Onafhankelijk van geboortedata
De Amerikaanse schrijfster en filmmaakster Chris Kraus werd geboren in 1955 in New York en bracht haar jeugd door in Connecticut en Nieuw-Zeeland. Na het behalen van een BA aan Victoria University of Wellington, Nieuw-Zeeland, werkte Kraus vijf jaar als journaliste en vervolgens verhuisde zij naar New York City. Kraus was 21 jaar oud toen ze aankwam in New York en begon te studeren bij acteur Ruth Maleczech en regisseur Lee Breuer, wiens studio in de East Village Recherchez werd genoemd. Zij maakte deel uit van de toenmalige groeiende kunstscène van de stad rn maakte films en videokunst, ensceneerde voorstellingen en speelde op vele podia. In de late jaren 1970 was zij lid van The Artists Project, een door de stad gefinancierde onderneming van schilders, dichters, schrijvers, filmmakers en dansers. In haar werk als performance- en videokunstenaar hekelde zij de gender politiek van de Downtown scene waarbij zij een voorkeur had voor literaire stijlfiguren en theatrale technieken mengde met Dada, literatuurkritiek, sociaal activisme, en performance art. Kraus bleef tot het midden van de jaren 1990 films maken. Tot haar romans behoren “I Love Dick”, “Aliens & Anorexia”, “Torpor” en “Summer of Hate”. In “Video Green”, Kraus ‘eerste non-fictie boek onderzoekt zij de explosie van de kunst van de late jaren 1990 door high-profile graduate programma’s, die Los Angeles in het centrum van de internationale kunstwereld gekatapulteerd hebben.
Uit: I Love Dick
“My love for you was absolutely groundless, as you’d pointed out that night in January in the company of my husband. It was about the only time you ventured an opinion past your sexy cryptic silence, the silence that I’d written on. But what does “groundless” really mean? My love for you was based upon a single meeting in December which you finally described in an exasperated letter to my husband as “genial but not particularly intimate or remarkable.” Yet this meeting had driven me to write more words to you than there were numbers on that EDL, 250 pages and still counting. Which in turn led to the rental car, this rainy drive along Route 126, this plan to visit you.
At that time in your life, you said, you were experimenting with never saying No.
I got off the plane at 7 buzzed with warm air, palms and jetlag serotonin, picked up a rental car and started north on 405. But I was nervous too, like walking through a script you know’s already been written except the outcome’s been withheld. Not giddy nervous. Nervous as in dark with dread. My outfit’s dreadful. I watch the road, smoke and fiddle with the radio. I’m wearing black Guess jeans, black boots, an iridescent silver shirt, the black bolero leather jacket that I bought in France. It’s what I planned but now it’s making me feel gaunt and middle-aged.
Eleven weeks ago I’d tailed your gorgeous car along 5 North en route to that “genial but not particularly intimate or remarkable meeting” at your house between my husband, you and I. And everything then seemed different: delicious, charged. The three of us got very drunk and there was all this strange coincidence. There were just three books in your living room. One was Gravity & Grace, the title of my film. I was wearing the snake pendant that I’d bought in Echo Park; you told a story about shooting a video outside your house when a snake magically appeared. All night I was playing Academic Wife, helping you and Sylvère Lotringer exchange ideas and then you mentioned David Rattray’s book and that was very weird. Because all night long I’d felt his ghost beside me and David had been dead almost two years. You looked at me and said: “You seem different than the last time that we met. As if you’re ready to come out.”
Chris Kraus (New York, 1955)