New York Times Sheds Light on New Kathy Acker Exhibition at Performance Space New York

A new exhibition, "Kathy Acker: Who Wants to Be Human All the Time," draws attention to Acker's legacy and influence on the Lower East Side. The group exhibition is co-curated by Jenny Schlenzka, director of Performance Space New York, and Norwegian artist Bjarne Melgaard, and is part of Performance Space New York's East Village Series. Janelle Zara, in her NYT review, writes: "The title is a line from 'Blue Tape,' a relatively unknown 1974 film of a 26-year-old Acker and the artist Alan Sondheim engaged in an experimental confessional on their mutual attraction. Highly pornographic, it’s an hour of intercourse and discourse Schlenzka describes as 'almost unwatchable.'" Let's pick up with Zara from there: 

“It’s these two brainiacs having sex,” she says. “But what you feel is the disconnect between them, the power dynamics. It’s remarkable how vulnerable it is.”

In the same vein of Acker’s writing, the art that appears in dialogue with the video are works of self-exposure: close-ups of male and female genitalia rendered in rainbow pastels by the painter Celia Hempton; a letter to Acker by the artist and poet Diamond Stingily, acknowledging the fact that they would not have been friends; a sculpture made of the mattress that artist Ser Brandon-Castro Serpas and an ex first had sex on. It’s an all-women show without labeling itself as such, with two obvious exceptions: Sondheim, Acker’s “Blue Tape” co-star, and Melgaard himself.

Read more at New York Times.