If it's Too Bad to Be True, It Could Be DISINFORMATION

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© Generali Foundation Collection—Permanent Loan to the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Repro: Werner Kaligofsky

Martha Rosler

If it's Too Bad to Be True, It Could Be DISINFORMATION, 1985

Video, color, sound, 16 min 26 sec Post production: John J. Godfrey

GF0002006.00.0-1999

Artwork text

The title of both the installation and the video is drawn from an article in the New York Times on Soviet MIG fighter planes in Nicaragua. In this article “disinformation” is defined as a strategy of the administration for misleading people with incorrect details and cover-ups, causing confusion and even destabilizing a government, but startlingly, this is with reference to the Soviet Union, not the U.S. With a montage of NBC Nightly News and other news broadcasts, the artist inquires into the reliability of electronic broadcasts by integrating mistakes in sound and image, as if they were technical problems. (Sabine Breitwieser)