Around Pain and Body: Ron Athey's contemporary performance

Abstract

The North American performer Ron Athey experiments on his work with the limits of the corporal pain on relation with the whole iconography and religious tradition. This combination of ideas had already been used previously, in someone of its components, by other authors belonging to groups as the Viennese Actionism, but also by Gina Pane, Marina Abramovic, Chris Burden o Franko B. The body, support of the artistic practice and, in this case, of the pain, is the link with the audience, way to organize actions of ritual and countersexual trends, which hide a strong critique to the order in art and society.