Your process blog entries should reflect on Rosler's thoughts on the history of video art as well as her work... in addition to any thoughts or brainstorming you may have of your own.
Here is a link to the Rosler reading. If you need to print it and mark it up please do so. If you need to highlight and take notes, please do so. If you need coffee before a lengthy exploration into the thought process of a brilliant new media artist, please get it.
Here is a link to her work on ubuweb: http://www.ubu.com/film/rosler.html (we will review most of these videos in class)
be courageous in your explorations, my darlings
The culture industry vs. the consciousness industry…
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It seems to me that Rosler is taking the position in which she would like these two industries to be combined, formally criticizing the inability of art ([culture]which criticizes and is negative) to keep in lengths with mass media television ([consciousness]which ameliorates and appeals).
Particularly, I have a problem with this viewpoint. After she goes into lengths about art and it’s general revolution into the mass production realm, thus losing its institutional artistic value, she complains of video’s ability to be mass produce, which would probably follow the same pattern. She would ideally like for it to become mass produce and remain away from being kitsch or corrupt. However, it is my understanding that if this were to happen then culture and consciousness would combine and form a general emptiness of being, causing man to reflect on himself and take in society at the same time effectively canceling each action out. For something to exist it must be one thing or the other but cannot be both at the same time and in order for video to remain cultural and therefore remain art, it must not exist equal to or less than consciousness, or mass media.
The only acceptable stance to take here is one of video become more cultural in order to reach more people internally reflecting all at the same time, and those people cannot externally reflect on it, otherwise it will become mass media. I talked about this in class but I feel as if a good channel in which this could succeed and is succeeding now is the internet….
Comments, opinions? Is there anyone out there who thinks I am blatantly wrong? :D
I appreciate the gusto with which Rosler attempts to expose the patriarchal powers that seem to rule the “art world”. I doubt that I am alone in my curiosity of why one artists’ work is deemed relevant enough to be included into the lofty and often, elitist world of institutional art, while another’s is disregarded all together. Rosler parallels industrialization with the loss of culture and the separation of the conscious as belonging to the individual. She writes about the history of media and its evolution from press to television, asserting that as the means of delivering a message evolved, the intent stayed the same. The intent being to deliver a portrait of society and culture as envisioned by the powers that be, and for this idea to be consumed by the masses. I feel like the problems she is trying to communicate with regards to the media “machine” and its affects on society are put pretty concisely in her summation of Marcuse’s essay when she writes “…the idea of culture in the West [is] to be defusing of social activity and the enforcement of passive acceptance”.
ReplyDeleteRosler brings to light the enormous role of broadcast media and our passivity as a society, and bridges this intention from mass media into the art world, where she seems to assert that similar aims are the goal. The artist must not be the catalyst to social change, but must adhere to the delivery of superficial messages of narcissistic self-expression, and entertainment at best. I do find it interesting that although she criticizes artist like Paik for perpetuating these ideas, she also to admit that the institution is necessary for art to exist, if only in a round about way. The “museumization” becomes a necessity for the artist to retain some level of autonomy. I get her angst, but unfortunately I can’t ignore that Rosler herself has been assimilated into the institution that she seems so adamantly opposed to.
One point of Rosler's that most interests me is her vision of utopian art criticism. She thinks that the utopian moment will be found if critique is delivered in a democratic way. The most obvious way to extend art to a larger audience would be the television, so why not, "merge art with social life". Everyone has a television and this makes art accessible rather than only a few privlidged or "elite" able to experience. Thus the critique of the art that is produced will have a larger more diverse population to have opinions about it and probably shaping what is coined as fine art differently than how the Modernists have shaped it. I really enjoyed her criticism on Modernists because their movement in particular capitalized on art being expensive and created for the elite. The only people that could see this art all the time is people who could by the enorous pieces of art and in saying that they had walls and spaces big enough to have the work. So if the only people that can view the art are a small group that are in the galleries that it is presented in for a short amount of time or could afford the art and had enough space for it in their home than how is art really culture when it excludes everyone except for the elite. Art the just becomes a commodity. Video in the fine art world makes so much more sense because the critique and response to it becomes democratic.
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