Chris Kraus’ first novel, I Love Dick, was published in 1997. Described by Rick Moody in the Village Voice as “one of the literary high points of the past two decades,” it soon became a cult classic. Her second novel, Aliens & Anorexia, recently hailed by Rolling Stone as “visionary,” appeared in 2000, followed by Torpor (2006) and Summer of Hate (2012). Her essay collections, Video Green (2004) and Where Art Belongs (2011) examine the possibilities and limits of visual art. Translated into ten languages, her novels have been praised for their sharp and intimate insights into the art and intellectual worlds in New York, LA and Europe. In Summer of Hate, she turns her attention to the parched expanses of Southwest US during the Bush years.
Writing in n+1, Elizabeth Gumport noted: “When Kraus exploded privacy, what she demolished was a house beyond repair … [her] decision to ‘explode privacy’ is nothing less than an attempt to make books equal of life, so that we may have books to live by. … Meaning shines from the most mundane details, which Kraus connects into constellations of particular and luminous significance … existence is transformed from a series of events lived through into a whole and single life - and therefore the world in which it is lived into something within our power to comprehend.”
Prior to writing, Kraus worked at the St. Mark’s Poetry Project in New York while pursuing a desultory career as an experimental filmmaker. In 2008, she toured the US with the Sex Worker’s Art Show. A frequent contributor to Artforum, Bookforum, Art in America, Spex, Los Angeles Review of Books and other magazines, she teaches at the European Graduate School and lives in Los Angeles. She is presently working on a critical biography of the American writer Kathy Acker, that will be published by Semiotexte in 2017.
“Chris Kraus is one of our smartest and most original writers on contemporary art and culture.” - Holland Cotter, New York Times
“For readers tired of political art’s worn-out strategies, Summer of Hate joins the rest of Kraus’ bibliography in offering an engaging and razor-sharp alternative.” —Meagan Day, Full-stop.net
“Summer of Hate is original, intelligent, darkly humorous, emotionally honest, and it grips the reader with a relentless thriller-like force.” —Victoria Patterson, Los Angeles Review of Books
This talk is given as part of the lecture series The Visitor Talks : Plus One