|
Big
Hope: Could you tell us about some song that for you either encapsulates
or has had an influence on forming some of your political views?
Martha
Rosler: It would be easy for me to suggest one, two or even three
songs. I remember when I was a young teenager hearing Pete Seeger
sing "Peat Bog Soldiers". It taught me something about history
and made me very curious about oppression in Europe before my lifetime.
In
the eighties I was very affected by Bob Marley's "Get Up Stand
Up," which represented the idea of continuing struggle. It emanated
from a place other than my own but it was a pretty much universal
song. Bob Marley is fantastic and it's a fantastic song. I used a
clip from it in a piece that I did in 1979-81 called "On the
Cusp of the Eighties," a performance that was about resistance.
Among other things, I put together a collage of sounds on the soundtrack
and that was one of the pieces. BH:
Was that something new for you to be working with music that had political
content as well as the visuals? MR:
Well I hadn't done it a lot, but I had done it a bit. For another
work, "Global Taste: A Meal in Three Courses," in 1983,
a work about globalization and cultural penetration, I used a little
piece of Marianne Faithfull's "Broken English," which is
not so clearly political as "Get Up Stand Up", perhaps.
BH:
I'd like to ask you about the connection between politics in art and
politics in music. For my own part I do like a lot of political songs,
but I'd say the majority of the songs I listen to and appreciate have
more of an emotional expression. Whereas in my own art practice
and the art practice that I appreciate, it's much more of a political
engagement that I'm interested in. I'm just wondering if you have
anything of a similar outlook or if politics for you has an equally
important place in music? MR:
Well, I would not presume to say what kind of music people should
be making, but I also tend towards music that is not directly political.
I remember pointing out to my friend Craig Owens, a powerful critic
who died of AIDS in the mid 1980s, that he wanted art to be political
but did not dream of demanding anything similar from music; he hadn't
even noticed. I
think the thing to remember is that music is more often non-verbal
than verbal in its direct address to people and that songs are more
than their lyrics. Even the delivery of lyrics is an essential element.
I think that the meaning of music for human beings transcends the
rational and therefore the political. Music and dance are among the
most basic uniters of human beings from the earliest days of our existence
as a species, so there's nothing more important than music. BH:
Is it important for you that art should include reflections or engagement
with social and political issues? MR:
It's certainly important for me, but I'm not a cop - I don't believe
in making rules for everybody. I started as a painter, and I have
great sympathy for people who are not interested in expressing social
engagement in whatever form in their work. Of course everyone does,
no matter what, but if people feel that their work is about something
else, I think the world is richer for this divergence of meaning.
BH:
I remember reading that during the Vietnam war you decided that you
had to get involved somehow and decided to stop making art because
it wasn't contributing towards the movement opposed to the war. You
downed your paintbrushes to do a different kind of creative act which
you didn't consider to be art at the time but later became recognised
in the art world as part of your overall body of work. I'm just wondering
whether your view of your role as an artist when involved in a creative
activism has changed since then? MR:
Well, I don't worry so much about it now. At the time, around the
end of the 1960s, because I was deeply involved in making abstract
paintings, of course I had to make a decision. And, as you say, it
was in effect a step outside of my self-identity as an artist to have
another kind of practice. I remember thinking at that point that if
I have to choose between calling myself an artist or a political activist
I would have to say political activist because this is an urgent task.
I had to stop going into the studio because I felt so guilty continuing
to paint. I did however, continue making installations and even sculptural
works, virtually all of them about women's issues and politics. Now
I do a number of different kinds of things, none of which involve
abstraction, so I consider that the work that I do always to be political
- or I should say socially engaged - but it ranges from being directly
agitational to being much more structural, in looking at the meaning
of social beliefs, social products, social constructions and things
like that. I'm thinking particularly of things relating to, for example,
the built environment - airports, modes of travel, housing and so
on - which have a directly political dimension sometimes but often
speak through their architecture in muted tones about social assumptions,
social obligations or their lack. |