Unlike many who claim
kinship
through avant pop, Kathy
Acker created narrators and main characters who always convicted
themselves. They didn't separate themselves from the weaknesses or
foibles of society. Her awesome sense of responsibility was often read
as masochism.
Satire and parody have dominated the web. Kathy's death marks the
end of this trend. When something's been done well, it's been done.
Women must
lead out of the morass of mockery. Too long we've endured adolescent
snickering
and finger pointing. Accusation can never define literature and art.
Acker wrote with authenticity. She was a mature person with deep
emotions.
Commerce and the will to powercommon motivators in
contemporary web
artweren't Kathy's driving force. Her greatest gifts had
nothing to
do with punk culture or rhetoric, but rather with formal innovation
and freewheeling
honesty. These two things carry. Always have and always will.
Mary-Anne
Breeze, aka mez, from Australia, has a fresh voice and exciting
web pages.
There are many paths to heaven/freedom. Some women take the tough
girl
route. The danger is in becoming as ruthless as the oppressor. With
Mary-Anne,
I feel the balance is taut. Her human sensibility can be tender or
brutal. The tension there doesn't scare me. What does are the
many websites that I call brain-genital. No heart or any other organs
were involved in creation.
One
of the
biggest problems with current web art is lack of emotional investment.
Women
must lead in the rediscovery of discernment, emotional depth,
aesthetic expression
and responsibility for change.
______________________
Christy Sheffield
Sanford
won The Well's 1998 prize for the Best Hyperlinked Work on the Web
and the
1999 trAce Nottingham Trent Virtual Writer-in-Residence Competition.
Her work
has appeared at numerous electronic magazine and project sites
including Light
and Dust, Enterzone, The Little Magazine, Salt Hill, Acorn Mush,
and Mother
Millennia. She has won a National Endowment for the Arts
Fellowship and
seven other grants including two NEA-Rockefeller supported awards
for New
Forms. She is the author of seven books including Only the Nude
Can Redeem
the Landscape and Italian Smoking Piece. Sanford's site
was recently
hotlisted by N. Katherine Hayles in ArtForum.