Martha Rosler

Martha Rosler works in video, photo-text, installation, and performance, and writes criticism. She has lectured extensively nationally and internationally. Her work in the public sphere ranges from everyday life and the media to transportation, architecture, and the built environment.

The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems 1974-75. A series of 45 gelatin silver prints of text and images on 24 backing boards, each backing board: 11 13/16 x 23 5/8 in. (30 x 60 cm) Originally viewed at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, England, as part of a Rosler retrospective.

Photomontages

Point and Shoot - 2008, Photomontage

Cleaning the Drapes 1967-72, Photomontage, 20 x 24 in.

Patio View 1967-72, Photomontage.

Research

Rubbish dump found floating in Pacific Ocean is twice the size of America

A rubbish dump twice the size of the United States has been discovered floating in the Pacific Ocean. The vast expanse of debris, made up of plastic junk including footballs, kayaks, Lego blocks and carrier bags, is kept together by swirling underwater currents. It stretches from 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan.

American oceanographer Charles Moore discovered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch by chance in 1997 while taking a short cut home from a yacht race. He said: "Every time I came on deck there was trash floating by. How could we have fouled such a huge area? How could this go on for a week"?

He warned that the rubbish could double in size over the next decade if consumers do not cut back on their use of plastics. More than a million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals die every year as a result of plastic rubbish.

Syringes, cigarette lighters and toothbrushes have all been found inside the stomachs of dead seabirds. The rubbish can also be dangerous for humans, because tiny plastic pellets in the sea can attract man-made chemicals which then enter the food chain.

Research director Dr Marcus Eriksen said: "What goes into the ocean goes into these animals and onto your dinner plate. It's that simple."

More info: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/the-worlds-rubbish-dump-a-garbage-tip-that-stretches-from-hawaii-to-japan-778016.html

Research

Coca-Cola is enjoyed in more than 200 countries worldwide. They can shift it anywhere, anytime. Shame they can't do the same with food.

From A UN report released on 29/03/2004

At this present moment, the food crisis is seriously affecting the lives of millions of people in 38 countries around the world, predominantly in Africa. Sudan, Ethiopia and Afghanistan are currently suffering the most seriously from a food crisis. The situation in the occupied Palestinian territory is also seriously deteriorating. Famine and widespread lack of access to food means that in the world, 840 million people are suffering on a daily basis from chronic malnutrition. Around 36 million people die from hunger directly or indirectly every year. Progress in reducing world hunger has virtually come to a halt and in many countries hunger is increasing. It is time to recognize that hunger is not a question of fate, but the result of the negative effects of human action or inaction. It is a failure to respect, protect and fulfil the right to food.

Source: http://www.fao.org/righttofood/kc/downloads/vl/docs/Rtf%20hearing%2031%2003%202004.doc


Coca Cola in a Nazi Uniform

Coca Cola (GmbH) were the German bottlers for Coke under the leadership of the CEO Max Keith (pronounced Kite). Coke sponsored the 1936 Nazi Olympics where Hitler showcased his Aryan vision to the world, while hiding the "Don't shop at Jewish shops" posters.

Coca Cola GmbH sought to be associated with the Nazis, it became a bit of a joke that if Hitler or a high ranking Nazi was on the front cover of a magazine Coke would advertise on the back. Coke advertised on billboards that were by the Berlin stadiums, so people attending Goebbel's rallies had to walk past them.

Coke financially supported the Nazis by advertising within Nazi newspapers, in one instance Coke published responses to accusations from rival bottlers that they were a Jewish company. These denunciations were placed in Nazi rags.

Coke advertised in the Nazi Army paper shortly after the invasion of Sudetenland, the ad was a picture of a hand holding a bottle of coke over a map of the world, the slogan was "Yes we have got an international reputation."

Coke opened up a bottling plant in Sudetenland shortly after the invasion.

COCA COLA'S NAZI ADVERTS - ART EXHIBITION

Curated by Mark Thomas and Tracey Sanders-Wood

This exhibition is done without the consent of Coca Cola. The works are not the original adverts used by Coke in Nazi Germany, well one or two might be Coke ads but they have been bastardised and willfully changed.

in 1941 when Coca Cola GmbH could no longer get the syrup to make Coke from America they created a new drink out of the ingredients they had available to them. That drink created for the Nazi soft drink market was Fanta.

Fanta is the drink of Nazis.

Research

Photomontage

These images come from a book called Photomontage by Dawn Ades. It covers the history of combining pictures in collage form.

Above: A poster issued by the Republican ministry of propaganda during the Spanish civil war. It is now in the Victoria and Albert museum. The words basically say "What Europe tolerates or protects, your children can await"

Above: Ad Nauseam (1944) by Jacques Brunius. Primarily a writer Brunuis moved from France to the UK in 1940 where he helped to spread Surrealist ideas.

