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On
10 July 2003, Big Hope: Miklos Erhardt and Dominic Hislop, recorded
a telephone interview with New York based artist Martha Rosler for
the programme 'Protest
Songbook',
broadcast on Radio Helsinki, Graz on 11 July 2003. Martha
Rosler: It would be easy for me to recommend 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. BH:
So, it's a less direct dealing with these topics than before. MR:
No, I wouldn't say that. I'd say that some of my work is less directly
engaged with urgent tasks but others aspects of it are just as agitational
or even if you will propagandistic - though of course that's always
a negative term -- as the work
always has been. I have somewhat of a wider practice now, but
none of it involves painting. BH:
After the worldwide mass mobilization against the recent war was unable
to stop what was inevitably going to happen anyway, how do we maintain
a sense of hope about being able to have an influence on these developments?
And do you feel like we're in one of those situations at the moment
that requires the kind of urgent action as when you said "there
are times when people have to take to the streets"? MR:
Well people aren't taking to the streets just now, and yet I would
still say that this is an urgent situation. The urgency is built in.
Ever since the sudden upsurge in anti-corporate globalisation in Seattle
in 1999 and all the subsequent European versions of the same multitudinous
rejection and the development of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre
in Brazil, there is a worldwide sentiment for a different mode of
operation. People are opposing what we can now call American neo-imperialism,
since the American policy establishment has itself literally embraced
the term imperialism. So I think it's an urgent moment but not a crisis
point. It's just below crisis point and we can see that crisis flaring
up partly exacerbated by the worldwide loosely organised terror campaign
against the United States and its allies that precipitated the full
press of imperial plans that the Bush Administration is engaging in. It's
really important that people get out of the habit of expecting instant
results. Political struggle is not like a football match where you
win a number of points and then you've won the game. Political struggle
is strategically carried out in many different locations and with
different tactics, and it goes on and on until things change, the
course of struggle is affected, and , one hopes, we create a better
world. You said that it was a war that we were unable to stop--yes,
that's completely true, but I think it was a war whose course was
affected very powerfully by the millions of people who stood in the
streets in February and March. I also think that at the moment the
opposition is having a severe effect on the Blair government in Britain,
and there's a crisis of credibility not only there but in the United
States about the reasons for going to war. I think the struggle against
predatory international behavior carries on and I think one has to
ask people to keep mobilising. BH:
In relation to that, I find it interesting that in Britain, the Blair
government was constantly denying that there was any fabrication of
the intelligence documents or that anything was amiss. Whereas in
the US, it seems like occasionally the Bush government could admit
that 'OK, this information about getting uranium from Niger shouldn't
have been included in the State of the Union address because it as
it turns out, there's no substance to it'. It's interesting that Bush
can admit things like that quite freely and get away with it, but
at the same time you can see Blair thinking 'No, no, you shouldn't
be saying that!' MR:
I was thinking about this the other day. To some degree this is the
difference between a parliamentary system and a presidential system.
Our situation in America is much less malleable and much less open
to actual participation by the members of the ruling party. We don't
have a prime minister, we have someone who has, often, supreme authority.
And at every opportunity the presidents, particularly the Republican
presidents in the twentieth and the twenty first century, produce
an imperial mode of presidency and try to subordinate all the other
powers of government. America has also always had a tendency
toward just two versions of one political party rather than
two or more parties; in effect, that's the party of capitalism, of
course, and this one-party-two-version system makes an real opposition
hard to mount from within. Since elections are now so unimaginably
expensive, both parties are indebted to giant corporate interests,
who anyway favor the Republicans.. Ultimately, we had a coup d'etat
in America-- which few people who understand what a coup d'etat is
would dispute--which brought in a tremendously aggressive business-friendly
administration; but during times of war, dissent is muted largely
through self-censorship because of the fear of consequences or loss
of access to news sources on the part of the media. Thus, we have
a form of a soft totalitarianism: we all have individual opinions
but that they're all the same opinion: 'whatever the government does
for security is OK, so don't bother me with the facts' --coupled with
an awful kind of American xenophobia. But
thanks to the lead of the British, who never stopped criticizing the
Blair government’s Iraq policy; and then at home in the US it
has become impossible to avoid reporting on the apparent failure of
the rosy pipe dream about the conduct of the postwar period, there
is much, much more willingness to criticize and question than during
the shooting war. BH:
I want to go back to something more related to art again.
