Domination and the Everyday
Domination and the Everyday
1978
audio archive
image not available online
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While deconstructing the unity of image and text is normal practice in Rosler’s video works, in this piece it is taken to extremes: video and still images and a crawling text on the screen all work in parallel without any formal correlation. An American middle-class woman feeds her young child in the kitchen and gets him ready for bed, while on the radio a gallerist is being interviewed about the art of the sixties and a written text slowly traversing the screen alludes to forms of domination in everyday life. Based on sociological analysis from the Frankfurt School, the work compares life in Chile and the United States. On these three visual registers (TV interview, mother/child dialogue and a theoretical text on screen), Rosler superimposes family photographs, trivial adverts from magazines and images of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. This fragmented symbiosis of still images, action, sound and discourse synthesizes what the artist self-describes as the ‘artist-mother’s This Is Your Life’. A vital context in which the media and the State are entwined with private life: the mixture of sound, text and visual elements can be seen as intense snippets of everyday experiences, showing the cracks through which politics invades our daily lives.

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original title
Domination and the Everyday
year of acquisition
2008
type of object
Audiovisual recording
credits
MACBA Collection. Barcelona City Council long-term loan
registration number
R.3232
date
1978
fonds
MACBA Collection. Long-term loan of the Barcelona City Council
media
Single-channel video, color, sound, 28 min 33 s
Copyright
© Martha Rosler
original title
Domination and the Everyday
registration number
R.3232
date
1978
year of acquisition
2008
fonds
MACBA Collection. Long-term loan of the Barcelona City Council
type of object
Audiovisual recording
media
Single-channel video, color, sound, 28 min 33 s
credits
MACBA Collection. Barcelona City Council long-term loan
Copyright
© Martha Rosler
Mother and child
Radio
Mass media
Manners and customs
Art dealers
United States
Chile
Pinochet, Augusto
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