Haggerty Museum: Martha Rosler

Martha Rosler

Invasion 2008 from Bringing The War Home: House Beautiful, new series 2004-08, photomontage as o-print 30x40"

I often feel that I'm living in a land of make believe where my job and my easy access to excess is a fantasy superimposed on the poverty and war of the real world. I found out I'm not alone. Martha Rosler started making photomontages in the sixties as a way to express her political and anti-war sentiments. Her original plan was to be an abstract expressionist painter. When pop art came on the scene she found the use of everyday images from advertising and pop culture better suited her perception of the world.

In an interview with WUWM's Lake Effect she talked about how the juxtaposition of images in photomontages reflected the strange, disconnectedness I have often felt living in relative comfort in the US, surrounded by advertisements and reality TV while watching our soldiers and our enemies kill each other in Iraq and Afghanistan from a distance. "We have mentally constructed a here and a there. Over there is chaos, hell, blood and death...It's one world."

The feeling of being disconnected is often just below the surface. Rosler's photomontages bring that feeling to the surface and help us to remember that the world out there is just as real as here.

Now until October 4th Rosler's photomontages titled Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful will be part of an exhibit called Jump Cut Pop at the Haggerty Museum

MKE MOVIE MAKER DARRAN COLE

Through a project called Alpha Sessions native Darren Cole is creating a record of what's happening in Milwaukee's corner of Hip Hop and presenting it to the world via video. He presents Mcs more as artists than "rappers." Milwaukee Hip Hop is a million miles away from corporate rap. Cole's videos are shot on the street, in the laundromat, at the grocery store. There's no glamor, no money. These guys are a little scary looking. But this is what you get when you leave the ivory tower and come down to street level. Cole's love of Hip Hop bleeds into his love of vinyl, which he shares in a documentary film shot around Milwaukee. I hope to see more from Darren Cole.

Alpha Sessions~Dana Coppafeel "88" from Darren Cole on Vimeo.

An MC in his element from Darren Cole on Vimeo.

Vinyl Wax Records from Darren Cole on Vimeo.