KRISTIAN SELTUN

GREAT EXPECTATIONS Great Expectations is the second part of the trilogy by Hollow Creatures called "IN MEMORIAM TO IDENTITY" based on texts by the American writer Kathy Acker.

Whilst part 1, "Persona" was based on a wide choice of texts by Kathy Acker, the basis for "Great Expectations" is mainly taken from the novels "Great Expectations" and "Blood and Guts in High School". The extracts reflect to a high degree, a charachteristic of Ackers work, both in form and content: anecdotes which, despite their fragmented form, seem to hold a complete universe; a universe of myths, cliches, stolen passages, personal stories; about her childhood, attractions, splits, intimacies, flesh and an immidiacy, and loss in lifes diversifications. In short, this is what Kathy Acker is, a writer about life.

In her abruptness on a given theme, she will often expose a rawness in the language and actions of a character, which can make Acker seem cynical, jarred and dissulusioned. It may seem disillusioned; but it also forces a desire to reach a wholeness, a safety through - a humble and boundless respect for the fact that the authentic can never be lived, that truth is gagged just as quickly as it emerges; that we are, each one of us, alone; don't want to be alone, but can't be together for ever, missed. The path of love is the posative construction, created by hope's cleverness, and is therefore just as dangerous to slip into, as throwing oneself out into blank boundlessness. As sooner or later, the brake will come, and when it does, its just as well to have learnt that the construction has deconstruction as its fundamental instigator. In this respect, Akers novels are deconstructed romantisicism. And the artisticaly created, works best, emotionaly deepest, when authenticity is taken on board. Only in fetishism is the frame work given for a security, and an interrelational game where your input is not broken down to nill by loss. A way into the authentic for Acker is in the structure of dreams, where a wholeness can be dealt with without limiting itself to repetition and the automated viewpoint. This is where we find the freedom to map out experiences from reality, becuase here we can shift terrain, quick enough for the fragments not to be placed in a monotone pattern - something other than the labyrynths pattern, where the subject is the only point of co-ordination.

In Hollow Creatures performance dreams are woven into a lanscape of changing images about ones origins and the sensation of the forever expected dissapation. The experienced is mirrored in the subjects sexual experiences. In the sexual meeting the co-ordinates are widened to include more than the subject alone, at the same time as restlessness undermines loves framework, romantisism. Love can't be created, only experienced. To believe anything else would be to wrap reality in illusion. And yet that is just what we do. As we have great expectations.