From the original Festival website:

In the Obliteration actions, I restricted myself to using only a few props: wig, brush, needles, and a few sheets of glass. The action in I & II starts with hair brushing and ends in a bloody viscous mess. Self-Obliteration III will be the closing action: mortification of the flesh, the lid on the display coffin, so to speak.

Obliteration of the self, non-reproductive futurity, death drive. Lacanian jouissance. I feel guilty for my darkness. The changing polemics of blood, the challenge of contextualising a solo live sex show into ecstasis. The underlying drive is in my history, of testing HIV+ in 1986, an obsession with the preceded and what was left over in the time when everyone died around me. And survivors guilt, and three-therapy nonchalance. And finally, as boring to talk about as cancer, an updated and raggedy post-AIDS state to be mindful of.

All this inspiration and intention, to be expressed with no words but two long blonde wigs and a hair brush, ten pins or needles, four rectangular sheets of plate glass, 750 ml veterinarian’s birthing lubrication, served up on a platform set at eye level.

Self Obliteration I : Ecstatic was first presented at Arnolfini Gallery in 2007. Since then Self Obliteration II : Sustained Rapture has shown at HAU2 and House of World Cultures, Berlin, Arte es Accion II in Madrid, Museo MADRE Naples, Visions of Excess/Spill Festival London, Teatr Dramatyczny Warsaw, Gallerie SAW Ottawa, Centre Clark Montreal, Donau Festival Austria, Open Space Victoria Canada, Souterrain Porte IV festival Nancy France, La Demeure du Chaos Lyon France. This is the premiere of Self-Obliteration 111 Mortification.

ronathey.org

2021: This video will be included in Queer Communion – a major retrospective of Ron’s work at ICA-LA, California, curated by art historian Amelia Jones (19 June 19 till 5 September 2021.)

For those who cannot make LA, the retrospective catalogue is out now from Intellect Press