Born to be Sold: Martha Rosler Reads the Strange Case of Baby $/M

Born to be Sold: Martha Rosler Reads the Strange Case of Baby $/M

1988 · 35 min · Comedy, Drama

Born to be Sold is Paper Tiger Television and Rosler's acerbic and witty interpretation of the notorious "Baby M" case, in which a natural — "surrogate" — mother and father of a baby fought each other for custody of the child. Rosler assumes various roles of the participants in the controversy, from the baby to the sperm, from the lawyer to the judge, as well as the two women in the case. Reconstructing the story from its trial by media and the court transcripts, Rosler views "surrogate" mother Mary Beth Whitehead's actions as an attempt to defy the identity assigned by her class and gender, and sees the verdict favoring the Sterns as an endorsement of the father's phallic right, his jurisprudential entitlement. Her analysis demonstrates how political, class and ideological systems are played out on the body of the woman.

Directed by Martha Rosler

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Born to be Sold: Martha Rosler Reads the Strange Case of Baby $/M

Vital Statistics of a Citizen, Simply Obtained

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Vital Statistics of a Citizen, Simply Obtained

Vital Statistics of a Citizen, Simply Obtained · 1977

Vital Statistics of a Citizen, Simply Obtained

Taking aim at the social standardization enforced particularly on women's bodies, Rosler critiques the politics of "objective" or scientific evaluation that result in the depersonalization, objectification, and colonization of women and Others.

Semiotics of the Kitchen

Semiotics of the Kitchen · 1975

Semiotics of the Kitchen

Martha Rosler explores kitchen utensils by alphabet.

Flower Fields

Flower Fields · 1974

"This short film was intended to create a colour field painting based on the flower fields that provided the living for so many, mostly undocumented, workers in the area. When the camera closes in on the beautiful colour-striped hillside, the laborers in the field can be seen. Later, in a run up Highway 5, we see the immigration police at their mobile roadblock."

Because This Is Britain

Because This Is Britain · 2012

Because This Is Britain

A visualization of phrases used by Prime Minister David Cameron during his Oxfordshire speech addressing the events of August 2011. Selected phrases emerge from the stream of his speech, punctuated by images of ordinary passersby, teenagers, youths at a job centre, looters, the Bullingdon Club, ‘riot wombles’ and an Occupy sign.

How Do We Know What Home Looks Like? The Unité d’Habitation of Le Corbusier at Firminy, France

How Do We Know What Home Looks Like? The Unité d’Habitation of Le Corbusier at Firminy, France · 1993

How Do We Know What Home Looks Like? The Unité d’Habitation of Le Corbusier at Firminy, France

Shot in Firminy-Vert, a Le Corbusier Unité, or housing project, in south-central France, this work traces the building’s history through an engagement with the lives of its residents and traces of its past. Called “Le Corbu” after its renowned architect, the complex was built after his death. Here is the space for an unspoken text about architecture and the warring interpretations of Le Corbusier’s idea of what might constitute a human, humane, humanizing space.

Prototype (God Bless America)

Prototype (God Bless America) · 2006

Prototype (God Bless America)

A mechanical toy figure dressed as an American soldier bends and sways, playing God Bless America — the sentimental, unofficial, and highly favored national anthem during World War II — on a bugle. The camera pans down, revealing that the toy’s camouflage-clad trouser leg has been rolled up to uncover a mechanism that looks uncannily like a prosthetic limb!

The East Is Red, The West Is Bending

The East Is Red, The West Is Bending · 1977

The East Is Red, The West Is Bending

Rosler uses the format of a cooking demonstration (as in Semiotics of the Kitchen) to address cultural transaction--the meeting of Eastern and Western cultures. Reading directly from a West Bend Electric Wok instruction booklet, Rosler wryly comments upon the Oriental mystique conjured by the West Bend manufacturers, a mystique evoked and then "improved" upon through Western technology--i.e. non-stick surfaces and electric power. Drawing attention to the choice of the color red on the wok, Rosler, in typical deadpan fashion, raises the bogeyman of Communist China, holding up a pamphlet of Chairman Mao Tse-Tung and saying, "Remember this guy?"

Backyard Economy 1

Backyard Economy 1 · 1974

Backyard Economy 1

Set in the arch-American "home movie" context of a sunny suburban yard, Rosler's early Super-8 film Backyard Economy I documents the products of mundane domestic chores. Silently depicting scenes of laundry hanging out to dry in a suburban backyard, Rosler points up the labor that allows leisure and interrogates its underlying "economy."

