{"id":22,"date":"2026-11-04T05:05:00","date_gmt":"2026-11-04T05:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philisharestory.org\/?p=22"},"modified":"2026-11-04T05:05:00","modified_gmt":"2026-11-04T05:05:00","slug":"from-san-francisco-to-oakland-north-koreas-cultural-future-philsugar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philisharestory.org\/?p=22","title":{"rendered":"From San Francisco to Oakland: North Korea\u2019s Cultural Future | PhilSugar"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Kraus interviewed by Maxi Kim.
\nEveryone who ever had a crush on
\nChris Kraus
\ndevelops an even bigger crush after seeing her live. My own fascination with her started when she visited the California Institute of Arts almost four years ago to read from her third novel
\nTorpor
\n. Set at the beginning of the end of history, Kraus\u2019 journey across post-Communist Romania in search sugar dating identity verification<\/a> of the spectre of an aborted pregnancy, reminded me of my own psychogeographical journey across an imaginary, future North Korea in search of a certain innocence and a cultural zero-level, a place to begin anew \u2013 out of nothing.
\nShe recently visited
\nBeaubourg 268
\nin San Francisco to discuss the art world, her forthcoming novel
\nSummer of Hate
\n, and her new art book
\nWhere Art Belongs
\nthat will be out in February 2011. Chris Kraus gave this interview the morning after the Beaubourg event as I drove her from a motel in San Francisco to Oakland International Airport. In return Chris interviewed me about my recent \u201cpublic interest\u201d project with
\nLes Figues Press
\nat Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, entitled
\nThe Principle of North Korean Charity
\n.
\nAt one point of the interview, we overshot our exit and the GPS navigator spent several minutes reassuring and comforting the disoriented driver and passenger.
\nChris Kraus:
\nI loved the tract you sent me awhile back about North Korea (\u2018Did Somebody Say North Korea?\u2019). Since
\nOne Break, A Thousand Blows!
\nhave you been writing any more quote-unquote, fiction? And where are you at with that?
\nMaxi Kim:
\nIt\u2019s funny you ask, because
\nMathew Timmons
\nrecently asked me to do a 10-15 page short story called \u2018Break Bloom Burn\u2019. In it, I play with your character, who is named \u201cKris\u201d with a K, and \u201cStuart Holme\u201d (
\nStewart Home
\n). It\u2019s probably untrue, but a part of me feels like I know the secret you or the secret Stewart because I\u2019ve spent so much time with your books.
\nCK:
\nAnd in fact, you do know us both.
\nMK:
\nRight. And in the story, \u201cStuart\u201d arrives from the UK to meet you for the first time and it turns out he has this heavy crush on you, and you both have a sort of fling in San Francisco.
\nCK:
\nHow embarrassing.
\nMK:
\nHe comes to your reading, and you guys immediately click and start talking about
\nPhilip K. Dick
\nand
\nKathy Acker
\n. It ends kind of ambiguously.
\nCK:
\nWell, I guess that means we won\u2019t have to do that in real life! But it\u2019s funny you mention Stewart Home \u2026 I was in London this year for a beautiful event that
\nMaria Fusco
\norganized at the ICA \u2013 an homage to
\nCosey Fanni Tutti
\nthat went on all day and into the night. And it was great \u2013 I\u2019d never met any of these people before, sugar dating search filters<\/a> but it felt like a tribal reunion. Stewart Home wasn\u2019t there, but they all knew him. They had most of his books at the ICA store and I bought two of them and read them both on the plane ride home. Now I feel like I know him too, even though we\u2019ve never met or even exchanged any email.
\nMK:
\nWhich ones did you read?
\nCK:
\nThe one I remember best is
\nTainted Love
\n\u2013 a, quote unquote personal history that keeps splitting off into the cultural\/criminal\/architectural history of London during the last 400 years or so. That was how to choose a sugar daddy<\/a> great. A twisted derive, putting the \u201cpsycho\u201d back into psychogeography \u2026
\nMK:
\n[Laughter] You guys would make a great power couple.
\nCK:
\n[Sighs] Well. Perhaps you\u2019ll introduce us some time?