Above: Incest (1968) by Marcel Marien. From the Surrealist publication Crystal Blinkers.

Research

Gee Vaucher

I looked at the images of Gee Vaucher today. You can read about her here:
http://www.96gillespie.com/artists_profiles/vaucher.htm
Or here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gee_Vaucher


The image below is of a billboard she designed to mark the 60th anniversary of the creation of Israel and goes well with my recent Israel montage.

This image below is from a record sleeve she designed for a band called New Prids.

The image below is from a book she produced called Animal Rites. This book explores the relationship between humans and animals and contains 48 collages.

"all humans are animal, but some animals are more human than others."

More images from Animal Rites here: http://www.96gillespie.com/archives/animal_rites/index.htm

Research

Holiday

This is a montage I made about the holiday industry in Israel. You can't really see it in its true glory as this blog changes all the colours in it every time I try to upload it. (It is in normal colours in reality) You can see it properly on these links possibly. I say possibly as it works on the Macs at uni but on my PC the picture doesn't come up at all. I don't know whats going on, the file, or my computer, must be corrupt or something ): ?

Link to original image: http://www.alexfleming.com/images/final_collage72.jpg

Below is a version I photoShoped to look more like an illustration.

Link to PhotoShoped version: http://www.alexfleming.com/images/finalcollage72.jpg

Research

Family Spending

UK households spent an average of £459 a week in 2007 compared to £449 in 2006.

Household spending is analysed according to aninternationally-agreed classification system, the Classification of Individual COnsumption by Purpose or COICOP. Using this classification, household spending was highest in the transport category, at £62 a week in 2007. This included £22.80 on the purchase of vehicles, £28.80 on operating personal transport (such as petrol, diesel, repairs and servicing) and £10.10 on transport services such as rail, tube and bus fares.

The second highest category of spending was recreation and culture, at £57 a week. This includes TVs, computers, newspapers, books, leisure activities and package holidays. On average, £12.50 a week was spent on package holidays abroad, compared to £0.90 a week on package holidays in the UK. Housing (excluding mortgage costs), fuel and power was the third highest category at £52 a week.

Food and non-alcoholic drink purchases contributed £48 to weekly household expenditure - £12.80 of which was spent on meat and fish, £3.70 on fresh vegetables, and £3.00 on fresh fruit.Non-alcoholic drinks accounted for £4.00 of weekly expenditure, and £2.00 per week was spent on chocolate and confectionery.

Average weekly household expenditure was highest among households consisting of two adults and two children, at £690 a week. The lowest expenditure at £165 a week was reported by one person retired households who were mainly dependent on the state pension.

Expenditure also varied according to the age of the household reference person. Those households where the reference person was aged 30 to 49 spent the most on average at £562 a week. Those where the reference person was aged 75 or over had the lowest average household expenditure, at £219 a week.

Source: Expenditure and Food Survey, Office for National Statistics

Research

Guy Debord and the Situationists

Guy Debord and Raoul Vaneigem were the two principal theoreticians of the Situationist movement. They were part of a small band of avante-garde artists and intellectuals influenced by Dada, Surrealism and Lettrism. The post-war Lettrist International, which sought to fuse poetry and music and transform the urban landscape, was a direct forerunner of the group who founded the magazine Situationiste Internationale in 1957. At first, they were principally concerned with the "suppression of art", that is to say, they wished like the Dadaists and the Surrealists before them to supersede the categorization of art and culture as separate activities and to transform them into part of everyday life.

Under capitalism, the creativity of most people had become diverted and stifled, and society had been divided into actors and spectators, producers and consumers. The Situationists therefore wanted a different kind of revolution: they wanted the imagination, not a group of men, to seize power, and poetry and art to be made by all. Enough! they declared. To hell with work, to hell with boredom! Create and construct an eternal festival.

In their analysis, the Situationists argued that capitalism had turned all relationships transactional, and that life had been reduced to a "spectacle". The spectacle is the key concept of their theory. In many ways, they merely reworked Marx's view of alienation, as developed in his early writings. The worker is alienated from his product and from his fellow workers and finds himself living in an alien world: The worker does not produce himself; he produces an independent power. The success of this production, its abundance, returns to the producer as an abundance of dispossession. All the time and space of his world becomes foreign to him with the accumulation of his alienated products....

The increasing division of labor and specialization have transformed work into meaningless drudgery. "It is useless," Vaneigem observes, "to expect even a caricature of creativity from a conveyor belt." What they added to Marx was the recognition that in order to ensure continued economic growth, capitalism has created "pseudo-needs" to increase consumption. Instead of saying that consciousness was determined at the point of production, they said it occurred at the point of consumption. Modern capitalist society is a consumer society, a society of "spectacular" commodity consumption. Having long been treated with the utmost contempt as a producer, the worker is now lavishly courted and seduced as a consumer.

