Please join us and Martha Rosler for an informal talk about gardening, embroidering, books and war. This evening will be first in a series of readings and discussions in and around Martha Rosler Library, with guest speakers including Molly Nesbit, Diedrich Diedrichsen, Chus Martinez, Jan Verwoert, Tom Holert and Nina Möntmann.
Admission is free, all are welcome.
Martha Rosler Library
unitednationsplaza is pleased to present Martha Rosler Library. 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, access 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. The bibliography, currently in process, can be accessed online at https://www.e-flux.com/projects/library
Martha Rosler was born in Brooklyn, New York, where she now lives, after spending the 1970s in California. She works in video, photo-text, installation, sculpture, and performance, and writes on aspects of culture. She is a renowned teacher and has lectured widely, nationally and internationally. Rosler’s work is centered on everyday life and the public sphere, often with an eye to women’s experience. Recurrent concerns are the media and war as well as architecture and the built environment, from housing and homelessness to systems of transport. Her work has been seen in the Venice Biennale of 2003; the Liverpool Biennial and the Taipei Biennial (both 2004); as well as many major international survey shows, including Open Systems at the Tate Modern (2005). Her work has been included in the Documenta exhibition in Kassel, Germany, and several Whitney biennials, and she has had numerous solo exhibitions. She has been invited to participate in SkulpturProjecte07 in Münster. A retrospective of her work, Positions in the Life World, was shown in five European cities and at the International Center of Photography and the New Museum for Contemporary Art (both in New York), concurrently (1998–2000). Rosler has published ten books of photography, art, and writing. Among them are Decoys and Disruptions: Selected Essays 1975–2001 (MIT Press, 2004, An October Book, in conjunction with the International Center of Photography), the photo books Passionate Signals (Cantz, 2005), In the Place of the Public: Airport Series (Cantz, 1997), and Rites of Passage (NYFA, 1995). If You Lived Here (Free Press, 1991) addresses her Dia project on housing, homelessness, and urban life. Several other books are in preparation. Rosler has been awarded the Spectrum International Prize in Photography for 2005. The prize was accompanied by a photo and video retrospective, If Not Now, When? at the Sprengel Museum in Hanover and NGBK in Berlin. Her solo exhibition, London Garage Sale, was held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in early June. She had a solo exhibition at Christian Nagel (Berlin) in January 2006 and at the University in Rennes in Spring 2006.
unitednationsplaza is exhibition as school. Structured as a seminar/residency program in the city of Berlin, it will involve collaboration with approximately 60 artists, writers, theorists and a wide range of audiences for a period of one year. In the tradition of Free Universities, most of its events will be open to all those interested to take part. unitednationsplaza is organized by Anton Vidokle in collaboration with Liam Gillick, Boris Groys, Martha Rosler, Walid Raad, Jalal Toufic, Nikolaus Hirsch, Natascha Sadr Haghighian and Tirdad Zolghadr.
Martha Rosler Library
June 2 – August 31, 2007
unitednationsplaza
Platz der Vereinten Nationen 14a
Berlin 10249 Germany
T. 49 (0)30 700 89 0 90
F. 49 (0)30 700 89 0 85
Opening hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 14:00–20:00
For further information, please contact Magdalena Magiera:
