Martha Rosler
dal 1/6/2007 al 30/8/2007
Segnalato da
1/6/2007
Martha Rosler
unitednationsplaza, Berlin
The Library comprises of approximately 7.700 titles from the artist's personal collection. A personal library represents the private sphere of an individual, her way of acquiring and combining knowledge. The event offers the visitor an opportunity to approach this open source of information with her or his own interests, and to create new affinities and connections.
Library
unitednationsplaza is pleased to announce the opening of Martha Rosler Library on
Saturday, June 2nd, 2007 at 19:00. Comprised of approximately 7,700 titles from the
artist's personal collection, the Library was opened to the public by e-flux in
November 2005 as a storefront reading room on Ludlow street in New York City. It has
since traveled to Frankfurter Kunstverein and MuHKA, Antwerp. The library will
remain on view in Berlin through August 31st and will travel to Institut national
d’histoire de l’art in Paris in November.
In an act of incredible generosity, one of America’s most important living
artists temporarily dispossessed herself of the vast majority of her personal
library so that it could be made available for consultation. No borrowing was
possible, but the eclectic ensemble of books on economics, political theory, war,
colonialism, poetry, feminism, science fiction, art history, mystery novels,
children’s books, dictionaries, maps and travel books, as well as photo albums,
posters, postcards and newspaper clippings could be studied at will. Smart,
decidedly political in orientation, often funny, and all over the place (in that way
a perfect mirror of its owner), the library is packed with essential reading and
titles that even your better bookstores would love to get their hands on. As the
product of decades of avid reading, the contents of the library are both the source
of Rosler’s work and an installation/artwork that continues many of the concerns –
with public space, acces
s to information and engaged citizenship – that traverse her entire oeuvre.
--Elena Filipovic, Afterall, issue 15, Spring/Summer 2007
A personal library represents the private sphere of an individual, her way of
acquiring and combining knowledge. Accumulation is the result of an intellectual
inquiry that takes place in parallel with a more random search, which can lead us to
unexpected textual, and therefore mental, spaces. Martha Rosler Library offers the
visitor an opportunity to approach this open source of information with her or his
own interests, and to create new affinities and connections between the elements of
the library that add to more than the sum of knowledge contained in it.
A reading group will be assembled to use the library as the basis for a series of
informal discussions around texts chosen by Martha Rosler and members of the group.
The meetings were initiated in New York, and are continuing at all locations of the
library as it travels. For each meeting, a guest reader will select a text from the
library and lead the group. Martha Rosler will join for a special talk on June 20th
at 19:00 hrs.
Opening june 2, 2007
unitednationsplaza
Platz der Vereinten Nationen - Berlin
Admission is free