[Career Counciling for Women in the Arts: Muriel Cooper]

A interview with designer and Media Director for M.I.T. Press Muriel Cooper, filmed as part of a series of documentaries about "Women in the Arts."

00:05Copy video clip URL A large crowd gathered around a television set on which an experimental video is playing. 

01:23Copy video clip URL A young woman typing at her desk. 

01:36Copy video clip URL Muriel Cooper says that she is “approaching my half century” and that, because there are so few women allowed in her field, she has “been a token woman a lot.” High percentage of women in art school versus those who are given jobs in design. 

04:09Copy video clip URL Cooper discusses her job as media director for M.I.T. Press and her background as a designer. 

08:33Copy video clip URL The contrast between being an administrator and being a single artist working on one’s own. Learning to let go of her defensiveness about her designs “in order to accomplish more.”

09:30Copy video clip URL Choosing to come to M.I.T. Press in part because a book is so much more lasting than the usual freelance design. 

12:00Copy video clip URL Being a woman in the business world. Being conscious of salary discrepancy but not of overt discrimination. Cooper thinks her salary is likely in the top 2% for women in the United States, and that she can’t complain about her own situation but that she is very aware of widespread discrimination in publishing and design.

14:47Copy video clip URL What makes her want to accomplish things. Musing about possible deep psychological motivations. Trying to learn “to achieve less, with less effort.” She agonizes a lot over her work, she says. 

16:16Copy video clip URL The productive and counterproductive aspects of agonizing over her work too much. Treating administration “like a design problem.” 

17:30Copy video clip URL Learning about the nature of design problems through experience rather than through training or education. 

18:34Copy video clip URL What she would have done differently: “I would have gone into analysis, instead of therapy.” The camera pans to Cooper’s shoeless feet, which are propped up on her desk. 

19:35Copy video clip URL The dangers of mishandling power. Learning management not through explicit training but through experience making for a more humane administrator. Her path might have been simpler, she speculates, if she hadn’t rejected so much dogma about management and so much of management/administrative culture. 

22:35Copy video clip URL Holding a sandwich in her hand, Cooper talks about Freud and about penis envy while joking about it being a “hero sandwich, not a heroine sandwich.” She muses about people thinking of her as “a ball-breaker” and “out to castrate all the men around you” because they’re threatened by her. She thinks that’s “probably a crock of shit that can be disposed of as easily as this sandwich” but that it’s something that women need to be wary of. 

24:48Copy video clip URL It being an exciting time in art: “I’ve always liked frontiers, and I think this frontier is breaking.” Being on “the threshold of synthesizing a lot of human capabilities,” with art being the place where they are brought together. 

26:25Copy video clip URL Whether women have to care more and “break your ass” more than men. 

27:47Copy video clip URL Advice for women: “Know yourself best. Allow yourself to fail. And at the same time make yourself do better every time. And don’t kill yourself because you’ve screwed it. And learn as much as you can every time you fail. And, finally, find out what’s best and focus as best you can. And, I guess, most of all be honest in what you do and how you behave.” 

29:26Copy video clip URL The mistake of thinking that “life is gonna be happy.” What she’s learned from being a teacher. As the tape comes to an end, Cooper takes a big bite of her sandwich and jokes “now we can actually talk!”

 

 

0 Comments

You can be the first one to leave a comment.

Leave a Comment

 
 




 
Copyright © 2024 Media Burn Archive.
Media Burn Archive | 935 W Chestnut St Suite 405 Chicago IL 60642
(312) 964-5020 | [email protected]