Dig(in)'n'Round

In this project we engaged with the works of American writer Kathy Acker (1947 - 1997) who often made use of experimental literary writing modes such as „cut-up“, where textual material is torn into pieces and rearranged in order to create new texts from a variery of genres and modes, but notably by an amalgamation of text with visual material such as images, drawings or (dream) maps. 

Together we examined the Kathy Acker Reading Room, the artists personal archive which has been situated at the Institute for American Literature of Cologne University after her passing. Spanning over a wide variety of genres - from classic literature to porn to crime novels to art theory to sci-fi or fluxus - and media - from publications to comics to zines, tapes, records, or even her iconic red-orange lipstick, her collection frames questions of the transgressiveness of memory, identity, sexuality and much more. Inscribed with notes and sketches, they are referring to and into one another, laying out a complex maps of pathways and crossings within the archive. An archive like a labyrinth that can be entered at any point, through any book and by anyone diggin-in there. Together we made use of Kathy‘s literary methodology of the cut-up in an artistically translated and visually executed manner to reread her archive and to draw upon the existing woven interconnections.