the Human Printing Press. Small incisions were made in a pattern on Carlton's back, and Athey used surgical paper to make prints from the cuts. The prints were clipped to a washing-line pulley rigged above the audience so that they would pass above the heads of some members of the audience. It was erroneously reported in the press that blood dripped from these prints splattering the audience and that spectators were franticly trying to leave the premises. When it was discovered that the N.E.A. had contributed money to the piece, outrage was expressed from many quarters, as the media focused in upon the story. Thus I would argue that Athey's H.I.V. positive status was a critical factor in the attempts to condemn and suppress the performance of his work. The combination of cutting and bleeding and Athey's H.I.V. positive body was interpreted in the media as a threat to audiences whose ignorance of how H.I.V. is transmitted became all too apparent in the aftermath. Although there was never at any time a risk of infection for the audience the 'bad' press for this performance ensured the withdrawal of support from funding bodies like the N.E.A. The withdrawal of funding & media coverage effectively ensured that Athey was unable to perform his work in publicly funded venues in the United States. However, there were several other factors that contributed to this latent censorship: his open homosexuality, his display of the naked male body, but more particularly his use of religious iconography in unconventional and irreverent ways, and his use of masochism and the abject body in performance. I will argue that masochism is central to his performance work and also the chief motivating force behind the widespread desire to suppress his disturbing vision. I am suggesting that masochism appears threatening because Athey uses it to question the place, function and meaning of religion through his appropriation of Christian symbolism. His masochistic practises may be used to consider how it is possible to blur the sorts of boundaries that we understand to determine our individual subjectivities. That is, he uses masochism, with its potential to 'shatter' or fragment our sense of a cohesive and fixed identity, to raise questions about both the nature and location of the self and the relation of that self to society. By calling the very basis of identity: the self, into question, masochism may be used to enact the mutability of individual identity in a society increasingly faced with doubts and uncertainties concerning the relevance / permanence of its structuring mechanisms. These acculturated mechanisms of power, according to Judith Butler, effectively structure our understanding of the gendered body, and by extension, I am arguing, support the social hierarchies that maintain ideals of 'desirable' gendered subjectivity.
This article will demonstrate how Ron Athey's performance works, using masochism as a key element, achieve a poignant critique of the structuring mechanisms of patriarchal power and patriarchy's influence on notions of fixed subjectivity, particularly 'desirable' masculine subjectivity. I will highlight how these structures of power have been used to suppress and shape the representation of A.I.D.S. in art and performance. The forces of culturally determined positivity mean that the masochist, guilty of allowing or carrying out unnecessary acts of intentional self-harm, without culturally recoupable results, is likely to become marginalised as pathological. That is, if his or her actions do not appear to have some culturally justifiable or approved aesthetic purpose, for example, to win a race, or to 'improve' the condition / appearance of the body in line with Western ideals, he or she is understood as 'sick'. This is not merely because of a masochist's penchant for purposefully interfering with their corporeal and psychological integrity and thus disrupting the aforementioned boundaries, but because of the masochist's claim to enjoy, gain peace through or even revel in the experience. Indeed this idea of the apparent contradictions of masochism is one that Nick Mansfield's Masochism: The Art of Power is particularly concerned with. Mansfield noted that a number of previous theories of masochism only expressed its dynamics in terms of the polarities of pain and pleasure.[4] Mansfield instead suggests that there can not be such a rigid separation between these apparently opposed sensations. He surmises that there is no clear division between these experiences and that a large proportion of our physical perception of pain and pleasure is dependent on how these bodily sensations have been culturally inscribed.
In addition there is a connection to be made between the still dominant tendency to make polarised distinctions between sensations of pain and pleasure and attempts to blur these 'binaries' through the marking of particular parts of the body through inscription, piercing or cutting. As I will subsequently argue, this break through the skin may be used both as a source of group or social identity and / or may serve as a locus of sensual intensity that may supersede that presented by sexual relations that privilege the penetrative behaviour of a heterosexual couple and traditionally place the ‘instinctual’ needs of the male over the ‘sensual’ desire of the female.
According to Alphonso Lingis who researched the inscribed body in non-Western societies and recorded his observations in his ‘Savages’ chapter of Excesses: Eros and Culture, such modifications may also be used to increase the surface area of erogenous zones, thus increasing sensual pleasure, through an initially painful experience.
