Hub Notes: The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems, 2/8/08
Hub Notes: The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems, 2/8/08
In a recent conversation with Elise Youn, the current Hub Fellow, we had questions about how Martha Rosler’s piece, The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems (1974-75), came across in the context of the
Hub’s neighborhood concept. We were concerned that the subtle incisiveness of the work was sometimes overlooked and perhaps being read too quickly as a kind of testament to the past conditions of the
neighborhood. While myth and culture on the Bowery incorporates a long history of urban underbelly-ness (transients, transience, drunkenness), we wanted to emphasize the work’s presence in the Hub space not as a nostalgic nod to the neighborhood’s grittier past (nor is it meant to provide comedic relief to ease anxieties of gentrification and the New Museum’s role in the rapidly changing identity of the Bowery). The dry and fleeting humor in the work couches Rosler’s strategic critique of systems of representation, namely the fallibility of photography’s claim to “documentary” truth and the reductive nature of words and naming. The “inadequacy” referred to in the title preempts the inability of the photographs and text to account for the complexities of the subject, i.e. the Bowery, as a sphere of New York’s urban life. Additionally, The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems questions how, if at all, we account for the “absent” and non-represented strata of society.
For more information see Rosler’s book:
Martha Rosler: 3 Works: 1. The Restoration of High Culture in Chile; 2. The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems; 3. in, around, and afterthoughts (on documentary photography)
Published by The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (2006).
Also here some links to relevant articles:
Eleanor Heartney, “Documents of Dissent – Martha Rosler,” Art in America, March 2001.
-Sabrina Locks