\nMK:
\nI thought you\u2019d already met.
\nCK:
\nNo. But I read his personal history in both of the bios and found it so tragic \u2026
\nMK:
\nThe fact that he had to work in a factory?
\nCK:
\nNo! The fact that sugar dating compatibility<\/a> his mother committed suicide.
\nMK:
\nHe never knew his mother, except for her documents \u2013
\nCK:
\nYeah \u2026 she was a model, living this glamorous-hipster life and I guess she had Stewart raised by somebody else. Then she OD\u2019d when he was in his teens.
\nMK:
\nSo the only way he knew her was, I believe, through her diaries. It\u2019s lucky her aunt didn\u2019t throw them away. And I think he wrote
\nTainted Love
\nfrom that, as a source.
\nCK:
\nThat is so touching. I\u2019m glad I gave you
\nHedi
\n[
\nEl Kholti
\n]\u2019s book [
\nBy The Time You Read This I\u2019ll Be Gone
\n] because it speaks to the same kind of thing. Hedi didn\u2019t have a tragedy like that in his life, but the search is the same. Growing up in Morocco during the 70s he saw the whole detritus of the European hippie movement washed up over there \u2013 and he felt that somehow their history was his, even though he\u2019d never known it. So he became drawn to seeking out strange, obscure archival material from that time.
\nMK:
\nI think that\u2019s how some people read your work, too. Not so much as an archive \u2013 but everyone I\u2019ve met whose read your work feels that they somehow know you on an intimate level, as if you\u2019re speaking to them.
\nCK:
\nI think that\u2019s how it is any time you like any writer. At least, that\u2019s how I feel. You want to be their best friend.
\nMK:
\nIt\u2019s almost like an archive. When you read a Philip K Dick book, you\u2019re not just reading a story, you\u2019re also learning about him as a person.
\nCK:
\nTotally. Biography can be such a tease. I just inhaled the
\nRoberto Bola\u00c3\u00b1o
\nbooks that came out in the last couple of years, and he does this so well. The flashes of who he is behind the story are what keep you reading, for sure.
\nMK:
\nI can\u2019t really read books where there\u2019s a sharp divide between the author and the material. Are you the same way?
\nCK:
\nYeah, I feel that. With every writer I like, there\u2019s a transparency, even if it\u2019s not literal. Even \u2013 or maybe especially \u2013 when the subject isn\u2019t domestic or personal.
\nMark Von Schlegell
\n\u2018s sci-fi books [
\nVenusia
\nand
\nMercury Station
\n] are extremely abstract, even sugar daddy lifestyle<\/a> sometimes obtuse, but there\u2019s so much of Mark there between the lines.
\nMK:
\nHave you ever thought of writing sci-fi?
\nCK:
\nI think, as genres go, I\u2019d gravitate more towards crime. But going back to what you said about presence \u2013 I think what makes you feel so connected with certain writers isn\u2019t a matter of autobiographical detail, but that the emotions are real. The way some writers are able to channel themselves through the form. With Mark\u2019s books, I feel like I\u2019m reading his optimism. Even though the genre itself is a little discouraging \u2013 now that the future\u2019s already here, not many people still want to read sci-fi.
\nMK:
\nOne thing I hate about most sci-fi is the lack of serious interest in what the art of the future might be. What the culture might be in the future, how the music would sound.
\nCK:
\nThat\u2019s a fantastic project. I\u2019ve never thought about that.
\nMK:
\nWhat would the French theory of the future be? What are the future North Koreans going to think of, reading Chris Kraus? What\u2019s installation art going to look like in space? Or on Mars? Or on Venus?
\nCK:
\n[Laughter] Exactly! That\u2019s such a great topic. What kind of philosophy are people going to read? Because these things just cycle through \u2013 nothing\u2019s ever entirely new. It\u2019s more a matter of what gets picked up from the past at each time.
\nMK:
\nThat\u2019s what impressed me about
\nTracy Molis
\n\u2018 monuments. Do you know the whole back-story behind why she created those sculptures?
\nCK:
\nI saw them on your roof at Beaubourg 268 \u2026 she was talking about the nuclear waste dumps in Nevada \u2026 how they were searching around for an iconic image that would convey danger one thousand years from now. And they chose Edvard Munch! How pathetic is that?
