The Cooper Union Interdisciplinary Seminar

the Cooper Union School of Art Interdisciplinary Seminar

Chris Kraus

Where Art Belongs

This lecture took place on September 28th, 2010 at 7:00 pm in the Wollman Auditorium at the Cooper Union

Lecture introduction

Tracing the short vivid history of Tiny Creatures, a storefront art space in LA’s Echo Park that never intended to be a “real” gallery, Where Art Belongs will examine this saga of another “last” avant-garde as an example of recent artistic enterprises that reclaim the use of lived time as material.

tiny creatures is
a desire to find a way to live our own way,
to have a sense of community,
to see each other while on earth
to share our lives, our pain, our talents, out
thoughts,
to capture a moment in time that will be lost or
forgotten,
and to package it with beauty, love, pain and all
we can feel as humans

The uses of boredom, the resurgence of poetry ... Also discussed will be Mexicali Rose, an ongoing community media center and gallery in Mexicali frequented by barrio youth, local craftspeople and artists and architects from both sides of the Mexican/US border, and the ongoing work of the Bernadette Corporation.

About Chris Kraus

Chris Kraus is a writer and art critic who mostly resides in LA. She is the author of I Love Dick, Torpor, Video Green: Los Angeles Art and the Triumph of Nothingness and LA Artland. Her forthcoming work includes the novel Summer of Hate and Where Art Belongs, a book of linked essays. Kraus received a BA from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand and continued her studies at the New York Art Theater Institute, the School for Marxist Education and Columbia University’s Reid Hall Paris campus. She has taught writing and criticism in graduate programs at UC Irvine, EGS and Art Center College and is a co-editor, with Hedi El Kholti and Sylvere Lotringer, of the independent press Semiotexte.

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