I thought I'd jot down a fast diary before the details fade away.. we've just finished 10 days of desert workshop, due to some circustances had a deeper than usual bonding, and seen a lot of serious work develop. Much love and respect to all participants, and my cohorts Julie Tolentino and Juliana Snapper.

Friday, August 15: Pickups from LAX and Palm Springs airport, all arrive at our housing, Miracle Manor Retreat, by 4p. (MMR Desert Hot Springs has an amazing history: After massage, the owner, Dr. Lois Black Hill would walk in an place Andre the psychic poodle on the foot of the table and use dawg as a conduit to prophesy from the southern region of the 6th dimension). Load up gang and go to our studio (Marcia's quonset hut in Morongo Valley) for intro and grilled tacos. Nearly full moon, Julie Tolentino leads movement exercise which ends in nude hike on nature preserve directly out back, led by Marcia (who is also a field biologist). First feeling in nude group of 11 peoples: very 70s. Then killer dogs barking and neighboring ranch breaks out a searchlight: abu ghraib (or something awful having to do with interrogation and sharp canines). Back to MMR for night swim and mineral water soaks.

August 16: Julie's Ashtanga yoga session at 5:30a, followed by breakfast, and hike to Mission Creek, which has water, ancient oaks, and stone cottages to hang out in. I read from Bataille's Inner Experience, then we spend time reading and writing. This day feels so mellow, it is definately misleading. After lunch, we start theory of composition and vocalizing with musicologist Juliana Snapper. Revelations from "The Queen's Throat."

Aug. 17: early yoga, Joshua Tree hike, I read an excerpt from Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida about becoming Total Image (death) in representation, good discussion follows. We go under Split Rock and set up a 'beach' party with picnic, do one-arm push-ups with a twist, torturous Heather Cassils workout.. Amazing images interact with landscape by Julie, Lee Adams, Tania Hamidi. Heat conditioning: we're dropping off at the bottom of a dirt road, have to walk uphill 3 miles in midday sun. Destination: Julie's future home at the top of coyote valley, still under construction. Lunch, and our first heat exhaustion-induced group nap.

Aug. 18: morning physicality, and the work is really starting. long sound composition with juliana. Food prep is exhausting me: theory is omnivorous, vegetable-centric, whole grain diet, throw in the special needs of a vegetarian, gluten-intolerant, candida-cleanse, and, were close to the same page, but still work to cover everyone. Trying to keep hummous, muhamarra, lentils and brown rice on hand, thanks to Papa Roger from Glacier, us carnivores are stocked up with chicken, turkey, and steak for the duration.

Aug. 19: Integratron! One of the owners, Joanne, welcomes us and basically gives us free reign, not to mention intro and sound bath. This wooden dome has an amazing history and spooky acoustics, within two hours I think we've lost our minds, except for Empress Stah who looks like she's arrived at her new home. We have 12 hours to finish and record compositions, then function as each others studio musicians. Seriously impressive range comes out of it! From churchy harmonies (Lee, Marcia), to body sounds (Heather, Julie), to sound coming out of live action performance (Aliza Shvarts, Stah, Manuel Vason) and a particularly layered scatalogical composition from Tania. Then we race to Giant Rock for a spectacular sunset.

Aug. 20: After yoga and morning swim, a serious work day, Julie and I are doing body work on one or two participants a day, trying to keep everyone fit and in good form. Also scheduling one-on-ones , as we're at the halfway point... amazing night-time performances: tableau from manuel, performance from tania w/interaction from lee.

Aug. 21: Wakeup call: 4a, travel to Death Valley in passenger van. one wrong turn at bottom of mojave preserve, and somehow we're on the nevada side trying to cut in through a 20 mile dirt trail. stuck in sand, bail out, stuck in gravel pit, never get out! according to map, main road is 5 miles, we send our cleancut marcia and manuel for help, and luckily we have 3/4 tank of gas to run air con, plenty of food and water, spend next 3 hours fluctuating between fake beach party under cliff (only shade anywhere) and worrying that marcia and manuel are in trouble. finally, small aircraft circles and signals alarm, then helicopter lands, planning to lift us out two at a time. then: cute butchy sheriff comes in major 4 wheel drive with marcia and manuel, tows us out of pit, lowers air in our tires, and follows us out. 1 mile to go: our back tire shreds. how many performance artists does it take to change a tire in the sand? Well not I, or zackary drucker and aliza, they're on the ipod dancing to lil kim, i'm chain-smoking. finally back on the real road, to Baker, CA, for a late night dinner at the MAD GREEK. We're still trying to understand the maps of where we were...

