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Join Ron Athey, Hermes Pittakos, and Michele Occelli for a workshop blending automatic writing, hypnosis, glossolalia, and choreographic practices. This session is part of the Queer Communion: Ron Athey retrospective at ICA LA
Artist Ron Athey taps into his Pentecostal upbringing, his gift for speaking in tongues, and his exploration of ecstatic performance to open the door to automatic writing. Also known as psychography, automatic writing is said to be a psychic ability that produces written words without conscious effort.
Over the course of this two-day weekend workshop, participants will engage with immersive exercises aimed at accessing the subconscious—to draw, write, and express freely.
Together with hypnotherapist Michele Occelli and Hermes Pittakos, this Weekender examines facets of Athey’s practice and theory that echo Georges Bataille’s Secret Society of Acéphale. In the absence of God, how do we invent new rituals? When curses and restrictions linger, how can magic be wielded against itself?
Participants will engage in automatic writing and hypnotic techniques, as well as Athey’s signature methods—word virus, mouthing off, channeling hysteria, and the dialectics of the sublime—to generate narratives, movement scores, and choreographic frameworks. Handmade planchettes, created by Athey in collaboration with artist Paul Donald, will be shared for writing exercises, and everyone will have the chance to craft their own mark-making intention tool.