Backyard Economy 2 (Diane Germain Mowing)

Backyard Economy 2 (Diane Germain Mowing) · 1974

Backyard Economy 2 (Diane Germain Mowing)

short of a woman mowing a lawn

Chile on the Road to NAFTA, Accompanied by the National Police Band

Chile on the Road to NAFTA, Accompanied by the National Police Band · 1997

Chile on the Road to NAFTA, Accompanied by the National Police Band

A bouncy music-video burlesque shot in and around Santiago, Chile, entwines reminders of U.S. corporate presence and of past political terror, with national and international musical strains. Chile, at the southernmost end of South America, was in 1997 on the fast track to admission into the economic alliance known as the North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Chile was enjoying its reputation abroad as a free-market success — a reputation promulgated by those who aided or supported the fascist coup led by General Augusto Pinochet, which had violently overthrown the elected government and led to the deaths of the President, Salvador Allende, and thousands of others, and the exile of tens of thousands of political refugees.

Semiotics of the Kitchen: An Audition

Semiotics of the Kitchen: An Audition · 2011

Semiotics of the Kitchen: An Audition

In 2003, Rosler announced an open call for a live re-staging of her 1975 video Semiotics of the Kitchen, to be held at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, for A Short History of Performance, Part II. Twenty-six women — actors, artists, curators, and museum staff among them — participated in a rotating performance of the work. On three sets stocked with kitchen utensils, the participants enacted the work in front of an audience, while their performances also appeared on monitors throughout the gallery. At the end of the performance, the three groups of women came together to present the last few gestures of the video — including its final shrug. Semiotics of the Kitchen: An Audition documents the preliminary rehearsals with Rosler and the public event, the “audition.”

Martha Rosler Reads "Vogue"

Martha Rosler Reads "Vogue" · 1982

Martha Rosler Reads "Vogue"

In this live performance for Paper Tiger Television's public-access cable program in New York, Rosler deconstructs the messages in Vogue and its advertising. Rosler looks at the institutional slants of the magazine industry and the fashion industry's reliance on sweatshops.

Museums will eat your lunch

Museums will eat your lunch · 2013

Museums will eat your lunch

In this silent video, still images of stores and residential buildings in New York City appear within a cutout template, based on the “giftbox heap” formed by the New Museum silhouette. As these shiny storefronts, dwellings, and official documents of occupancy of the new Bowery in the 21st Century go by, set phrases relating to the merits and demerits of museums roll desultorily down from above to below.

A Budding Gourmet

A Budding Gourmet · 1974

A Budding Gourmet

‘A cook can’t just mix things up’, says a woman with a typical Brooklyn accent while the camera shows sophisticated images from food and travel magazines. In this black-and-white video, her first in this format, Martha Rosler explores the relationship between gastronomy, class and breeding. A silhouetted woman hiding her face from the camera describes her efforts to improve her status and that of her family through gastronomy. With a deadpan voice and accompanied by the strains of a violin concerto, the woman explains why she wants to become a gourmet. The text comes from one of Rosler’s ‘postcard novels’ entitled Budding Gourmet – also written in 1974 – in which in eleven chapters the artists tells the story in the first person of a woman wanting to learn haute cuisine to climb the social ladder.

Seattle: Hidden Histories

Seattle: Hidden Histories · 1995

Seattle: Hidden Histories

A series of one-minute interview-based spots Martha Rosler made with the American Indian community during her residence in Seattle from 1991 to 1995. Rosler reveals lost languages, unrecognized tribes, and the experiences of contemporary Native Americans living not on reservations but in the city.

Reading the Media

Reading the Media

Reading the Media

Founded by a collective of radical media makers in 1981, Paper Tiger Television pioneered edutainment. Broadcast on public access television, the collective took a grassroots, DIY approach to media production that showcased how television was made through television, while critiquing corporate media and attempting to build a more equitable form of moving image. As one of the founders put it: “It is one thing to critique the mass media and rail against their abuses. It is quite another to create viable alternatives.” Punk and experimental, Paper Tiger Television was such an alternative. The series, Reading the Media, featured all manner of intellectuals, artists, and activists analyzing, and satirizing newspapers, magazines, and even cigarette ads to decipher their hidden codes, messages, and ideologies.

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