Research

Who Invented Typical Girls?

Typical girls try to be
Typical girls very well

Can't decide what clothes to wear
Typical girls are sensitive
Typical girls are emotional
Typical girls are cruel and bewitching
She's a femme fatale
Typical girls stand by their man
Typical girls are really swell
Typical girls learn how to act shocked
Typical girls don't rebel

Who invented the typical girl?
Who's bringing out the new improved model?
And there's another marketing ploy
Typical girl gets the typical boy

Research

Richard Prince

(American, born 1949)

In the mid-1970s, Prince was an aspiring painter who earned his living at Time-Life clipping articles from magazines for staff writers. What was left at the end of the day were the ads: gleaming luxury goods and impossibly perfect models that provoked in the artist an uneasy mix of fascination and repulsion, disgust and envy.

By 1977, Prince had begun rephotographing these advertisements in order to, as he put it, "turn the lie back on itself." Acting as art director, artist, and viewer, he imagined his purloined images as stills from a movie in his head. He developed a repertoire of strategies—blurring, cropping, enlarging, grouping—that revealed the hallucinatory strangeness, or "social science fiction," of his seemingly natural source material.
http://www.metmuseum.org/TOAH/HD/pcgn/ho_2000.123.htm

Untitled (four single men with interchangeable backgrounds looking to the right) - Richard Prince

4 Women Looking in the Same Direction - Richard Prince

The Same Man Looking in Different Directions - Richard Prince

Research

A Cheap Holiday in other Peoples Misery

Following on from the experimental montage I made last week (Safe European Homes - See earlier post below) I started looking at how tourism is sold to the consumer and found this map of Israel in a holiday brochure.

It seems Palestine has literally been wiped of the face of the earth. I find it interesting to compare it to real maps of the region.

This is a map from the BBC :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/world/2001/israel_and_palestinians/key_maps/

This is a map that shows the land the Palestinians have lost in the last 60 years or so.

Of course none of this is mentioned in the brochure.



To quote the companies own literature "We will look after you and take you on a journey that will exploit"

Reflection on Group Discussion

I found the opportunity to discuss my project in a small group helpful as it allowed me to see how others would react to my ideas.

With my work on the web in a Blog however, (and no internet access during the lesson), it was hard for other members of the group to grasp the kind of images I was looking to produce as they had never heard of the artists I was researching and looking to emulate.

It was suggested by members of the group that I should look at the work of Situationist such as Guy Debord. This I intend to do.

Research

Laurie Simmons


Taj Mahal - 1984

Simmons uses plastic figures in this image to suggest the roles that were encouraged by the emerging consumer society that dominated her own childhood.

Alex Fleming

Safe European Homes - 2009

I made this montage to demonstrate the type of thing I am looking to produce. It pictures tourists at a gateway in Morocco. The images through the gateway are taken from a magazine article looking at the levels of violence and poverty in Africa.

Marx - 2009

This image of Marx was produced by freezing a black and white ink jet print. The water brings out the coloured inks. The idea was to link the serving up of political opinion with the serving up of frozen dinners.

Xray Specs

I know I am artificial

But don't put the blame on me

I was reared with appliances

In a consumer Society

I wanna be Instamatic

I wanna be a frozen pea

I wanna be dehydrated

In a consumer society

Art - I - Ficial by Xray-Specs

Research

Richard Hamilton

One of the founders of the Pop Art movement.

This is his description of Pop Art: "Popular (designed for a mass audience); transient (short-term solution); expendable (easily forgotten); low cost; mass produced; young (aimed at youth); witty; sexy; gimmicky; glamorous; and last but not least, Big Business." [Quoted in History of Collage by Eddie Wolfram, p. 159]

Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? 1956

Richard Hamilton's famous fifties collage Just what it is that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? was made with normal collage techniques by cutting and pasting parts of the pictures from magazines in one day. He began by making a list of topics to be presented in the image: man, woman, humanity, domestic appliance, food, cars, cinema, TV, telephone, comics, tape recorder, history and space.


Just what is it that makes today's homes so different? 1992
This print updates the images for the nineties following the same list but using new computer technologies to scan picture elements electronically from a range of sources such as magazines, photographic prints, transparencies, and even a circuit board. Other details were 'grabbed' directly from video tape or shot with a Kodak DCS 200 digital camera and transferred into a computer. A variety of proprietary software prepared the material for transfer into a Quantel Paintbox to be masked, cut out, resized, put into perspective and pasted into the image. The process, which included learning to use the new technology, took many weeks.


Source: http://collection.britishcouncil.org/html/work/work.aspx?a=1&id=39513&section=/theme/