Talker #5: Spalding Gray with Kathy Acker

Talker is an interview zine about performance by Giles Bailey.

Issue #5 is a transcript of an event hosted by the writer Kathy Acker at the ICA, London in February 1987 in which the performer Spalding Gray discussed his work.

A founding member of the Wooster Group, Spalding Gray gained fame for his autobiographical monologue performances. At the time of this conversation, he had just completed filming Jonathan Demme’s movie adaptation of his work Swimming to Cambodia, a performance in which he describes experiences surrounding a trip to Southeast Asia to play a small role in the film The Killing Fields (1984). In this dialogue with Acker, Gray focuses on the process of developing work and compares his experience of writing with making live performance.

The event was part of the ICA’s IN CONVERSATION series which paired up writers to talk about their practices.

Giles Bailey is an artist based in London. He works with performance, using texts, video fragments and choreographies to explore how knowledge and meaning are generated through relationships with others. Since 2016 he has published Talker.

Thanks to Paul Becker and Richard Birkett.

Issues of Talker have featured Ian White, Kate Valk, Richard Maxwell, Sue Tompkins, Spalding Gray with Kathy Acker, Dora García, Jo Fong, Paul Maheke, Clifford Owens, Barby Asante, Gustav Metzger, Miranda July, and Agus Nur Amal PMTOH, and Bobby Baker. Digital versions of these issues are available here; print versions can be found here.

ISSN 2632-8496 (print)

ISBN 979-12-239-4463-9 (ebook)

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