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avitaminose's review against another edition
5.0
I really enjoyed this book. Kraus' analysis of art but also of life, hers and other people (artists alive and dead) and the connection she makes between them are very insightful and nuanced. She acknowledges the limits of the critic of a system in which we are living and the limits of art as a social practice while pinpointing qualities of the art that partly succeed in operating in this realm without being gimmicky. As per usual with Chris Kraus, I have discovered lots of artists and authors I didn't know and advanced my own reflections while having an enjoyable and easy read.
willande123's review
5.0
For Chris Kraus, art is relational. It's about perception. The artist creates a piece, that's for sure, but that's only half the story. The value and meaning of a piece of art depends on how the viewer interacts with it. Art is not merely biographical. Without the viewer, the individual personal interpreter, art is nothing. It's just a collection of arranged atoms. Art matters because it makes people feel. Kraus's thesis is that good art makes us interrogate ourselves and the social forces around us that influence our every action. Only then can we attempt to understand and be true to ourselves.
Because art is relational for Kraus, borders are important. A border physically represents a divide in perspective. Those on each side see each other differently, construct different myths from the same set of base facts. In her set of essays on the Mexico-US border towns of Mexicali and Calexico, Kraus's writing plays with perspective, just like the border artists she praises.
"Our first stop in Mexicali was a two-story shelter for homeless migrants in the central city, overlooking the new highway that leads to the border," Kraus writes on page 131. The image is striking: a huge migrant shelter full of freshly rebuffed border-crossers overlooks the newly built highway that could speed them to their dreams – if only they had the capital and the right paperwork. They gaze wistfully down and dream as they watch gleaming tractor-trailers bound north. So close, yet so far. At the same time, the truckers and vacationers headed back to the US just see another squalid building in a dangerous Mexican city. For Kraus, speed and inequality go hand in hand. The highway users can zip past the squalor. The migrants, though, have no choice but to remain static, stuck and immobile. Perspective matters; it shapes belief, which forms reality.
But Kraus also points out that we can play with our perspectives, and therefore play with our beliefs and reality. Luckily for us, artists play with reality for a living. Kraus writes about Tao Wells, a New Zealand artist who decided to run a farcical PR campaign for the country's welfare system. He aimed to reframe the perception of welfare by explaining it as an eco-conscious choice. Less work means less greenhouse gas emissions, means a healthier planet for us all!
Wells plays not only with our perception of welfare, but also exposes how PR spin rules our lives. We believe the stories that we want to believe, and that creates our reality. We already choose to believe that capitalist corporations have our best interests at heart, even though we know they don't, so why can't we see a guaranteed safety net that keeps the victims of capitalism from death as a good thing? Again, perception, belief, reality.
Great art, like Kraus's writing about it, helps us see our understanding of the way things are and challenges us to see beyond it, beyond the current order to new ones. Kraus tells us to harness our feelings, not suppress them, so that we can see different perspectives and discover those that we want to make real. Engaging with art in this way, I think, is the real social practice that Kraus is getting at.
Because art is relational for Kraus, borders are important. A border physically represents a divide in perspective. Those on each side see each other differently, construct different myths from the same set of base facts. In her set of essays on the Mexico-US border towns of Mexicali and Calexico, Kraus's writing plays with perspective, just like the border artists she praises.
"Our first stop in Mexicali was a two-story shelter for homeless migrants in the central city, overlooking the new highway that leads to the border," Kraus writes on page 131. The image is striking: a huge migrant shelter full of freshly rebuffed border-crossers overlooks the newly built highway that could speed them to their dreams – if only they had the capital and the right paperwork. They gaze wistfully down and dream as they watch gleaming tractor-trailers bound north. So close, yet so far. At the same time, the truckers and vacationers headed back to the US just see another squalid building in a dangerous Mexican city. For Kraus, speed and inequality go hand in hand. The highway users can zip past the squalor. The migrants, though, have no choice but to remain static, stuck and immobile. Perspective matters; it shapes belief, which forms reality.
But Kraus also points out that we can play with our perspectives, and therefore play with our beliefs and reality. Luckily for us, artists play with reality for a living. Kraus writes about Tao Wells, a New Zealand artist who decided to run a farcical PR campaign for the country's welfare system. He aimed to reframe the perception of welfare by explaining it as an eco-conscious choice. Less work means less greenhouse gas emissions, means a healthier planet for us all!
Wells plays not only with our perception of welfare, but also exposes how PR spin rules our lives. We believe the stories that we want to believe, and that creates our reality. We already choose to believe that capitalist corporations have our best interests at heart, even though we know they don't, so why can't we see a guaranteed safety net that keeps the victims of capitalism from death as a good thing? Again, perception, belief, reality.
Great art, like Kraus's writing about it, helps us see our understanding of the way things are and challenges us to see beyond it, beyond the current order to new ones. Kraus tells us to harness our feelings, not suppress them, so that we can see different perspectives and discover those that we want to make real. Engaging with art in this way, I think, is the real social practice that Kraus is getting at.
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