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.
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