Join us for an evening with
Daniel Schulz and
Larry Reid (Fantagraphics Books & Gallery) to hear about
Kathy Acker in Seattle, the new publication on the late Kathy Acker. Acker was an American experimental novelist, playwright, essayist, and postmodernist writer known for her idiosyncratic and transgressive writing. Our guests will also share parts of
Kathy Acker Story, a video talk by
Kathleen Hanna, lead singer of the bands
Bikini Kill, Le Tigre, and The Julie Ruin.
Registration
About the book:
© Daniel Schulz
Kathy Acker’s residencies in Seattle in 1980 and 1989 were brief but important to the development of this influential literary artist. While residing in Seattle’s Belltown arts community in 1980, she was completing work on her signature novel,
Blood and Guts in High School, and beginning to write
Great Expectations, which includes passages about her experiences there. She returned in 1989 for a residency sponsored by Seattle’s Center on Contemporary Art (CoCA), which inspired Kathleen Hanna to form Bikini Kill and gave momentum to the Riot Grrrl feminist movement.
In September 2019, the
Kathy Acker in Seattle Symposium at the Goethe Pop Up Seattle presented a series of exhibitions, panels, readings, and research opportunities. The symposium featured regional, national, and international artists, authors, curators, and scholars examining Kathy Acker’s lasting legacy in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. This book documents those proceedings. Through oral histories, dissertations, and contemporaneous documentation,
Kathy Acker in Seattle provides valuable insight into the life and work of this fascinating artist.
About the author:
Daniel Schulz is a German-American writer, researcher, and factory worker based in Cologne. In 2015, he staged and directed the play
Humanity Incorporated at the 15minutenfestival in Cologne and at the 100°festival in Berlin. He is the author of the 2016 short story collection
Schrei. In 2017, Schulz undertook the inventory of the Kathy Acker Reading Room at the University of Cologne, which he has since curated. He was a research assistant for the
Get Rid of Meaning-exhibition at the Badischer Kunstverein Karlsruhe in 2018 and a co-editor for
Gender Forum’s special edition “Kathy Acker: Portrait of an Eye/I” in 2019. In 2020, he completed his Master in History and English Studies, delivering the thesis “Inventarization and Creation of a Finding Aid: Kathy Acker 1947-1997.” His works have been published in
Der Federkiel, Luftruinen, Die Novelle, The Transnational, Paris Review, The Electronic Book Review, Mirage 5, Gender Forum, Fragmented Voices and the German anthology
Tin Soldier (2020).
About the film:
Kathleen Hanna has had a long career as both a musician and activist since she first incited the Riot Grrrl movement in the early 1990s. In
Kathy Acker Story, Hanna narrates the journey between Olympia WA and Seattle, where she visited the workshop of the author of
Blood and Guts in High School herself, counter-cultural icon Kathy Acker. It was a journey that inspired her to start a band. Hanna tells us about her encounter with Acker and the challenges she faced during this weekend long workshop in May 1989, which ultimately lead to the beginning of her career as the punk feminist artist she is known as today.
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