Secrets from the Street: No Disclosure

Martha Rosler

Secrets from the Street: No Disclosure, 1980

Artwork text

A view from a moving car of street life and the brightly colored shop fronts of San Francisco’s “Mission District,” a Latino quarter that is a magnet for tourists. The video was produced for the exhibition Public Disclosure: Secrets from the Street, which took place simultaneously in both City Hall and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In contrast to the title of the exhibition, Rosler revealed as myths those presentations of cultural life that leave out the question of social power. The real “secret” is the obscure relationship between economic and political power exercised by one’s own culture on the sub-culture. “The secret is that to understand a culture the limits of understanding in one’s own culture must be fully grasped.” (Sabine Breitwieser)