Ron Athey, ‘The Acephalous Monster’, 2019. Photo by Andreja Kargačin.
Intensive workshop in esoteric performance development
Mon 17th - Fri 21st February 2025, Battersea Arts Centre (London)
The workshop is priced £360 (£280 concession) and payment plans are available. We expect high demand for this intensive, so please book early!
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Ron Athey and Michele Occelli invite you to join an intensive 5 day workshop process exploring automatistic modes of performing through hypnosis, trance movement, mortification of the flesh and pageantry.
This will be a deep-dive into the practices of automatic writing, somatics, hypnosis and procession that Athey has used in performance making since 1995. We’ll explore the modular sacred theatre, talismanic signatures and the place of bodily fluids in contemporary performance. There will be lectures on lighting and video making, and the practice of hypnosis.
Come with a performance concept - the final day will be support participants to develop and realise their (solo or collaborative) projects.
This is a rare opportunity to get in deep with bold, esoteric artistic practices. We suggest potential participants familiarse themselves with the practices of the faciltators before booking.
If you have questions relating to this please reach out to Future Ritual (producing@futureritual.co.uk) in the first instance.
Participation & Tickets
The workshop is priced at £360 (£280 concession). As it sits outside of a funded project budget all ticket income goes towards the cost of putting the workshop on.A deposit of 25% will be required to secure your place on the workshop, with the balance payable by Monday 3rd February.
> Book now
Ron Athey, ‘Gifts of the Spirit: Prophecy, Discernment and Automatism’, 2018. Photo by Chris Wormald.Who is this call for?
Constructing Phenomena [II] is intended for performers, body artists, experimental artists and researchers with experience in performance art, live art, dance, theatre, choreography, and body-based performance practices.Logistics
Venue: Battersea Arts Centre, Lavender Hill, London, SW11 5TNDates and Times: Mon 17th - Fri 21st February, 10.30 - 17.00
Travel to and from the workshop, food and accommodation in London are the responsibility of the participants. We can connect artists visiting London with others in the group to find accommodation together.
Contact
If you have questions around the workshop, please be in touch with Future Ritual (producing@futureritual.co.uk) in the first instance.
Ron Athey, ‘Sebastiane’. Photo by Joanna Matuszak.Ron Athey
Ron Athey is a Los Angeles-based artist who has been making performance works since 1981s Premature Ejaculation, an actionist/noise duo with Rozz Williams (his partner and front person of the seminal death rock band Christian Death). Self-taught, Athey’s earliest works were inspired by Johanna Went, Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle, and electro-punk/queercore pioneers Nervous Gender. By the 90s the HIV/AIDS pandemic shifted response and this work, the “torture trilogy” became passion plays which were presented in spaces such as ICA London; Cankarjev Dom Ljubljana; PS122 NYC; ExTeresa CDMX. Monographs “Pleading In the Blood” and “Queer Communion” were published in 2013 and 2020 on Intellect Press, followed by retrospective Queer Communion at Participant Inc. NYC and ICA-LA 2021.In 2023 Athey and facilitators launched an annual immersive art making workshop in Athens, Greece titled Darkness Visible. Current videowork includes a series of post-porn-mythologies including Asclepius/Acephale, The Hierophant, and Pasiphae, Witch Queen of Crete: A Gloryhole Origin Story. And in various forms, a sacred modular theater, Hierophant Workings. Athey and collaborator Hermes Pittakos are currently showing a two act performance WILLENDORF (shown in September for a performance event honoring Vaginal Davis’ citywide survey in Stockholm).
Ron Athey is represented by Murmurs Gallery, Los Angeles.
Michele Occelli
Michele Occelli’s approach to hypnotherapy utilizes a combination of Ericksonian and ideo-dynamic techniques to enable processes of change and self-discovery. After years of academic research in both eastern and western philosophy (SOAS, King’s College and Goldsmith’s College), he trained as a whirling dervish with the Mevlevi Order of Konya. The study and practice of Hypnotherapy came because of a desire to engage both mind and body as a unity, which is the basis for any form of understanding of both self and the world.> www.micheleoccelli.co.uk