Monday 19 April 2010

Martha Rosler - If you lived here......

This quote from Martha Roslers book "if you lived here" seems really pertinent to my thinking about Landscape-Portrait:

"Social activists, certainly, continue to recognise the importance of documentary evidence in arguing for social change. It is the necessity ot acknowledge the place- and time - from which one speaks that is an absolute requirement for meaningful social documentary”

"Naturally, this shifts the terrain of the argument from the art object - the photograph, the film, the videotape, the picture book or magazine - to the context, to the process of signification, and to social process."

The idea of documentary evidence - allowing "acknowledging historical context yet allowing 'unquantifiable sources' - LP can be seen in this light, in try to create a dataset of documentary evidence as part of a integrated practice. How this data might be used, either in gallery, planning office or locally convened online campaign is relevant to its audience.

The other thing to think of here is time:stamp. LP is ambiguous about this, the video is not dated, whilst it acknowledges place - via a Google map. Is it important for each of the video portraits to be dated.

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