Secrets From the Street: No Disclosure
A look at the intersection of cultures and classes as exemplified in the street life of San Francisco's Mission District. Its stores and restaurants attract the “Anglo” middle class from the rest of the city and beyond. Tourists may feel they can fathom the area's “secrets” while plucking bargain diamonds from the trash. For the residents, largely working-class, often poor, the street is the hub of social relations, and its walls provide an outlet for young people's social expression as well as a forum for activists.
This videotape, produced for an exhibition held at both San Francisco's City Hall and its Museum of Modern Art, argues against the show's theme, 'Secrets of the Street: Public Disclosure' – that accounts of cultural life which omit the question of social power are mythical; the real "secret" is the obscured relation of economic and political domination of one's own culture over the observed sub-culture.
– Martha Rosler
Description Source: Cinenova Catalogue (1994). Edited by Kate Norrish. Editorial committee: Elaine Burrows, Liane Harris, Helen de Witt
