Sanitizing the Artist: A Dirty-Report

Ron Athey’s Self Obliteration #1 Ecstatic and #2 Rapture — part of HAU Theater’s Politics of Ecstasy festival

SPOLIER ALERT – WHICH DOUBLES AS A "MAY SPOIL YOUR MEAL" ALERT

Two plates of glass frame a tattoo-covered, but otherwise naked, man posed on his hands and knees on a table. He is wearing a long blond wig.
He breathes. The audiences watches, wanders, and waits.
He starts to brush the wig. Long strokes at first, then he reverses and teases it up into Dolly Parton-On-Steroids.
He takes the wig off. By removing the needles in his skull.
He then puts his head upside down, using the dripped blood as paint on the canvases of glass.
His muscles shake in a regular rhythm that has little to do with the half-techno, half-arty background music.
The wig comes back on and is eventually used as a full-head cast, wrapping together the wounds and his face.
Assistants wearing black latex gloves add two more glass plates, boxing him in. A white paste is added to the blood and the wig becomes a brush, covering the new plates of glass with the pink mixture, which is then brushed into the wig. This continues and his hands forget about the wig and begin to follow the lines of the tattoos on his skin.
When he has finished bringing himself to rapture, he stands on his podium and claps. The audience reciprocates.
He dismounts and the black-latexed assistants put his feet in plastic bags before he lands on the floor and walks backstage. The applause dies out and the audience slowly begins to leave. Performance time: 30 minutes. Time until the last audience member has left the theater after the performance: 15 minutes.
Outside, under the elevated subway tracks, the songs of Disney animated films filter through the air.