Kathy Acker and Ellen Zweig in Australia
Following Metro Arts's successful Eyephonics workshops and High Performance gigs by New York poet John Giorno a'nd Paris sound poetry pioneer Bernard Heidsieck, Metro Arts' Eyephonics programme presents further performances and workshops by two of America's hottest and most challenging female performance artists, San Francisco novelist Kathy Acker and New York poet, performance and installation artist, Ellen Zweig.
Kathy Acker is the author of some twelve novels including Great Expectations; Blood and Guts in High School; Empire of the Senseless; Kathy Goes to Haiti; Literal Madness; The Childlike Life of the Black Tarantula; I Dreamt I Was A Nymphomaniac; The Adult Life of Toulouse Lautrec; and most recently My Mother: Demonology. Hailed by Picador books as "literally the wildest writer going ... direct, fast , hot, horny, furiously honest"; as a writer with "scarified sensibility, subversive intellect, and predatory wit .. . like no other I know" (New York Times), as "a female voice that goes beyond feminism, artistic freedom turned into a free lifestyle" (Village Voice), Acker is without doubt one of the 'must see ', unique voices of the nineties. "Trained"-as she remarks- "as a classicist", Acker subsequently lived a life among what one might think of as the 'classic' East and West Coast American avant-gardes , skipping New York high school as a teenager to hang out with Film Co-op pioneers such as Jack Smith; discovering the new music of Robert Ashley, of second husband Peter Gordon, and of Warren Burt in California; making money with the "early Andy Warhol people" in 42nd Street sexshows; finding her early self-published books acclaimed and republished by Sol Lewitt and New York's Printed Matter... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline