Cutting Skin

This chapter provides a detailed description, discussion, and interpretation of the performance artist Ron Athey’s 1994 show 4 Scenes in a Harsh Life, and the controversy that it caused at local, national, and international levels. Discussion places that performance in the contexts of Athey’s other work, and the broader practice of performance art of the body, and then argues for the relevance of the Athey work for understanding the Neolithic pit-houses at Neolithic Măgura. Primary articulations of relevance are the previously under-represented role of the digger-as-performer, of the audience-as-witness and spectator, and of visibility and ephemera in performance. The chapter ends with a discussion about types of questions that we might now ask about pit-house sites such as Măgura.