- Venue
- Tate Modern
- Location
Starting at the end of the talk; ‘the questions and discussion section’ created a strange atmosphere that rippled through the past two hours and shifted all that had been discussed.
The paraphrased question:
“An artist recently told me, that because her work was a success many years ago, when she was a young artist, she always finds that people focus on her past work instead of exploring her present pieces, and it ends up leaving her feeling that she is now slightly inconsequential. In this discussion you have been asked a lot about your past work from the 70s era, do you feel the same?”
Iwona Blazwick looked on intently, waiting for the answer. And the answer came. Yes she did. Embarrassment reached across her face with an uncomfortable chuckle. Yet here and only from this point did the conversation get put into focus and this artist Martha Rosler was brought forward into the present.
Martha Rosler recalled how she dislikes repeating the same blurb for the same questions over and over again and looking at the same work and watching the same film Semiotics in the Kitchen created in 1975; 32 years ago to be precise. But when it comes to it, it is her who has recoiled back to her previous work. Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful (1967-1972) commenting on the Vietnam War, has been brought forward to relate it to the present War in Iraq. The comment is still the same; wars are wars, and that is that. We still prioritise our homes and appearances no matter what is going on outside the window. And although this is from her past, the issues involved are deeply relevant to today and the connection has to be made.
“No one likes my work when I make it! …Maybe one day God Bless America (2006) will be repeatedly requested, watched and discussed?!” -Martha Rosler
A sense of sarcasm fills her voice, a slight scathingly bitter remark, yet within it, hope fills the words, that it will happen in time. God Bless America (2006), a mechanical toy of an American Soldier jauntily moves as it ‘plays’ the tune ‘God Bless America’ on his trumpet. The tune continues as the camera pans down and out and the legs of the soldier come into view. The rolled up trouser leg exposes the mechanism beneath which looks remarkably like a prosthetic limb. This whole show is filmed tightly giving the appearance of a very small space; the enclosed ideas, that this is separate, almost far away enough to be ignored.
Then moving into the present day, 2007, Martha Rosler had work shown in Documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany. Initially she submitted her Photo/text piece The Bowery in Two Inadequate Systems and Flower Fields (colour field painting). But thinking on, she realised she didn’t want to be that artist who submitted a 1974 piece and another piece on flowers; “Got to do better than this…or people would think I’m a dying artist!”
So from here Kassel Gardens (from the Perspective of a Mole) (2007) was served to shake her other past work up a little. The series of photographs and projection depicted Rose Hill in the Kassel Gardens. During the Second World War, the locals would not let the Russian, Polish and Yugoslavian slave labourers use the nearby bunker, resulting is mass slaughters as the city got bombed. Alongside this, the remaining debris from the air strikes, that destroyed the city, was deposited there and Rose Hill was developed over it. In parallel to Kassel’s Rose Hill, Martha Rosler has lived in Los Angeles and there, Rose Hill Cemetery, is a dominant feature of land. In response to the links between the two cites she felt a need to create a memorial site in Kassel. The Molehills are a symbol of what is beneath, being forced up. The sense that no matter how many years pass or how much it is covered up, forgetting should not be an option, and nature reinforces this by bringing it back up. ‘The return of the repressed’, ‘making visible the invisible’ all play a part in what is underneath. The moles are a protected species; permission is needed to kill them; yet, she said, in California you slaughter them. Their protected status leads to their end. Each notion that is explored within this piece circles round; back into itself, back into war, back into America, and then back into the past. Just as Martha Rosler has explored before, the past reoccurs and with war and slaughter in mind, there is no escape.
The discussion was ended with talk of the beginning. “Semiotics in the Kitchen…Has it ever been performed live?”Whitechapel Gallery asked her to perform it. It was obvious to see, that this piece was particularly revered by Iwona Blazwick, the current Whitechapel Director, as she featured it greatly in the “Talking Art” discussion. Martha Rosler was adamant that she hadn’t intended to perform this piece herself, but from this, she put out a request for female actors/performers to audition and then proceeded to record the chosen performers reciting this piece to the camera. Whether this was her idea, or she felt pressured to deal with the interest in this piece of work, it is planned to be revealed in the near future.
I feel that this piece, Semiotics in the Kitchen, hangs over her. It lurks in the shadows, in the background of all her pieces that followed. But from Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful, to Bless America (2006) and then to the recent Kassel Gardens (from the Perspective of a Mole) (2007), her work succeeds in tackling with the political concerns that she feels the need to explore. And with this performance of Semiotics in the Kitchen, by other people, she can now put it to rest; it is out of her hands. “No more questions.”