Aug. 22: Ragged from misadventures the day before, we start yoga late (the temperature is much higher, therefore exhausting), group discussion about yesterday, and health and safety in general. Then to work: tomorrow we're having a performance for the public.

Aug. 23: Quonset Hut, 8:30 p.m., Zackary Drucker's performance, a meditation that fuses hypnotic suggestion with the "Queen's Vernacular" (cuntiness), the transexual body, 20 pairs of tweezers and a gold ballgag; Manuel Vason stages 4 situations (w/3 different women and one transexual penis-holder that ends with him as a pissing fountain; Empress Stah introduces a new language (and look) and readies for zero gravity; Tania Hamidi turns-out a chicken-coop trailer, crawls out the skylight with anal tube attached, follows scat trail to tub; Heather Cassils in solo fight choreography lit and dusted by racecars; Aliza Shvarts takes one-on-ones in a sweaty hot-water closet; Lee Adams constructs the Acephale image in an Airstream, which is closely followed by Stah's 'villain' character,' mind-boggling razor blade trick. All in all: serious work with low tech, fantastic use of site and available materials. Major range of what performance/live art can do, how identity, abjection, interaction, sensation and intimacy can be played out. Food and drink, back to the manor for a late nighter.

Aug. 24: A lot of crying and whining in yoga, full day of naps, eating, cleaning, starting to pack it up.

Aug. 25: More crying and whining in yoga, followed by Heather's abdominal training, pack up my library, see off Lee and Stah as they leave for burning man, drive heather and aliza back LA, dinner at alegria with aliza and drop off at burbank airport. Trying to avoid post-bootcamp crash..

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This Saturday, July 14, at 7 p.m. - Juliana Snapper Underwater Opera Work'n'Progress: --  Please bring swimsuit

 

Dear all,

 

I am writing to announce events and introduce the concept of Juliana Snapper's new performance, an underwater opera, which will eventually be performed in the ocean. Susan Matheson and I are co-hosting the first performance workshop in Palm Springs this Saturday. We have limited capacity, so if you are in the area or interested in coming to Palm Springs for the event, please email me at athey@earthlink.net

 

Soprano and musicologist, Juliana Snapper (my Judas Cradle collaborator) with artist Jeanine Oleson, are creating a series of intimate public experimentations to be performed in pools and bathtubs around LA and San Francisco. To get a better idea of what she's up to, I did a quick Q&A with Juliana, which is pasted below, as well as links and artist bios. If you are interested in a future event, please check their blogspot linked below, or email Juliana and Jeanine at: aquaopera@gmail.com

 

Thanks for your attention and hope to see you soon, Ron Athey

 

http://underwateropera.blogspot.com/

 

http://julianasnapper.com/

 

 

My Interview With Juliana:

 

Ron Athey:  I hate to start of lowbrow, but I was talking to Andrew Infanti, and our only context to underwater "vocals" was Weechi Wachi, the mermaid theme park in Florida, where the sexy mermaids lip synch to songs and do provocative acts like eating bananas underwater..

 

Juliana Snapper:  (ignores my cheapshot) What distinguishes this piece most from other musical projects in the water is that both the singer and her voice are in direct contact with the water. (A French composer supposedly got closest to this by submerging a singer in a glass bubble but she never even got moist.) I'm still learning how to make the most of the voice in water because it behaves so differently and I have to relearn everything. Right now I'm working with my sound in two ways: singing directly into the water and through prosthetics. Just singing into the water entails maximizing the body's conduction of vibration so that the bones move as much sound info as possible and working with the air bubbles out the mouth -- tinkly flows of small bubbles or giant boomy releases? They have their own character. Singing into a metal snorkel takes the bubble noise out of it and lets the sound work in the water with more ring. The water sound will be mic-ed and projected above water. I'm curious though too about making ear horns for the listener to dip under water to hear directly, and in Palm Springs it might be great to put people right in the pool.

Ron: It seems challenging enough to use a breathing apparatus underwater, but to actually perform operatic vocals..

