That immigrant experience in your childhood… reality as you know it is completely shattered and you realise there can be an entire other reality

New York born film-maker and writer Chris Kraus talks with Martin Rumsby on her experiences growing up and studying in New Zealand and how those experiences shaped her work.

Chris worked as a journalist on the Sunday Times and the Evening Post at a very young age (17) before she moved back to New York to become an artist. Martin and Chris discuss Chris’ long career in experimental film and as an author, and many of the films, ideas and movements that inform her work including punk, anarchism, the experience of death in American cities, the borders of sanity/madness and much more.

Chris’ books include I Love Dick, Aliens & Anorexia, and Torpor, Video Green. Her films include Gravity & Grace, How To Shoot A Crime, and The Golden Bowl, or, Repression.

Thanks to Martin Rumsby and Floating Cinemas for donating this interview to the Cultural Icons project.