Sample from second draft

I'm having some technical difficulties uploading my second draft to my webspace on Villanova University's server; because Leeds Uni's computers don't have Microsoft Frontpage. But the full second draft will be posted sometime probably Monday. Here is a sample paragraph: In 1973, while still a postgraduate student at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), New York born artist Martha Rosler held a garage sale. Of course, the garage sale is a common feature of the suburban American landscape—whether in southern California or other parts of the United States. However, instead of the garage sale being held in its logical location, i.e. a garage or suburban yard, Rosler’s garage sale was held in the student art gallery at UCSD. This gallery gesture was entitled the Monumental Garage Sale, it was: Advertised as a jumble sale in local newspapers but also as an art event within the art community, this work took the form of house-hold sale where second-hand goods – clothes, books, records, toys, costume jewellery and personal letters and mementos – were displayed on racks and tables and sold off over the course of the exhibition. A gesture of this kind is a participant in the wider critical stances towards systems and systemizing, characterized by the 1970s international art scene. Rosler’s Garage Sale provokes the spectator to rethink what gallery and everyday spaces are, and the schism that has been occurred between them. Commodities are indeed being sold in the gallery during the garage sale exhibition, however, these everyday objects are not “art” as object in the same sense as one of Marcel Duchamp readymades—at least in terms of the art market or auction block. The objects participate in Rosler’s installation/performance as material exchanges—and are vital ones at that. Instead of art as object(hood), it is rather art involving objects. Rosler navigates a unique territory consisting of both dematerialism and materialism. The Garage Sale is critical to the art object itself as ‘transcendental’ and the gallery as a space for transcendental art objects. Rosler Garage Sale gesture presents a interesting dilemma for late-capitalism in art galleries, where basically products are for sale (it was indeed a fully operating garage sale!), however, the products one is buying are not necessarily “art.” Art is happening, things are being sold, but not being sold as art (as a sacred object). The gesture is really the art, the spectators/museum goers who are shopping in the garage sale and the collection of objects; but not the objects themselves, Rosler’s gesture is unlike that of Duchamp readymades, the latter of course could be sold for millions. Rosler saleability—of objects—is a bit of merely small change for a shirt, a vinyl record, etc. What I would argue is occurring in Rosler’s performance piece is a dematerialization; consequently, coexisting with an artwork whose materialization is essential to its existence and the issue of commodity fetishism in her work, i.e. the exchange of goods for cash that occurs in any garage sale.