Juliana: It's a tricky thing to take on because it stresses technique beyond operatic limits and a small amount of water sucked in accidentally can be fatal. But that's really how it started -- as a partner piece to the upside-down table scene from Judas Cradle. I can't understand why singing has never been approached this way – every other instrument has been broken and altered to see what other sounds were there. With the voice, its not only a musical question, but pushing the instrument to the limit as a way of making it expressive raises questions of embodiment and socialization and expressive exchange, that let opera speak in new ways.

 

Ron: As one of the main elements, water is also symbolically loaded.

 

Juliana:  I'm interested in the fantasies of feminine power and singing underwater. Not just Europe but India, China, and Africa have mythologies about sirens and mermaids. What's up with that? What's up mermaid on the rock with no pussy, just a fat tail? What's up with the siren who lures sailors to their death by ear fucking them? Lesbians and manatees...  Its a  fishpussy mess, girl.

Ron: How did you come to work with Jeanine Oleson in this process?

Juliana:  My original plan was to ask artists to write me scores, starting with Jeanine. Jeanine is writing the first score, which I feel is going to have a big impact on the opera as a whole, maybe thread through it. She's coming to help tease stuff out with these workshops to see what the palette is. She's fucking sharp and her art is fleshy and beautiful and witty. I like this classical music structure because it can layer authorship in a way that's generous, flexible, interesting. I bring the raw materials of singing underwater, and soundworlds that stem from that, and then I'll work with a handful of scores (from graphic to situational and broad stroked to micromanaged) that form acts of a large opera as its performed in different sites on the way to the ocean.

 

Ron: The concept of working in the ocean is huge and seems much more uncontrollable.

 

Juliana: I talk about the ocean as the final destination because its gonna take some real gear and boats and deep comfort singing under pressurized water in the cold. Imagine grottos around the world as backdrops... I'm just as interested though in the smaller water venues – Jeanine has a dream of doing an overnighter at the Manhattan Aquarium --
and especially being in people's homes. I find singing in close quarters powerfully humanizing and right now in this world and in this country, it is small humanizing acts that draw my attention more than anything else.

Ron: That is always the challenge with performance work, how to keep the experience intimate, even as the project become grand. This is definitely experimental and symbolist, is there also a political feeling in this work?

 

Juliana:  Since working in the water I have been thinking a lot about the new relationship with water that is already in motion for we people of the earth. Climates are changing so that inland fresh water sources are drying up and coastal cities like San Francisco, Manhattan, Amsterdam may be underwater in a few decades.

 

Ron: The fulfillment of J.G. Ballards Waterworld. I know you are also working with Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla, how are they supporting you in this development process?

 

Juliana:  Dr. Grant Deane is my man at Scripps. He's an oceanographer studying ocean acoustics, 1) how water and air interact in bubble fields to measure climate change, and 2) underwater communications. He's got an archive of underwater recordings --bubble fields, critters, glaciers melting, rain, wind...-- and he's helping me think about how to use my voice and sound underwater in both practical and acoustical terms.

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Ron: And finally, the horrible reality of funding, how is this going to work?

Juliana: We're working on getting money but nobody's bitten yet. Writing a few arts grants, and also applying for science money. I'd like to have some dollars right now but I think when this gets going the funding will come.
 
BIOS

 

Vocal artist Juliana Snapper creates experimental opera, performing internationally with opera and new music ensembles, and working in collaboration with theater, visual and new media artists. Snapper's work has been discussed in journals such as Salon.com, Art in America, and TDR: The Drama Review among others. Her vocalism, playing at the ridge of virtuosity and breakage, is described as both "precise" and "too warmly human", "ecstatic" and "a flayed shred of human need, desire, pain" Born in Albany, California, Snapper began performing and recording professionally as a teenager. At 15 she gave her first new music premier at UC Berkeley, and by 17, she had joined her first opera company and taken part in an Emmy award winning recording with the Philharmonia Baroque. Juliana received her BM in vocal performance from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and then returned to California to pursue an interdisciplinary Ph.D. (Critical Studies/Experimental Practices in Music) at UC San Diego. Snapper has featured recently in Los Angeles at the Disney RedCat Theater, the Armand Hammer Museum, and in New York at PS122, Participant Inc. Gallery, and for the NYU's Interactive Arts Performance Series and the Performa05 Biennial. Juliana gave the US premier of French composer Philippe Manoury's interactive cycle, En écho in 2002 with programmer Miller Puckette and they have since presented the work throughout the United States. In 2004, she created the role of Rafael for poet Eileen Myles and composer Michael Webster's opera Hell. Snapper created the lyric spectacle, "The Judas Cradle," with artist Ron Athey, which was commissioned by the UK Fierce! Festival and toured internationally on a grant from the British Arts Council in 2005. Her voice pieces for video, with artist Paula Cronan, have shown in festivals in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, London, Madrid, and Zagreb. Snapper's writing on music is published in The Journal of Open Space, Encyclopedia, and The European Journal of Cultural Studies.
 
