Son[i]a #253
Martha Rosler
Feminism was the first form of activism to appear in Martha Rosler’s work. In the 1970s, her photomontages and videos already denounced the exploitation of women in advertising and the media, which perpetuate stereotyped and objectified representations. Since then, Rosler has maintained her feminist perspective and expanded the scope of her artistic commitment to denounce the many strategies of domination and control deployed by the capitalist system against people.
Through videos, photographs, installations, performances, and essays, she analyses phenomena such as labour exploitation, US imperialism, immigration, the boundaries between the public and private spheres, urban gentrification, access to housing, war, surveillance systems and branding in the age of social media. Rosler warns us of the need explore the ‘semiotics of our existence’, and through her artistic, teaching, and writing practice she emphasises the fact that the images around us are not innocent: only a critical gaze will allow us to rebel against the clichés imposed on us.
Martha Rosler opens this SON[I]A with a lucid reflection on the political, psychological, and relational spaces generated by airports, as a metaphor of our times. She also analyses and questions the proliferation of surveillance systems and self-representations in contemporary society, while telling us about artistic circles in the seventies, the seminal video art scene, and the need to keep chasing utopias. And for our amusement, we take up Martha Rosler’s inadvertent invitation to reappropriate her ‘Semiotics of the Kitchen’.
Chus Martínez
Chus Martínez speaks about the exhibition "Are you Ready for TV?".
María Ruido
María Ruido talks about the political power of images and the subversive potential of cinematic strategies such as off-screen, voice over, and editing, which help us understand and imagine the world in new ways. She also reflects on the always contradictory relations between the critical and experimental power of culture on one hand, and its institutionalisation on the other
Deleted scenes
We dig up some unreleased fragments of the interview with Martha Rosler that we were unable to include the first time around.
Marysia Lewandowska
Marysia Lewandowska talks about the Women’s Audio Archive, about the crucial need to generate counter-narratives in totalitarian regimes, about networking before networks, about the boundaries between the private and the public, the negotiations generated by the shift from one sphere to another, the responsibilities of the archive, and the potential to generate conversation through art.
Franco "Bifo" Berardi
Bifo talks about mass killings in relation to cinema, mental health, neuroplasticity, friendship, irony and, ultimately, hope.
Georges Didi-Huberman
Interview with Georges Didi-Huberman about the problems regarding the way in which we see and interpret images, a problematic issue that stems from the definition of what an image is, and from the hierarchy that has historically been imposed on the dialectic between words and images.
Allan Sekula
Interview with Allan Sekula about the relationship between art and photography, about artistic activism, the role of the artist in the public sphere and "Waiting for Tear Gas".