Re: [-empyre-] the invisible subject

["Ana Valdes" <agora158@gmail.com>]

I am raised by German nuns, also a very fundamentalist community. For
them the issue was to make the body invisible, to hidden it behind
black dresses and coifs, according to them "the body was only the
vessel of the soul", a source of sin and decay and foul odours.
Later, on the jail, we were also hidden in grey uniforms and our hair
was cut, to avoid "tempt the male jailers and soldiers we were guarded
by".
When I was in Palestine, in Gaza, I spent the 8th March, International
Womens Day, with several hundred women, performing and acting.
Almost all the women were covered by veils, some of them wore burkha
similar clothes which covered the whole body, gloves too, the only you
could see were the eyes and many wore dark sunglasses.
The invisibilization of the body made the body only more desirable and
the itch to peel the layers of clothes and see behind was very clear
for all of us who were not fully clothed.
Ana

On 7/12/06, Christina McPhee <christina112@earthlink.net> wrote:
> When I was a little girl, I could not get my dad (an academic) to
> admit that there was  such a thing as  women's history (he was a
> professional historian).    He argued that to label history as
> women's was to stereotype history.
>
> At the same time it was agonizingly obvious that there were 'no women
> artists'' . The grammar  that  insisted the term 'woman' was just a
> subset (subject?) of the term 'man' made for a violent erasure.
>
> in the fundamentalist community in which I grew up, the talent and
> intellect required of an artist,  could never be actualized if born
> female.  I began to devise,   visual art, as a tool  to bash a way
> through the barriers.   I had to leave that community or die.
> Because I learned this as a child  I experience life from a certain
> remove.
>
> When in the seventies  American culture put 'differential' into
> descriptive language about human beings,  so that you always were
> obliged to say, '\he or she' , instead of 'he' , this was a step
> towards actual speech in real words, in actions, in art,  things
> like, how 'exposure' and 'gaze ' are different for women than for men.
>
> Being 'erased' in that culture caused a resort to trying any means
> available, any resource, to create a communication.  Drawing.
> Writing. Making grades so I could get the fuck out of there.   Living
> in the 'bare' of being invisible.  how to make visible work when you
> are invisible.
>
> Art practice is an inflammatory speech against,  the making invisible
> of the individual subject.
>
>
>
> -cm
>
>
> www.christinamcphee.net
> www.strikeslip.tv
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth
with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you
will always long to return.
— Leonardo da Vinci