Jeanine Oleson is an artist whose practice incorporates interdisciplinary uses of performance, film/video, installation, and photographic work. She attended the School of the Art institute of Chicago, Rutgers University, and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Oleson has exhibited at venues including: L.A.C.E., Los Angeles; Monya Rowe Gallery, NY; Samson Projects, Boston; John Connelly Presents, NY; Bates College Museum of Art, ME; Kansas City Museum of Art, MO; Participant, Inc., NY; PS 1 Contemporary Art Center, NY; Galerie Schedler, Zurich; Pumphouse Gallery, London; Art in General, NY; and White Columns, NY.

The Monster in the Night of the Labyrinth DVD available now

The DVD from 'The Monster in the Night of the Labyrinth' performance event, reflecting on the dark vision of Georges Bataille, commissioned by The Hayward Gallery and curated by Lee Adams & Ron Athey as part of the 'Undercover Surrealism' exhibition, is now available for sale.

The DVD features Ron Athey's seminal performance 'Solar Anus', Lee Adams' 'The Language of Flowers', 'Realising the Marvellous in the Mundane' by Stav B, 'Anus Domini' & 'Flight of Fancy' by Ernst Fischer & 'Perdita' by Helen Spackman.
(Total running time 54 minutes)

£20 for individuals
£40 for Institutions

please email: info@leeadams.net to make an order.

Alternatively copies can be bought from The Arnolfin Gallery Bookshop, Bristol during the period of Manuel Vason's Encounters exhibition (Saturday 9th June - Sunday 1st July).

Incorruptible Flesh: Perpetual Wound, collaboration with Dominic Johnson at Chelsea Theatre, London and Fierce Festival, Birmingham. Commissioned by the Chelsea as a solo performance with a mentoring project attached, we combined forces and the cross-generational 'passing of the torch' dynamic was to be addressed. We developed personas based on the Philoctetes myth, the old warrior with the wound that never heals, and the son of Achiles who comes to seduce.. and pervert it into the passing on of the wound. 60 minutes of trance-like camp, gore, romance, death trip. Big thanks to lighting design and set construction by Marty and Sarah-Jane, sound design from Juliana Snapper, Death Valley video camera Jennifer Doyle and edit Lisa Cazzanzo.

Fakir Musafar UK Tour, panel discussion at Queen Mary University, London, introduced by Queen Mary lecturer Dr. Dominic Johson, moderated by Lois Keidan of Live Art Development Agency, with Fakir, Marisa Carnesky, Kira O'Reilly, and myself. Topic on how our work deals with audience and participation. For some reason i was nervous it would either end up being overly reverent and referential to fakir, or polarize into the retarded 'is it art'? crap. instead it was very free-form, respectful, even unhinged in a fantastic way. Besides the official topic, discussion went to ritual and trance state, energy and intent, and work that comes from outside of the arts academies. Fakir told a hilarious anecdote about being ran off stage at a large ornette coleman concert!

Re/Visions of Excess at Fierce! Festival, Birmingham, co-curation with Lee Adams. On my knees praising the talent and production skills of Mr. Adams, who organizing a full coach of 53 to be picked up at Stunners. We took over the Pink Flamingo lap dance club again and offered an evening of DJs, interactive installation art, and mainstage acts, MCed by the incredible David Hoyle. DJs Bradley Kaos and David TG. Installations included myself giving erotic massage, Hancock&Kelly Live gilding genitals, Veenus Vortex as hermaphodite, Lazlo Pearlman giving full-release trans-man lap dances, Angel making busts of US president disappear in his fuckhole. Acts included Michelle Carr of Velvet Hammer Burlesk in a spider costume, Lee Adams as Bunny committing sepuku, Empress Stah in Queen of the Night, Ashley Ryder in an erotic scene which climaxed with a sheep's heart being pulled out of his colon, Miss Cunty singing 'Heroin,' Dominic Johnson's premiere of an incredibly glamorous and profound solo involving flesh hooks and mirror balls, and last but not least Mouse (maus?) as the naughty poodle, in a poetically frantic show of auto-fisting, precise enema expelling.. fucking amazing. has taken over a week to come down from re/visions.

