Chris Kraus
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Chris Kraus is a filmmaker and an acclaimed author of three novels; I Love Dick, Aliens & Anorexia and Torpor. Video Green, Kraus' first non-fiction book examines the explosion of late 1990s art by high-profile graduate programs that catapulted Los Angeles into the epicenter of the international art world.
[edit] Bibliography
- I Love Dick, 1997 (Semiotext(e) / Native Agents).
- Aliens & Anorexia, 2000 (Semiotext(e) / Native Agents).
- Hatred of Capitalism: A Semiotext(e) Reader by Chris Kraus & Sylvere Lotringer, 2001.
- Video Green: Los Angeles Art and the Triumph of Nothingness, 2004 (Semiotext(e) / Active Agents).
- LA Artland: Contemporary Art from Los Angeles by Chris Kraus, Jan Tumlir, and Jane McFadden, 2005 (Black Dog Publishing Ltd).
- Torpor, March 2006 (Semiotext(e) / Native Agents).
- I Love Dick by Chris Kraus, Eileen Myles, Joan Hawkins; Sep 2006 (Semiotext(e) / Native Agents).
I Love Dick was widely reviewed, including on National Public Radio. Many of the reviews seemed to break in a symmetrical mode—feminists thrilled at the “outing” of another progressive white-male with alleged misogynistic tendencies, while others were outraged at the prospect of using fiction to “out” someone in such a public way- a strategy lifted from such stalwart New York groups as Act-Up. By page seven of I Love Dick, readers are explicitly told that Kraus has in fact decided to obsess over Hebdige. Nothing more than her “noticing” his glances at her over dinner prompts Kraus to conclude that “the idea that Dick may have proposed a kind of game between them is incredibly exciting.” On page 30, Lotringer tells readers that he has secretly taped Hebdige. Using Art Center as their base of operations, Lotringer and Kraus arguably goad I Love Dick’s readers into engaging in their own rubber-necking: p. 44 has Lotringer boasting to Kraus, “I got him in, it’s your turn now.” On page 99: “Chris considered using her studio visits at Art Center to testify about Dick [to students], exhorting all the students there to write him. ‘It will change your life’! She’d write a crazy tract called I Love Dick and publish it in Sylvere’s magazine...”. Page 132: after getting Hebdige on the phone, Kraus proudly announces “when I reached you, you cryptically called the whole thing off. And I hung up the phone, and in front of this roomful of art students in their 20's, let out a huge and uncontrollable sob.”
A play based on I Love Dick was written and staged in a New York avant-garde venue.
Some say that I Love Dick is not fiction piggy-backed on non-fiction or vice versa, but a sustained critique of the laziness of its readers.