The savage inscription is a working over the skin, all surface effects. This cutting in orifices and raising tumescences does not contrive new receptor organs for a depth body […] it extends an erotogenic surface […] it's a multiplication of mouths, of lips, labia, anuses, these sweating and bleeding perforations and puncturings.[5]
In addition self-inflicted body wounds may be used in some societies as metaphors. Rifts and disagreements within a community may be remedied through a symbolic incision made in the body of a member. The successfully healed wound heralds a return to harmony. In addition there are numerous anthropological examples of societies that use scarification to signify rebirth of an individual, particularly when undergoing rites of passage.[6] Although Lingis’s attention in Excesses was centred on relatively small non-Western, non-technological societies, his study seemed to provide confirmation to individuals like Fakir Musafar, 'father' of the Modern Primitive movement[7], that there is a deep-seated desire in many people to undergo ritual processes that include masochistic elements.
Performance and Permeability
A body that is permeable, that transmits in a circuit, that opens itself
up rather than seals itself off that is prepared to respond as well as to
initiate […] would involve a quite radical rethinking of male sexual
morphology […] in the rethinking of sexual encounters and sexual pleasure demanded by the AIDS crisis, with its possibilities of a nonphallicized male sexual pleasure.[8]
While Athey's reasons for making his work are not consciously a political statement directed against power disparities, I would argue that his work does present a subversion of patriarchy's structuring systems. This subversion works through his exposure and parody of socio-cultural constructions of masculinity and the constrictions these constructions impose. I want to suggest that Athey's work questions whether the penis, with its attendant economy of sexuality / pleasure, is necessary for a 'complete' experience of the body. Through his concentration on, and manipulation of the penis, particularly in his work Deliverance in which he is symbolically castrated with a staple gun in one scene and in another uses an enormous double-headed dildo with a fellow performer to mock the obsession with penetration, and the mystique that supposedly surrounds the penis, Athey makes parodic reference to the machinations and assumptions of phallic power. Although Lacan would argue that the penis is not necessarily correlative to the phallus, that is, that the possessor of a penis or the male, is not automatically the person in possession of 'power' or the phallus, I would agree with Jane Gallop in her chapter 'Beyond the Phallus’ in Thinking Through the Body where she asserts that there remains a tacit association between penis and phallus that conflates the conceptual with the physical, so that the male is more often popularly conceived of as possessing and asserting power than the female.
The Movement Away from Phallocentricity
In the wake of the countless A.I.D.S. related deaths during the 1980s, a growing number of people in the gay and heterosexual community in Los Angeles were looking to express themselves and their sexuality in ways that heightened their awareness of the body as perhaps a sexual encounter might, but that did not necessarily expose them to the new H.I.V. risks now associated with the reception and exchange of bodily fluids that may occur in penetrative sex.[9] This expression often took the form of tattoos, piercings, cuttings and brandings. These actions allowed individuals to experiment with alternative ways of experiencing the body that did not rely on a phallic economy. That is, a wish to move away from, or at least reconsider, the receptive qualities traditionally associated with acts of sexual consummation; away from the image of the male body as impermeable. For in the act of cutting, piercing or tattooing, the presumed integrity of the male body, not usually associated with seepage and leakage, enters a temporary or even a 'permanent' (genital piercing) liminal zone which may arguably be aligned with the feminine and its associations with the flowing of various body fluids. In this way, these practices represent a rupture in the accepted understanding of the male's bodily integrity. Furthermore, the relationship of intimacy and trust that must be kindled in order for such activities to take place may be an important factor in bonding individuals or members of sub-cultural groups.
The apparently masochistic nature of these practices and their increasingly prominent incidence during a time of sexual uncertainty and technological change has been interpreted by some as a 'return to the body'. That is, in contemporary society, our individual sense of agency may be diminished because of the increased way in which the body is given over to pervasive mechanisms of control : the medical screening of the body to determining our 'fitness' / health,[10] the manipulation of our genetic future through research into the human genome and gene therapy. Political control exerted through the limitation of access to resources and funding determined by such factors as the ability to deal effectively with bureaucracy. Information technology used to compile and exchange personal information in ways that have few controls to ensure confidentiality. In addition there are concerns relating to the pressure of social and self control exerted to police the boundaries of the body from contamination or 'pollution' (particularly in relation to body fluids). Indeed, Dr. Armando Favazza notes that self-mutilative behaviours often arise in societies facing "destabilizing conditions":