Manuel Vason's sympsium/Encounters photography exhibition and book launch at Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol
Manuel's large prints were mounted in cylorama formation, red abmient lighting, and floor sensor pads triggered a spot on the photos individually. The keynote speaking, rebecca snyder (sp?) was fantatic and offered some challenging notions of how we view live art vs. how we view photography. Panels throughout the day addressed the collaboration process, the notion of audience, the live experience vs. documentation or performance made for camera. participants included kira o'reilly, helen spackman, ernst fischer, franko b., richard hancock, tracy kelly, and more.

Ecstatic, solo performance, premiere, Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol
Using a narrow platform and audience standing close, i launched into ecstatic by brushing a wig that concealed my face. franko b. described it as pamela anderson on acid, i think it might have been more pamela anderson channeling marina abramovics the artist must be beautiful. anyway the hair concealed a punchline, and just into the 'reveal,' the fire alarm went off, and the audience were forced to leave but i was allowed to stay, bleeding on the platform. for perhaps 5 or 10 minutes, i moved the performance forward and the audience were brought back in, i continued until i was trapped under two heavy panes of glass. Thanks again to Juliana Snapper for creating a neurotic soundscape, Dominic Johnson and Franko B. for assistance.

Erectus Abominas

Dear Mister, your image, these images, fill me with many feelings of pleasure and solidarity. But for the sake of getting into you and not polluting your visuals with my disease, I will try to resist empathizing and remain a voyeur. You make me both horny and sad, if I ever started to roll my eyes back in my head, you whack them back down with your dark humor. The extensiveness of your self-portraits have an accumulative effect, virility in the midst of decomposition. Is that on target or am I projecting my own morbidity? Regardless, I admire that you let it all hang out, so close to the homo-ideal, yet sufficiently used. If in some manifestations you appear too clean-cut, you are a proper Grotesque. In this I delight.

The Barthesian Corpse
Matthias Herrmann's photographic works do not fight, but fuck with, the idea of his own flesh as Total-Image. In the hotel series, site-specific to the make believe homes, the restriction of using minimal to no props in available setting, works in his favor. He creates persona the frozen impulsive moment. It's life depends on neither truth or fiction, but the mythology of his sex. His cock, whether seen hard or floppy, is never shown recessed. Counteracting the deadly tableau pose, the tools of his trade are didactically posed, as to be a mockery. To look at Herrmann's work, his roles as photographer, subject and prop, within the Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida concept of Total-Image, it is certain that death becomes him.

Thoughts on Faggotry and Sexual Repulsion
Through the past decades, homosexuality remains a culture of desire, even in the face of assimmilationist agenda and death. Hedonism dominates the gay tragedy. It resonates alongside, or in spite of, sickness. Herrmann's playful horniness, often with the assistance of text quotations, wanks off at a higher pitch. That could be cheeky, ironic, or entirely sincere. The repetitive states of genital arousal is a male power trip, but the displaying of the anus and welcoming position of the legs is the passive homosexual abomination. Further, the keistering of anything from a champagne bottle to a fire extinguisher hose -- while they could be the pranks of an isolated, hypersexual teenager -- in this context are defiant. And defiant to that masculine active cock or passive hole, he brings in the element of feminine drag. Certainly not trying to pass, this cross-dressing is insincere. The style of women's clothing Herrmann wears in some scenes seem almost as random as the hotel furniture: ratty wigs, inexpensive "sexy" lingerie, undergarments that, if structural, are ill-fitting. What you don't end up with is a chick-with-a-dick. With his serious gaze and muscular physique and porn-size cock, Herrmann mocks his own sexuality and dares to become Ridiculous. This is complex image-wanking, a rejection without letting go. It's also lonely, this.

