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Barbara Kruger: Part of the Discourse | Art21 "Extended Play"

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    ["Barbara Kruger: Part of the Discourse"]
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    How come any piece of canvas
    with pigment on it
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    gets to be called art?
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    There are so many ways of making art,
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    some of them more available
    to a general public than others.
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    I remember going to galleries
    when I was young--
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    totally intimidated!
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    Certain works have to be decoded.
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    I think the availability of my work
    was important to me,
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    because I was that viewer
    who didn’t understand--
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    who didn’t know the codes.
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    Performa approached me,
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    and the skatepark came up in conversation.
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    I just go, "Oh that would be so cool."
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    "Money talks."
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    "Whose values?"
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    These are just ideas in the air,
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    and questions that we ask sometimes--
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    and questions that we don’t ask
    but should ask.
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    I grew up in Newark, New Jersey.
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    My mother and my father,
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    neither of them have college degrees.
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    We lived in a three-room apartment
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    and I slept in the living room.
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    I was always very aware of how
    where we’re born,
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    what we are given,
    and what is withheld from us
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    determines who we can be in the world.
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    I came to New York.
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    Went to Parson’s for a year.
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    Started working as a billing clerk
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    and then a telephone operator.
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    Living in Newark and later New York,
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    maybe you didn’t read the tabloids
    but you saw them everyday
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    in the subway and everywhere.
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    All of a sudden,
    I heard there were jobs at Condé Nast.
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    I was lucky--
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    I got hired as a second designer.
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    If you didn’t get people
    to look at those pages,
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    you were fired.
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    Cropping pictures.
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    Choosing fonts.
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    When I first started I thought,
    "Oh I want to be art director,"
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    but it was a different world.
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    I was like a chimney sweep
    compared to the other people who worked there.
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    I really took time off
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    and tried to figure out
    what it might mean to call myself an artist.
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    I remember saying to people,
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    "Can I just be an artist by working with
    pasteup and magic marker?"
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    "No, you can’t do that."
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    I realized I could use the fluencies
    as a designer
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    to make my work.
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    I like fonts that cut through the grease--
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    the, sort of, clarity
    of those sans serif fonts.
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    I felt that red capture one’s attention.
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    In most cases, I could not afford to
    print these images in color.
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    I used to go to used bookstores
    and find old magazines,
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    and I converted them to black and white.
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    For us, in 1981, '83,
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    showing your work was about
    being a part of the discourse.
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    When my peer group first started being discussed,
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    and our work was being sold,
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    I thought, "Well if my work is developing
    this commodity status, I had to address it."
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    Issues about power, value,
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    unfortunately do not grow old.
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    Architecture is my first love.
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    I just spatialize ideas.
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    I know what areas to engage
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    to activate a space
    with images and with text.
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    "Think like us."
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    "Hate like us."
    "Fear like us."
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    I want my work to create commentary.
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    [PROTESTOR]
    --Right to life, your name’s a lie,
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    --you don’t care if women die.
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    [KRUGER] I made "Your body is a battleground"
    to get people to go to the march.
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    This was for women’s reproductive rights.
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    I remember calling Planned Parenthood
    and offering my services,
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    and they didn’t know who the eff I was.
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    They said, well they were
    working with an advertising agency.
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    Oh okay, alright.
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    So I used this printer named Quirky.
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    I used to print all these posters with him.
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    I went out at one or two in the morning
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    and put these posters up all over town.
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    Well, of course I’m a feminist.
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    But I have never been able to consider
    gender or sexuality apart from class--
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    and never thought of class apart from race.
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    Something to really think about
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    is what makes us who we are
    in the world that we live in,
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    and how culture constructs and contains us.
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    There are stereotypes of the artist
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    or of the musician.
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    Those are the kinder stereotypes.
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    People ask me all the time,
    can they come to my studio?
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    And I say, do you want me to put a beret on
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    and you can photograph me with a big table?
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    I said, no--
    no.
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    I just don’t want to be that person.
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    There’s enough visual record of me.
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    You don’t need a million pictures.
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    What it means
    to point a camera at another person,
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    I think that there’s a brutality about that.
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    "You."
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    "You know that women have served
    all these centuries"
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    "as looking glasses possessing the magic
    and delicious power"
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    "of reflecting the figure of man at twice
    its natural size."
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    It’s a Virginia Woolf quote.
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    I just had to use that.
Title:
Barbara Kruger: Part of the Discourse | Art21 "Extended Play"
Description:

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Video Language:
English
Team:
Art21
Project:
"Extended Play" series
Duration:
07:25

English subtitles

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