The Whitney Biennial in 1993 seemed to represent some kind of watershed
for multicultural socially engaged art practice in the US that was
the climax of a lot of smaller pushes in that direction. In recent
years in Europe, there has been a noticeable trend amongst young artists
to work in groups to do collaborative socially engaged projects that
extend over a long period of time. I'm just wondering whether and
how that momentum from the time of that Biennial in 1993 has been
maintained in the US. MR:
I don't know if I would credit the Biennial of 1993 as doing anything
other than reflecting a certain politicised practice that was developing
and in fact the director of the museum wound up losing his job over
that because of the severe attacks from the right wing about the nature
of the Biennial. That discouraged a lot of artists who were wanting
to make it big in the market, who then withdrew from making any direct
kind of statement or showing any direct kind of political engagement
but at the same time, just as in Europe there are lots of young artists
who have wanted to get involved in projects that relate to the real
world and, as you say, have formed groups, collectives and loose associations
that draw them into working on projects that relate to social governance,
social justice and so on. These are questions that should occupy every
citizen, but the whole concept of citizenship in America is severely
eroded, so it is often up to those who deal in symbolic activity and
art making to take it on and make it seem as urgent as it is, and
often to suggest some ways of working toward solutions. BH:
Some of these long term participatory projects, which involve a lot
of documentation as part of their presentation are obviously a lot
more subtle than the kind of direct statements prominent in billboard
and other public works made in the US in the Eighties. I'm just wondering
whether despite an increased engagement with a specific context and
its participants, these kinds of projects suffer from a reduction
in visibility and therefore immediate impact on a broader public. MR:
what I think really is happening is that over the course of the last
ten years, or somewhat less perhaps, is that a lot of artists with
social intentions have shifted their space of operations to the internet.
The problem there is that the work does lose a direct visibility outside
the company of artists and net-involved people, but because the nature
of the internet as a public sphere is changing, mutating and developing,
it's very hard to know how much effect work on the net will actually
have in the near term. So it's true that, on the one hand, there's
been a lot less support in the form of public grants to do work that
takes place literally on the street or in the public eye; but on the
other hand, the internet is cheap and easy so people can do it on
their own or ensemble. I think people are also interested in radio
and web casts and so on, so I think this is a rapidly changing and
mutating situation. BH:
I wanted to ask you a question referring to the internet activity
that is going on today, and if you are following discussions that
are going on for example on Nettime or other such lists? MR:
I read Nettime every day, and I often pass on relevant posts from
Nettime to my online group so we can talk about them. BH:
What do you think about the recent discussions on tactical media,
in which one part is saying that we should follow a kind of military
line of action in opposing the system and the other is warning that
this way, you are speaking the same language as the system and are
therefore just its negative aspect, so it would be better to somehow
get out of this spiral? MR:
There are some pretty strong and valid critiques of tactical media
that have to do with the fact that, let's face it, most net activism
involves white males and people of European descent and Europeans
and that this is not that powerful a movement in the parts of the
world where the internet has little presence, I don't think that the
people on Sarainet in India would agree with this, but maybe they
would. The other thing is that I want to talk about this idea of thesis
and antithesis that you were referring to. I often hear this posed
in relation to the net or more broadly in relationship to opposition
art or opposition in general, and I'm still waiting for people to
suggest what another possibility might be. It could be the famous
'Third Way' of Blair which of course doesn't exist. So, I'm saying
that if we can't have an art of critique, whether we call it tactical
media or whatever, then what can we have that actually voices specific
opposition to real-world policies? Until somebody shows me a better
approach, I'm going to have to stick with a critical art address. The
same argument about “speaking the master’s language”
has long preoccupied the feminist moment. I think the debate usually
comes down to the same questions, and people tend to say what I’ve
said. BH:
I've been reading Deleuze and Guattari and what they are speaking
about is opposed to a totalizing Hegelian analysis. The rhyzomatic
stuff more based on singularities. Nothing really practical comes
out of it but I just like it. MR:
It was really popular in the Eighties here to talk about rhizomes
and I think I'm not sure that that doesn't apply to tactical media
even though the term is involving a military metaphor. I'm not sure
these are antithetical to one another is what I'm trying to say. I
can't begin to know how to answer the question of what is the right
strategic address in terms of trying to, in effect, set up an alternative
public sphere or reactivate the actually existing public sphere, particularly
by taking to the streets. BH:
Yeah, but it's very much also about these kind of strategies of resistance;
on the one hand you have the possibility of street protest, which
is the traditional way, and on the other hand you have the possibility
of this really rhizomatic way of the internet which can connect millions
of people at the same time as participants in a kind of protest, but
are not on the streets, so it's surely not really antagonistic. BH:
This means that we haven't found a 'Third Way'. MR:
But we will. I don't see it replacing mass action in the real, visible
world, however. Martha
Rosler is a New York based artist who has engaged with social and
political issues in her work since the late 1960s. |