International filmmaker and writer Chris Kraus joins 2016  Jackman Goldwasser Chicago artist-in-resident Sabina Ott to discuss the current sculptural project Who Cares for the Sky?, which continues Ott’s exploration of Gertrude Stein’s writing through sculpture, painting, video, and installation. Kraus and Ott have been mutual admirers of each others’ creative work for over two decades and will discuss the evolution and process of generating creative ideas and fictions.

Celebrated author, critic, and professor of film at the European Graduate School ((Switzerland), Chris Kraus has achieved cult celebrity for her experimental novels like Aliens & Anorexia (2000) and I Love Dick (2006). Her films include Gravity & Grace, How To Shoot A Crime, and The Golden Bowl, or, Repression. After obtaining a BA at  Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, Kraus worked as a journalist before moving to New York in the 1970s. There she began studying with actor Ruth Maleczech and director Lee Breuer at ReCherChez studio in the East Village. Part of the city’s then-burgeoning art scene, Kraus made films and video art and staged performances and plays at many venues. She was a member of The Artists Project, a City-funded public service venture of painters, poets, writers, filmmakers and dancers. Her work as a performance and video artist satirized the Downtown scene’s gender politics and favored literary tropes, blending theatrical techniques with Dada, literary criticism, social activism, and performance art. Kraus continued to make films through the mid-1990s. Since 2007 Chris Kraus has taught at the European Graduate School and lives in Los Angeles.

Sabina Ott received a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2015/16 and recently completed a public art commission for the Chicago Transit Authority and a solo exhibition at the Chicago Cultural Center. Represented by Aspect/Ratio in Chicago, Ott is known for her broad range of work—from painting to installation to sculpture—and her central role in the art world as educator, curator, and founder of Terrain Exhibitions. She earned her BFA and MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Exhibiting since 1985, she has participated in more than 100 solo and group exhibitions in Sao Paulo, Brazil; Auckland, New Zealand; Melbourne, Australia and many cities across the US. Her work resides in numerous museum collections including The Whitney Museum of American Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Oakland Museum of Art, and has been reviewed in many publications including Art in America, Art Forum and The New York Times.

This event is free and open to the public.