Notebook is a section where I share candid thoughts and personal reflections on various topics.
When I launched Spectral Type in earnest at the end of 2021, I had to create a portfolio of my work, which entailed digging up many things published over a decade ago, like this interview with author and filmmaker Chris Kraus. In 2011, I had a chance to speak with Kraus about her films, which were shown at Real Fine Arts (RIP) under the BQE on the border of industrial Greenpoint. Though rarely screened, her films’ reputation preceded this retrospective showing, having been peripherally described in her 90s novels like Aliens and Anorexia and I Love Dick. The latter was made into an Amazon series in 2017, but at the time of the RFA show, Kraus was still very much a cult figure mainly known in the art and theory worlds. I stumbled across her work for the first time in 2007 when I found a copy of her book Video Green at a used bookstore in Philadelphia. Needless to say I was hooked on the blending of art, sex and narrative, which had a big influence on me as a budding writer at the time. I was a novice interviewer when Kraus and I spoke, but she was gracious and enthusiastic, and even wrote me a thank you note after it was published, which I still keep in a folder of nice things people have said to me. Read the whole piece here ❦