Activations: A Conversation with Chris Kraus + Sabina Ott (Part 2)
Earlier this week, we posted part one of our conversation with Chris Kraus and Sabina Ott. Refresher: Chris is a feminist legend with a cult following based on her books and films (I Love Dick is one example). Sabina Ott is a Chicago art world star (Guggenheim fellow, Jackman GoldwasserĀ artist-in-resident, educator, curator, and founder of Terrain Exhibitions.)
Chris and Sabina sat down with Helena Bassett of the Hyde Park Art Center and talked the role of the white artist in the contemporary moment, activism as theory, art as making space for transformation, whatās on their bookshelves, and some people they wanted to hype (Helena was super excited aboutĀ Joni Murphyās Double TeenageĀ because itās based in New Mexico where kye is from -- hit kye up for a bookclub with kyr colleague Ariel!)Ā
Helena Bassett: What is the role of the white artist in the contemporary moment, in which black and brown people are criminalized on a mass scale, put in cages, and killed by police? When art is being made in struggle, how do you conceive of your own role in this moment?
Sabina Ott: My work doesnāt address, in a didactic way, any of that reality. What I do well is creating a scene thatās so experiential that thereās a freedom thatās offered, a freedom that is for everyone, and itās real. I know itās real. All these classes are here [at the Hyde Park Art Center] and there are teens every day after school in the hall, and usually theyāre teens of color. Iāve just been sitting in the mountain and usually kids come up and theyāre just enthralled -- Ā āI didnāt know an art thing could do this! I didnāt know a thing could do this!ā What theyāre saying is, āI didnāt know I could make this.ā To me, thatās a different kind of offering.
So in talking about trauma, do you keep re-iterating the trauma or do you offer a space where that trauma becomes something else. For me in my work, Iāve had my share of traumas and I want to offer a space where it becomes something else. Not to deny that it exists, but that it becomes something else. Thats an opportunity. Thatās how I think about it.
As a human being - Iām an activist. I go to protests, I do what I can to combat systemic racism and individual racism. But it feels very frustrating and limiting. As a human being itās like [frustrated scream] but as an artist, I can do it non-directly.
HB: Lauren Berlant talks about two modes of approaching historical violence. Are you going to experience the re-injury of it again, like Mapplethorpe does, sort of to shock the viewer into their own racial imaginary through these photos? Or, do you not want to participate in the reinjury and instead choose to explode a world around it that can transform something differently? What Iām hearing you say is that you want to make room for that space of transformation, that you want to invent a thing for a world that doesnāt exist yet, or make space for a repair yet to come. And what I think is really important about what you said is that you are in the space; itās not like āHere is my art! Take it!ā But you are there talking to people and thatās a pedagogical strategy -- itās not just on a museum wall, you are literally alive and in the world with people.
Chris Kraus: These things bother me, all the time, on a daily basis. But I can only work on one thing at a time as a writer. Summer of Hate came out of that. I couldnāt breathe during the Bush years -- the American flag lapel pins and the war, the introduction of screens everywhere, and then personally being in the Southwest and close to the border. Seeing the prison system up so close. Things that I always theoretically knew, but seeing that being confirmed with actual people that I knew. I spent 2-3 years writing a book about that.
But I have another chance with Semiotext(e), to act on these feelings. We have an activist series now thatās one of the streams in print with Semiotext(e) called Active Agents, where weāve been looking beyond theory towards publishing work of and about more domestic activism. Weāre trying to get Jackie Wang to do a project. Did you see the ebook called āLies: Everything We Write Will Be Used Against Usā? She was a member of that collective. She wrote Against Innocence, a brilliant text that we published in a pamphlet series in 2014 for the Whitney. Weāve also been working with Sergio GonzĆ”lez RodrĆguez, who was a journalist from Mexico City who was very involved in reporting from the Juarez femicides and murders. Weāve done two of his books and are about to do a third book of his, this time on the murder of the 43 students in Ayotzinapa. Itās already come out in Spanish, we will do the American version of it.
HB: How does that work, shifting from a focus on theory to this Activations series?
CK: Itās very fluid. It doesnāt mean weāre not going to publish theory or fiction anymore. The Active Agents thing started long ago when Sylvere and I did a book together by some former Black Panthers when Dhoruba Bin Wahad was just being released from prison. And we knew someone who was friends with Dhorubaās partner, Tanaquil Jones, and we published those texts within the book Still Black, Still Strong. So the imprint has been going since then and we keep looking for things that will fall into it because we think all the things animate each other. The activism is a reflection of the theory, especially the theory that we published in the last decade, which is Italian economic theory. Everything about the collapse, before/during/after -- Christian Marazzi, Franco Berardi, Maurizio Lazzarato -- those are really important books about the global economy.
The fiction books recently are kind of a way of sharing the psychic other side of this macro economic structure. One of our books just out, Natasha Staggs Surveys: A Novel, was reviewed in the New York Times today. The first time ever a Semiotext(e) has ever been reviewed in the New York Times.
SO: What I like about Semiotext(e), even though itās been going for 40 years, is that thereās always this underground aspect of what it is you do that is really powerful. Itās stealth.
HB: Are there any questions you two would like to ask each other?
HB: I want to let you go soon, so Iām just going to present my last three questions and you can choose between them: Whatās on your bookshelf? What are you craving? Who is someone you want to hype, that youāre really interested in right now? Or you can just rapidly list off answers.
CK: Iāll give you the truthful answer. Iām traveling so itās more like whatās in my backpack. Wuthering Heights for the plane, because Iāve never read it. Bruce Boone, a San Francisco New Narrative writer, heās an incredible writer, his work changed my life when I read it in the early 80s and weāre reading together April 2nd and so I thought I should re-read some of his work. He wants to talk about UFOs and aliens and I need to kind of be up with it. So thatās the bookshelf. Iām also craving time to get back to Baja to work on another chapter of my book. Iām more than halfway through and every time I have to leave it now, itās very frustrating. So Iām craving to be left in peace and finish my book. What do I want to hype? Joni Murphyās Double Teenage is coming out in a couple of weeks. As a New Mexican, you must read this book. Itās about two girls growing up in Los Cruces, itās synchronous with Ā all the border disasters of the 90ās and NAFTA and she kind of brings together NAFTA issues with Tiqqun young girl issues. Itās a brilliant book:Ā
SO: Thats a hard one, for me. I would like to hype Anna Showers-Cruser, whoās my assistant but more importantly sheās a grad student at the University of Chicago, and Iām really interested in her work. Sheās really into materials as well. Iris Bernblum, she has a show at Aspect Ratio, my gallery. Itās really good, itās creepy. I also have a book answer. Iāve been really bad -- Iāve been listening to audiobooks but I only get halfway through everything -- bad attention span. I have a book that Iām trying to read, though. Margaret Cavendish, who is dead but she was around in the 1700s I believe, she wrote a book called The Blazing World. Itās a science fiction book where she proposes this matriarchy. She was one of those disappeared women authors. She was from a wealthy family, she wrote constantly, she wrote tons of books, and she has pretty much disappeared. I got interested in it because I really like that Siri Hustvedt book, The Blazing World, which is a new book written about a woman artist who has no success and everyone trashes her work. So she gets three guys to be the frontmen to her work and each time the people love her work but itās under the name of a young man. She gets these false identities. Its this really internal, great, weird story that I loved. It freed me. You think about all the women that have been working, that have always been secondary. You just get buried -- youāre not a sexy package with a dick. [Shared laughter]
- iris bernblumās work.Ā
