Martha Rosler : Positions in the Life World

by Catherine de Zegher (Ed.)

• ISBN13: 9780262041744
• ISBN10: 026204174X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-04-01
• Publisher: Mit Pr

Summary

"I want to make art about the commonplace, art that illumines social life. I want to enlist art to question the mythical explanations of everyday life that take shape as an optimistic rationalism and to explore the relationships between individual consciousness, family life, and the culture of monopoly capitalism." Since the late 1960s, American artist Martha Rosler has produced seminal works in the fields of photography, performance, video, installation, critical writing, and theory. Committed to an art that engages a public beyond the confines of the art world, Rosler investigates how socioeconomic realities and political ideologies dominate ordinary life. Her astute critical analyses are often cloaked in deadpan wit. This book, which accompanies the first retrospective exhibition of Rosler's work, contains seven color photo essays by Rosler; an excerpt from the curatorial project "If You Lived Here"; essays by Alexander Alberro, Catherine de Zegher, Sylvia Eiblmayr, Jodi Hauptman, and Annette Michelson; a conversation between Rosler and Benjamin Buchloh; and a biography/bibliography along with a complete list of art works. EXHIBITION SCHEDULE: Ikon Gallery Birmingham, UK December 1998 - January 1999 Nouveau Musée Villeurbanne, France January 1999 - February 1999 Generali Foundation Vienna, Austria May 1999 - August 1999 MACBA Barcelona, Spain Fall 1999 The New Museum New York City Spring 2000

Table of Contents

bringing the war home: house beautiful: in vietnam	14	(9)
a conversation with martha rosler	23	(33)
benjamin buchloh
the bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems	56	(6)
postcard novel: a new-found career	62	(2)
rights of passage	64	(8)
the dialectics of everyday life: martha rosler and the strategy of the decoy	72	(41)
alexander alberro
texts: installation and photo/text work	113	(33)
1975 three portraits: millie
1976 she sees in herself a new woman every day
1976 north american waitress, coffee-shop variety
1977 the restoration of high culture in chile
1977 traveling garage sale
1983 fascination with the (game of the) exploding (historical) hollow leg
1988 unknown secrets (the secret of the rosenbergs)
1990 in the place of the public: airport series
1992 greenpoint : garden spot of the world
body beautiful, or beauty knows no pain	146	(7)
martha rosler's characters	153	(13)
silvia eiblmayr
transitions and digressions	166	(7)
fragments of a metropolitan viewpoint	173	(7)
martha rosler
solving the puzzle	180	(13)
annette michelson
scripts : video and performance	193	(48)
1974 the art of cooking: a mock dialogue between julia child and craig claiborne
1975 kitchen economics: the wonder of (white) bread
1975 semiotics of the kitchen
1977 wedding day
1977 what's your name, little girl?
1977 vital statistics of a citizen, simply obtained
1978 domination and the everyday
1980 secrets from the street: no disclosure
1981 optimism/pessimism : constructing a life
1981/82 watchwords of the eighties
1982 martha rosler reads vogue
1983 a simple case for torture, or how to sleep at night
1985 global taste: a meal in three courses
1993 an empty space in ottensen : contaminated by history, capital, and asbestos
born to be sold : martha rosler reads the strange case of baby S/M	241	(9)
public or virtual? martha rosler's space travel	250	(8)
jodi hauptman
in the place of the public: airport series	258	(8)
passionate signals martha rosler's flowers in the field of vision	266	(18)
catherine de zegher
immigrating	284	(3)
martha rosler
biography / bibliography	287	(8)
list of works	295