A machine for breaking down

In this writing workshop, we’ll experiment with methods inspired by avant-garde writer Kathy Acker. Together with Leonor Jonker, writer, artist and curator of the year-long exhibition 'Blood, Guts, and Anarchy', you’ll explore how Acker used collage and cut-up techniques and try them out for yourself.

By appropriating, distorting and combining existing texts from the literary canon with autobiographical writing and found texts, Acker sought to create a new, feminist language. She saw writing as a 'machine for breaking down.'

We’ll work with writing prompts that Acker gave to her own students, draw on existing texts and materials from the exhibition, and steal illustrations from the Alphabetum of West Den Haag. The workshop will culminate in the creation of a collaborational zine.

'I begin to copy my favourite pornography books and become the main person in each of them.'

-Kathy Acker