\nMK:
\nThat was the premise: How do you create a monument that will keep people away a thousand years from now. It\u2019s such a silly impossible question. But it does get you, through art, thinking about the future.
\nAlexander Provan
\n: \u201cIf the nuclear waste repository under construction inside Nevada\u2019s Yucca Mountain endures for a thousand years . . . it is likely to outlast our own civilization. If it endures for ten thousand years, it is likely our languages will no longer be intelligible to the humans that have replaced us. Government officials are not known for taking extraordinary measures to guarantee the well-being of people outside their constituencies, much less their millennium, but public anxiety about the project is such that the usual charge of guarding the safety of our children and grandchildren has been extended: . . . The Department of Energy\u2019s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management must also find a way of sending a message to whatever comes after us: stay away from Yucca Mountain.\u201d
\nCK:
\nYes \u2026 How can there be a universal icon for fear?
\nMK:
\nSo I asked
\nGina Clark
\n(performance artist and co-founder of Beaubourg 268) to create North Korea-inspired video art. And I asked
\nRobbie Hanson
\n(artist\/musician and co-founder of Beaubourg 186) to compose a future North Korean soundtrack for our exhibition at
\nLACE
\nLos Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, July 14 \u2013 [Philippines sugar dating sites<\/a> Aug 04, 2010]. Do you know the whole back-story behind
\nKrautrock
\n? Right after the de-nazification process in Germany, certain artists were searching for music that wasn\u2019t traditional German folk music, and they didn\u2019t want to reproduce American pop music. Their project was to make music \u2013
\nCK:
\n\u2013 that was German but not Nazi?
\nMK:
\n[Laughter] Exactly! But I think it\u2019s misleading to call it Krautrock, because a lot of it is ambient.
\nCK:
\nWhat did Robbie come up with for North Korea?
\nMK:
\nHe\u2019s taken traditional Korean beats from folk music essentially, and running it through his synthesizer to make it sound \u201cfuturistic\u201d in his own way.
\nCK:
\nThis is very exciting \u2026 I understand better now what you\u2019re doing. But I wonder \u2013 are you concerned about finding ways to make the odd situation in North Korea resonate with larger questions about futurism, totalitarianism, isolation?
\nMK:
\nThat\u2019s my main goal. I\u2019d like people to treat North Korea as many did with New York after 9\/11 \u2026 all those imaginary blueprints and plans for rebuilding the World sugar daddy site with most members Philippines<\/a> Trade Center. And you saw the same thing after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans: all those plans about how to rebuild schools in very modern and interesting ways. And hopefully non-Koreans will contribute in creating plans \u2013
\nCK:
\nSo your project is less a critique of the present regime than an attempt to imagine it as already being leveled out to ground zero. It\u2019s already over for you \u2013 you see it more as a site of reconstruction.
\nMK:
\nExactly.
\nCK:
\nWhat kind of future can be created by a society that\u2019s been frozen in a nowhere land for 60 years?
\nMK:
\nAnd it\u2019s interesting, because there\u2019s not much to salvage, culturally. It\u2019s like trying to salvage what was good in the Nazi regime.
\nCK:
\nWhen did the two Koreas split?
\nMK:
\nIn the mid-to-late 1940s. I think of North Korea as the Poland of East Asia. It\u2019s stuck between super powers, it\u2019s always gone back and forth.
\nCK:
\nSouth Korea\u2019s already post-boom \u2013 now they\u2019re spending lots of money on culture and art.
\nMK:
\nThere are a lot of negative consequences to that economic boom \u2026 about 2 million people are addicted sugar dating subscription cost<\/a> to online gaming. But strangely you won\u2019t meet many South Koreans who think about North Korea at all. It\u2019s out of sight\/out of mind.
\nCK:
\nYou were born there. Do you speak Korean?
\nMK:
\nYes.
\nCK:
\nSo hypothetically you could go back and find a way to visit the North.
