Chris Kraus Books

This bilingual publication offers an unprecedented exploration of the work of Belgian poet and artist Sophie Podolski (1953-1974), who has lingered in obscurity since her untimely death at the age of 21. Podolski's work is emblematic of a time marked by sexual liberation, antipsychiatry, and youth disenchantment. As a self-taught writer and artist, she wrote in an uninhibited and provocative style about life, popular culture, and conformist society. While she was known primarily as a poet during her lifetime, this book places emphasis on Podolski's visual practice and highly personal iconography. As well as the original manuscript of her only book, The Country Where Everything Is Permitted (1972), this book showcases Podolski's remarkable body of graphic works, with more than 100 drawings and some of her earliest etchings. Distributed for Mercatorfonds

The European bestseller, an epic of two brothers, brought together and divided by betrayal, secrecy and self-delusion, spanning seventy years of German history: from the Russian Revolution, to World War II, to 1975.

It's Summer, 1991, the dawning of the New World Order; a post-MTV, pre-AOL generation. Jerome Shafir and Sylvie Green, two former New Yorkers who can no longer afford an East Village apartment, set off on a journey across the entire former Soviet Bloc with the intention of adopting a Romanian orphan. Unflinchingly dark, hilarious and moving - Torpor is at once a satire and philosophy of cultural history, social identity and failing relationships. Dipping into the trajectory of a life at different moments, Kraus interrogates convention and emotion, creating characters that are flawed, witty, and altogether true to life.Part prequel, part sequel, Torpor continues a project of life-writing; personal, unsparing, and triumphant. If I Love Dick is the book of your 20s, Torpor is the book of your 30s.

Video Green examines the explosion of late 1990s Los Angeles art driven by high-profile graduate programs. Probing the surface of art-critical buzzwords, Chris Kraus brilliantly chronicles how the City of Angels has suddenly become the epicenter of the international art world and a microcosm of the larger culture. Why is Los Angeles so completely divorced from other realities of the city? Shrewd, analytic and witty, Video Green is to the Los Angeles art world what Roland Barthes' Mythologies were to the society of the spectacle: the live autopsy of a ghost city.

First published in 2000, Aliens & Anorexia defined a female form of chance that is both emotional and radical. Unfolding like a set of Chinese boxes, with storytelling and philosophy informing each other, the novel weaves together the lives of earnest visionaries and failed artists. Its characters include Simone Weil, the first radical philosopher of sadness; the artist Paul Thek; Kraus herself; and 'Africa,' Kraus's virtual S&M partner, who is shooting a big-budget Hollywood film in Namibia while Kraus holes up in the Northwest woods to chronicle the failure of Gravity & Grace, her own low-budget independent film.In Aliens & Anorexia, Kraus makes a case for empathy as the ultimate perceptive tool, and reclaims anorexia from the psychoanalytic girl-ghetto of poor "self-esteem." Anorexia, Kraus writes, could be an attempt to leave the body altogether: a rejection of the cynicism that this culture hands us through its food. As Palle Yourgrau writes in the book's new foreword, 'Kraus's rescue operation for aliens like Weil from behind enemy lines on planet Earth is a gift, if, in the end, like all good deeds, it remains-as Weil herself would be the first to insist-a fool's errand.'

Exploring themes of obsession and identity, the narrative follows a self-proclaimed failed filmmaker who becomes infatuated with her husband’s colleague. This story serves as a manifesto for a fresh perspective on feminism, highlighting the significance of first-person narration in conveying personal experiences and emotions. Through this lens, the book challenges traditional narratives and delves into the complexities of desire and ambition.

Exploring the intersection of art and personal relationships, the essays delve into the complexities of human connections and the contrasting experiences of freedom and confinement. The author reflects on a decade-long friendship, revealing how their lives intertwine through shared moments in a bar, underscored by the act of smoking Marlboros. The work challenges conventional notions of borders, emphasizing the tangible realities of life and art.

Chris Kraus examines artistic enterprises of the past decade that reclaim the use of lived time as a material in the creation of visual art.

The legend and writings of American feminist writer Kathy Acker (1947-1997) - that of a rich girl, street punk, stripper and victim - is wrapped in mythologies. Nowadays Acker's legend has faded, making her writing more legible. In this first biography, Chris Kraus approaches Acker both as a writer and as a member of the artistic communities from which she emerged. The book traces the extreme discipline and literary strategies Acker used to develop her work, and the contradictions she longed to embody. Using archival research and conversations with colleagues and friends, Kraus describes the movement of Acker through some of the late twentieth century's most significant artistic enterprises.