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On October 24, Millersville University will present its 2012-13 Conrad Nelson Lecture featuring Martha Rosler, media artist. This event will be held at 7:30 p.m. at the Ware Center, Millersville University Lancaster.
Rosler, photographer, video and performance artist and critic, has persistently addressed the role of mass media in reinforcing cultural stereotypes relating to gender, war, housing and transportation. As an artist of the feminist art movement, Rosler examines the dissemination of gender roles and standards of beauty and health via broadcast television. She continues to produce agitational and collaborative works focused on social change.
In Rosler’s photomontage series, House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home, she juxtaposed battlefield scenes of the Vietnam War taken from Life magazine with images of upper-middle class home interiors. The depiction of American homes by Vietnamese civilians and soldiers played upon the reference to the Vietnam War as the first “living room war.” This series was intended to reveal Americans’ passive consumption of the war and, by their inaction, their unspoken approval. She recreated this series in 1994, during the first Iraq War, and again in 2004 and 2008, to address the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, using the same format to make the point that little had changed.
Prior to presenting this year’s Conrad Nelson Lecture, Rosler will appear on a panel discussion, “Understanding Media Today: Sorting the Truthiness,” along with Brooke Gladstone, author of the Millersville University’s One Book, One Campus selection, The Influencing Machine. Rosler’s son, Josh Neufeld, is the illustrator of The Influencing Machine.
This event is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Christine Filippone, assistant professor of art history, at christine.filippone@millersville.edu or 717-872-3912.
