Martha Rosler - Kitchen Semiotics

A classic. I totally get this video now. I saw it a year ago at the WACK! exhibit and was like "what is up with that lady banging pans?" It's such a complex video first about how the domestic world is constructed and the tools of women's (generally) labor. In viewing it again it takes on an aspect of violence in how she presents each of these implements. Even the ladle is used violently (if you consider standing next to her over a pot of hot soup). So her use of the tools - without food - brings me to thinking about Louis Althusser and the ways in which violence (or the threat of violence) are used to control people, in this case women. There's an ambiguity in Rosler's video as to whether she (as Woman) is an object of the violence or a subject-agent of the violence. That ambiguity keeps this piece relevant and gripping to me. There is more to say on this video, but that is for my research paper.