Rosler's Reading Rainbow

Just like some of you, I found the Rosler reading to be pretty bizarre and dense. Those 20-odd pages were like navigating the Congo; it was slow, foreign, and ultimately aggressive with its ideals. What I've come to understand is that she has at least some passion for the potential of video art, and I've come to agree with the need of an easily accessible medium since everyone has the potential to make art --- to make a social comment.

Like Obi, I felt that Rosler unnecessarily made the reading complex by adding her critiques in a forced, aggressive manner. This in turn made the reading awkward and dense, like a hedge maze created by someone having a stroke. I felt that if Rosler had made her comments and criticism more of a poetic metaphor or parallel, the reading would've been lighter and I wouldn't feel as if I'm having her perspective and principles shoved down my throat.

The only possible redeeming factor of the reading was the facts --- the concrete content elaborating more on the history of video art, and the art world throughout the period. Still, Rosler's commentary was like having a radical feminist group gain control of Reading Rainbow to attack viewers with their own beliefs.

Ridiculous Rosler

That's exactly what the Rosler reading was. Ridiculous. I found myself steadily digressing throughout the gruesome 20 pages of reading. I did get through all of it though but it took me a while. WAY too long. Before actually delving into the reading, I told myself that I was going to read it twice to fully grasp what she was saying. That ended up not happening at all and I barely read it once. Through hours of struggling and sounding out weird names, I finally achieved my goal.

The biggest thing I question Rosler about was her choice of vocabulary and its complexity, which many people in class wondered too. C'mon now woman. You don't need to say all that just to mean this. It's like she over-analyzes and over-critiques things that frankly don't need to. Probably, I would say, about 90% of what she wrote is dense for no reason. A lot of her sentences are run-on and should be broken up because they contain too many dense ideas that create this super duper long sentence that the reader has to break down on their own. I shouldn't have to be stopping and breaking up paragraphs and sentences for my understanding. Your writing should be clear and concise enough from the start so I could easily grasp it.

What she actually talks about, on the other hand, is quite contradicting. She talks bad and down towards the elitist but sounds just like one of them in the reading. I do fully believe that she is against galleries. LOL she hates them and that is one of the few things that is actually clearly apparent in the reading. Her point basically was how video art was not considered a real art at first. It was then "museumized" and lost a lot of its respect and appeal.

Rosler reading: D-

Rosler.

Rosler, especially the reading, is a difficult subject to tackle. Yet, before I attempt to analyze 20 pages of verbose, unnecessary ranting against media, I would like to praise her. I really liked the reading regarding landlords. She gave an interesting perspective of a woman who was under the impression that the grass was greener on the other side. She explained the complexity of relations between landlords and tenants and how some can indeed be friends. I also enjoyed the two videos that were shown. Especially the Julia-esque videos involving Rosler stabbing kitchen knives directly into the audience while staring them dead in the eye. I also liked the complete and utter disgust she has for the measurements and social norms that were shown in the video where she was analyzed by the medical team. The parents speaking about their daughter's death due to eating disorders was touching as well.

Now, onto the reading. I did not like it. Dense is an understatement. Her views are quite radical and she seems to contradict herself from what I can grasp from this reading. I think she is anti-gallery and believes that video art should interrupt tv and provide alternatives. She doesn't want video to be the main form of art and thinks the art world is only for elitist but allows the population to critique the mass world. As a classmate stated, it's ironic because she seems like an elitist with this ridiculous writing.

Essentially, Rosler dislikes artist like McLuhan, Nam June Pike, and Pollack for a variety of reasons. Her jab at Pollack is due to his macho attitude, expressive paintings, and his lack of being available to everyone. Her beef with Pike was halfhearted- she liked that he interrupted tv with the magnet but didn't like how he was assimilated into the gallery world.

-Marla

Rosler's Reading Fun

Before I discuss this reading, I think it is important to mention the supreme irony of the essay that was also discussed in class: although Rosler denounces elitism in both the art and society, the highly academic and inaccessible langauge she uses (in a paper directed at art world elitists) is nothing that an ordinary person would ever want, or be able to, read.

Now that is out of the way, so let's take a look... well, sloughing through Roslers history of video was painful at best, but that's not the point of the whole thing. Rosler's point was how she felt video art managed to avoid being lost to art as a mere commodity, but that the way it was brought into art (museumization) made it lose a lot of it's "rebel" appeal. In other words, once video art had an established status quo in the art world, it was somehow "less" of a true "art."

Also... art, ART, and art art... COME ON. If your going to use different terms for "art," you need to create them. It needs to be some TYPE of art, not just a r t or art or freakin art- I prefer if if you call it "museum" art vs "fringe" art, or "kitsch" art vs "non" art.

Also, the conflict between "science and myth" or "traditional values and industrialization" is interesting, and it's worth noting how Rosler sees this as the main conflict in art up until modern times. Her pessimism about the industrial side is a bit grueling, and her feminist viewpoint seeps conspicuously into every sentence, but she is entitled to her opinion.

And I also hate Jackson Pollock and the male domination over the "high art" world, so she has my support there. Art seems like something like is much better suited to sensitive, feminine attitudes- why should harsh, masculine attitudes have such a hold over art? Both approaches deserve to be seen. I can see where Rosler's anger comes from (you can see it in her videos too- you toss that spoon girl!).

Also- even though Rosler dislikes this dominate approach- she ultimately concedes that "the issue at hand as always is who controls the means of communication and what are the forms counternanced and created." So ultimately, control is necessary in this world in order to gain recognition. It's the same concept as "the victors write the history books." Rosler is bitter about this, but also acknowledges the reality that the right artists need to fight for control, or forever be lost in obscurity.

Yet, good art that is obscure is always more "art" than good art that has become famous and garnered a high price tag.

... It's so easy to get fed up with this nonsense. Thanks for the confusing, mind bending read, Rosler.

Woahhhh...

response

There is no purpose in repeating what other people said, so I'll just kind of add-on to what you smart people have started.

In class, we were just talking about the sexuality of the movie: Men dressed as women, women's place in corporate business, men vs women, etc. But I think there is a race role too. The largest roles are the Mexico Korea, North America Korea, USA Korea, and General Korea. Mexico Korea speaks spanglish so much it makes her character difficult to follow sometimes (not to mention her temper.....she calls the other girls sluts and whatnot, perhaps she is concerned that they have more power over her. This is another theme in this video, that the girls are just trying to maintain their careers). America Korea and USA Korea seem to fight a lot. And General Korea, who is the only black character in this video, is in charge. Why a black person is in charge, I don't know (no racism here, nut it must have significance), while all the other girls in the video are white as sour cream (powdered faces, blonde wigs, white shirts, all that stuff everyone already knows).
In the script, the Koreas are not called characters, but "Attendees". This makes me think that Global Korea, who is in change, has insubordinates as would a queen. So they are not distinct individuals (hence them all looking the same)attending to Global Korea, who is the queen of the Korea posse.

Also to add to Katie's interpretation of the dog posters, perhaps they are to remind the viewer that it is a "dog-eat-dog" world, especially in corporations, where someone can "get your job in 4 seconds". The dogs are cute, but they will "eat" each other (the career girls seem cute, but they would climb over each other to keep their jobs). Mexico Korea even says she will "buy a mean dog sign" when she was having a tantrum over Jessica/ Cindy. BEWARE OF DOG.

I'm wondering if there is more significance to the girls choice of words (not really their sentences, but word choice). They talk all girly and use internet lingo. I feel like it must mean more than just the girls being....girly. They just sound dumb. (You can see this better in the script, where Trecartin even uses numbers or letters or shorthand, such as 4 instead of four, y instead of why, etc).

Also I noticed the Korea = Career-a parallel. Cool play of words there. All the career girls have Korea on their name except Jessica, the intern (or “illegal outsider re-useable friend (prop)”) renamed Cindy, who is not worthy of the title other girls have. This is one of the things Mexico Korea mentioned when she has her tirade about Jessica. Interns work for no money yet is involved with the corporate "body", which reminds me of a promiscuous person. Mexico Korea calls her a "contemporary slut".

USA Korea interviews North America Korea, She uses the word "higher" instead of "hire", when explaining to the viewer that hiring someone like North America Korea means that NA Korea will get USA Korea's job (in 4 seconds, no less). I'm not positive that significance, but I can only think of one working their way up higher in a corporation or work force, usually taking others' jobs in the process.

The video of "meetings" seemed like play- work. The airplane was not a real one, and it was obviously not a real plane, and Trecartin did nothing to make it seem realistic. He showed in plain view to the viewer that it was a random room in a house. The "meeting" is outside with Global Korea straddling the top of an umbrella like a stripper pole. The girls are partying in the bus and kissing and showing their thong. This is not serious work. The girls are play-working, not serious at all. They are followers of Global Korea, and will remain as such to keep their jobs under her.

Lastly, the delivery of their words reminds me of a literary term called "stream-of-consciousness", which is when syntax is not of complete sentences, but rather they are scattered phrases and words which are supposed to invoke a thought process, or how a person thinks. We don't think in whole sentences, we think in fragments, small bits of information which, although random, when put together can complete a thought. This can even be said about how the video is put together, since it is all sporadic and pieced together in small pieces which make one whole.

It's all kinda complicated. YES

Laurie Anderson's O Superman

1981