\nMK:
\nYes \u2026 there are a lot of interesting projects going on there. There\u2019s a group in the South pumping classical music into the North, trying to undo the brainwashing and attract North Korean refugees to the South. It\u2019s a very weird vibe. It\u2019s called the DMZ, the demilitarised zone, but it\u2019s probably the most heavily fortified place on Earth. I just hope that in my lifetime we get to talk about North Korea the way we talk about Germany now.
\nCK:
\nHave you thought of setting up a cultural exchange with the University of North Korea?
\nMK:
\n[Laughter] No, that\u2019s an impossibility. The only way to get into North Korea is to be a fan of Kim Jong-il. I have so many articles on the net critiquing his regime that I think it would probably be very difficult for me \u2013 I think North Korea is one of the few places where there\u2019s not much to salvage. It really is a dead culture. And its past is also very ambiguous. In a sense, they never moved out of pre-modernity \u2013
\nCK:
\nIt\u2019s one of the last wildernesses discreet sugar dating Philippines<\/a> on earth. So you\u2019d be starting from a very clear point.
\nMK:
\nOne of the things I really want to express is that we should stop this urge to paint Kim Jong-il as a Stalinist. And actually his ideology is much closer to National Socialism. There\u2019s that kind of multi-cultural, Levinas-inspired mindset that prevents people from looking at North Korea critically. Learning from the Other., etc \u2013 I think that\u2019s beautiful up to a point, but in the case of North Korea, I think we have to be a lot more critical.
\nCK:
\nStalinism \u2013 or communism \u2013 is the only ideology Americans know how to demonise \u2026 no one knows what it is, it\u2019s just a synonym for the Empire of Evil.
\nMK:
\nRight. North most popular sugar dating platform Philippines<\/a> Korea has nothing to do with communism.
\nCK:
\nOr with Maoism \u2013
\nMK:
\nKim Jong-il has no interest in anything regarding the historical, intellectual legacy of communism. He has a heavy distaste for what you might call academicism, or \u2013 thought in general.
\nCK:
\nYou told me they\u2019d managed to block the internet entirely in North Korea.
\nMK:
\nYes, it\u2019s easy when you don\u2019t have any computers! [Laughter] [Pause] What was your impression of Beaubourg 268 during your reading last night?
\nCK:
\nI thought it was incredibly beautiful. I didn\u2019t know what to expect. I thought it was going to be on a main street, in a storefront. But in fact it\u2019s a beautiful town home that you\u2019ve converted into an art space, a gallery, almost a small museum. And it works really well. The garden\u2019s amazing \u2013 and the back house, with Tracy\u2019s installation on top? The living room is sort of an exhibition space, and there\u2019s one room completely devoted to being a gallery. It seems like a happy place, Max.
\nABOUT THE INTERVIEWER
\nMaxi Kim
\nwas born in a military camp on Mt Paekdu, the tallest volcanic mountain on the East Asian peninsula. According to an ancestral inscription his birth was heralded by the spectral presence of the haiku poet Issa over the mountain\u2019s caldera. He studied Japanese and American literature at University of California, then studied French theory at California Institute of the Arts, where he wrote his first novel
\nOne Break, A Thousand Blows!
\n. His writing has been compared to the visual art of Richard Prince, Wallace Berman, and the films of Sofia Coppola. In 2008 he moved to London, and taught writing. He currently lives in San Francisco. Read Richard Marshall\u2019s interview with Maxi on
\n3:AM
\nhere
\n.<\/p>\n

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Chris Kraus interviewed by Maxi Kim. Everyone who ever had a crush on Chris Kraus develops an even bigger crush after seeing her live. My own fascination with her started when she visited the California Institute of Arts almost four years ago to read from her third novel Torpor . Set at the beginning of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"solace_meta_sidebar":"","solace_meta_container":"","solace_meta_enable_content_width":"","solace_meta_content_width":0,"solace_meta_title_alignment":"","solace_meta_author_avatar":"","solace_post_elements_order":"","solace_meta_disable_header":"","solace_meta_disable_footer":"","solace_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisharestory.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisharestory.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisharestory.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisharestory.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisharestory.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/philisharestory.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25,"href":"https:\/\/philisharestory.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions\/25"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisharestory.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisharestory.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisharestory.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}