Monday, May 4, 2009

Props to predecessors

I stumbled across this artist, Laura Parnes who has made video works of Kathy Acker's novel 'Blood and Guts in High School'! 

This novel has had a HUGE impact on my understandings of representation, sexuality, feminism and form. I'm working on a text video series at the moment using excerpts where Acker uses a style of feminist prose to tell stories of sex, violence and manipulation to pick apart the threads of political hierarchy. Metaphor as effigy. The intellect of Kathy Acker is seriously like internal fireworks exploding.

"Blood and Guts in High School" (video installation, 2004-06, 40:00) by Laura Parnes.
An excerpt of her film can be seen here.

The thing that I like about Laura Parnes's video is that it honors the impact that Kathy Acker's work has had on queer and feminist artists. Her style and political force is visible in a lot of art work produced today by young queers and women, (for the Kathy Acker dorks out there) such as holly fluxx's zines & lyrics, eg. there are parallels in the style of thier review of Gio Peter Black and Acker's stories of New York City bars. I appreciate how Laura Parnes's video is something of a literal tribute.

In the same vein, I am LOVING Yoko Ono's collaborative remix album 'Yes, I'm a Witch' with Le Tigre, Peaches and Cat Power.

1 comment:

  1. wow!!
    i'm so stoked that you noticed that review of black peter!! i didn't know if anyone cared, ha!
    xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
    i <3 kathy acker

    ReplyDelete