Dear Martha

Here is the list of interview questions I emailed Martha Rosler, for my dissertation. I contacted her the other week at Rutgers University and she agreed to an interview.

1. Since you were still in your MA program at the University of California-San Diego (UCSD) during the staging of the Monumental Garage Sale in 1973 (is this correct?), what was its reception academically at the UCSD, among the professors and that university art environment?
2. Did you intend the Garage Sale to always be presented in a gallery setting, would a suburban yard or garage be just as affective? Interestingly, however, in many of your interviews and writings you state how for a while your artistic practice operated in opposition to the containers for the mainstream art world. (I’m referring here to your 1996 statement, republished in Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology.)
3. How did you come up with the concept of the Monumental Garage Sale? At the time, how did your artistic practice and your thought process develop leading up to it?
4. When you were an MA student at the UCSD, whom were you reading? Had you begun reading Henri Lefebvre at that point? (You cited that Lefebvre was an influence of yours, in the 1999 interview with Benjamin Buchloh for your book Positions in the Life World.)
5. Since the Garage Sale has been restaged over the past 30 years now, how have you noticed the work’s reception alter since the first show in 1973?
6. At the time of the 1973 Monumental Garage Sale, were you familiar with Arman’s Le Plein (Full Up, 1960) or Jannis Kounellis’s Dodici Cavalli Livi (Twelve Horses, 1969)? Or, what did you think of those gestures in relation to yours afterwards? In general, what were you artistic influences when you were a postgrad student?
7. Have your garage sales been held outside gallery spaces since the inaugural 1973 version? According to my research, it has been held at the following locations: UCSD, Lamelle Gallery (San Francisco), Project Arts Centre (Dublin), New Museum (NYC), Generali Foundation (Vienna), and most recently the ICA (London). Is this correct?

Some short technical questions:

1. When did you return to NYC after your studies at UCSD?
2. Was the 1977 Traveling Garage Sale at Lamelle, in the “garage” of the gallery or the gallery itself? (I’m referring here to the text for Traveling Garage Sale in your Positions in the Life World.)