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The LA Review of Books has the transcript of a conversation between Chris Kraus and Mark von Schlegell, the author of The System Series, a series of sci-fi books published by Semiotext(e). The most recent book in the series, Sundogz, was published in March of this year. The conversation took place in May at 365 Mission, an alternative art space in Los Angeles. Here’s an excerpt:
The three books all describe pockets of survival and existence within a larger, impenetrable, collapsing system. The system finally doesn’t matter that much. It’s hazy. What matters more in these books are micro cultures of parallel life. And that’s why your books are read so much in the art world.
Perhaps. They’re written from the art world in a way. I mean, I often publish chapters of them in art publications before they become books, et cetera. So they begin — or my writing in general has been kind of forced into — or maybe not forced, but less fully accepted into this micro world of the art world, which in some ways has allowed it to exist.
But as to larger ideas of collapsing systems, the idea is that in general humans got off earth enough to settle space. But earth was, in the meantime, almost in that effort destroyed, certainly is collapsing totally. And the question is, will these colonies that have been in space now for less than 100 years by the time Sundogz is starting, will they survive the collapse of earth itself? Not without madness, no doubt. Not without poetry. And so each book finds a different colony and traces out its possible survival.