Siri Hustvedt, Chris Kraus and Anne-Hilde Neset
Why are men still connected to intellect and society, and women to emotions and the body? What is the reason for the marginalization of those challenging the «universal» experiences of the middle class man?
In Siri Hustvedt‘s last essay collection, A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women (Norwegian translation by Knut Johansen), she examines how narrow ideas of gender and perception affect how we experience art and literature, by looking at artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Pablo Picasso and Robert Mapplethorpe. Who are the female muses of these artists, and how do I experience them?, she asks. Through a number of novels and essays, Hustvedt has explored art and identity. In her last novel, The Blazing World, we meet the artist Harriet, who hide behind numerous male indentities in an attempt to achieve artistic recognition.
Chris Kraus has been named the favorite writer of the art world, and is the author of a number of genre bending essays and novels, as well as the cult novel I Love Dick (translated into Norwegian by Knut Ofstad earlier this year), which might be read as an artistic manifesto. Like Hustvedt, she depicts women’s experiences in the art world. Her book Kelly Lake Shore is out in Norwegian this fall (translation: Paal Bjelke Andersen), and a new book on the writer and punk icon Kathy Acker will be published in September.
Kraus and Hustvedt will meet the director of Kunstnernes Hus, Anne-Hilde Neset, for a conversation about visual art, feelings as form, a reckless aura and female antiheroes.
forfattersamtale English Billettsalg Litteraturhuset Wergeland