Welcome To The Dark Side
Post-HIV-infection, there's a continuation of theme in Herrmann's work, he holds ground above this nagging sagging human flesh, but by revealing sickness there is an inherent slant, coupled with an apparent indulgence in mood: These hotel diaries continue to document Herrmann as pornstar, underwear model, pervy horn-pig, but his compulsion to exhibit has taken on a dead-pan edge. There is also an increasingly introspective, melancholic feature: still lifes (with or without spunk), packages of HIV meds appearing as their own persona, available pornography. Total-Image: I feel sexy (but my eyes say sick), my cock is rock hard (but I'm wearing this stupid wig again), I feel like showing my asshole (even if it is ragged and ulcerated). The material is not so different, it still has fun, yet it is haunted by the specter of HIV and drug therapy. With the information of diagnosis comes a viral perception of bloody tissue in the toilet, or cum on the fruit bowl, that cannot be denied. Even with the shame equation aside, this is a different quandary than Hannah Wilke's Intra-Venus series, death is not nearly so close for Herrmann and his sexuality is still plugged in. For those of us who like their art front-loaded and their sex objects on the used side, he's not only plugged in, but turned on high.
--Ron Athey

RON ATHEY
September 14 - October 28, 2006 at Western Project, Culver City
by John O'Brien


Performance artist Ron Athey has long been known for his challenging, sexually explicit and very extreme art work. Through performances that combine pomp, ritual, duration and physical action, Athey lays open the vulnerability of the human body with a--sometimes literally--surgical precision. He accomplishes this in ways unlike any other artist working within this context. His actions contain some of the same visceral qualities and the direct transformation of bodily flesh seen in the works of such artists as Bob Flanagan, Gina Pane, and Rudolph Swartzkogler. But his staging is of a different, more ornate and elaborate order. Hermann Nitsch's orgiastic group performances are somewhat closer in spirit to the presentational device which Athey favors. The decidedly theatrical and operatic qualities differentiate Athey's work from these precedents. It is only in the context of the crossbred, hybrid art form he has fashioned that his exclusion from the exhibition "Into me / Out of Me," at PS1 in New York, is understandable. Is it possible to be an outsider's outsider? Certainly, in an exhibition described as being an exhaustive survey of "how artists have explored the physical and psychological boundaries of their bodies and those of others creating images of fragility and strength, illness and suffering, tenderness and violence," his absence from that New York venue is glaring.

The current exhibition features video still images taken from his duodrama, "Judas Cradle." The actual Judas Cradle device, inspired by the original design, is a pyramid cast in resin on which Athey performs (literally embedded). Next to him on a podium is the opera singer Juliana Snapper, who acts as his interrogator throughout. Together, they use the body and their voices, as well as projected images and elaborate costumes, to explore the history of torture and personal suffering. Their multilingual libretto is built from disparate sources, including the transcripts of Inquisition hearings, opera quotes and the author Jean Genet. Their vocal techniques include high-pitched duets and speaking in tongues.

In performance, the sequence of actions he works upon his body are often derived from torture or other painful and controlling methods. The sounds of the actions can go well beyond most viewers' ability to withstand them. The tension and the duration of these extreme actions make them hard to follow without turning away. The unbearable intensity of this is redistributed and, to some degree, reduced by the distancing effect exerted by photographic stills. A further advantage—setting aside the aforementioned observations--is that this permits a clearer view of how Athey sets up the hard-to-imagine scenes of his stories.

Sumptuously framed against a backdrop of black or dark blue cloth, his naked and tattooed body stands out as a vulnerable and physically fragile construct within a world of restraints and constraints. His performances reveal how the body functions as an interface between a spirit and the world. He underlines just how fragile the body is: a naked and easily breakable thing. Photography also allows him to freeze-frame his almost entirely tattooed body, which is an integral and regular part of his artwork. His "Solar Anus" (I suspect so named as an homage to the surrealist writer Georges Bataille) consists of black sunrays pouring out in streams of black light and triangles. It is featured prominently in all of his images. This, along with the arrowed perforations of his heavily muscled torso, both relate to his own artistic narcissism and to the history of painting with its abundance of images of beautiful dying saints and martyrs from medieval times to the present.

It has been written that from within his experience of it, the body is a kind of prison, the outmost limits of which he seeks to know, right up to the definitive transformation of death. This is also a theme from the history of opera. Often, the main characters in the librettos die, or are soon to be taken away by Death. The long soaring voices, which distort the phonetic value of the spoken words, give opera its distinctive aural qualities. Athey has found another dimension in which to express this cry, this frailty and mourning.