raucous Tag

The mind and body are sometimes regarded as separate, even opposing, entities. But for writers like Acker and Eileen Myles, exercise and movement change into powerful aids within the creation of their art The caricatured image of an artist doesn’t typically involve a Schwarzenegger-esque physique. But buff artists do exist. American author Kathy Acker, a raucous avant-garde superstar carved with muscles, was certainly one of them. For her, bodybuilding was a strategy to play with identity and a mechanism to reconcile physical and mental pursuits.  In a world that increasingly devalues embodied practices in favour of digital interactions and virtual experiences, we have gotten ever more distanced from our own physicality and, in consequence,...