What happened to Ana Mendieta ? (as the Womens Caucus for Art created as a protest chant after her possible murder )l. , What happened to Ana?

I am perforing with in the digital body without the essentializing element,
eg i am not interested in determinging 'what is ' feminine or even 'what
it' la conchita or 'diasster' as nominative or ontological conditions.
thus different from Ana; i, more like, moving the strategy of her performative engaegment
with the site into a zone of fictive constructions that live alongside or at the
limn of a kind of black hole I feel on the 'other side' of the screen and / or at the edge of
consciousness. A black hole that is the 'real' eg jouissance in lacanian terms,
or in a darker mood, the 'baree life' of the incommensurate, unimage able,
unimaginable hell of pain iinvolved in the concentration camp or in any of the extremes
of human suffering. I take it as given that all identitities are constructed identities
and that when we construct an identity it doesnt give us (or it) any special or
essential power or position. It is also important to me not to label any site or
conditon as an observable 'bare life' becuase it is so important for a raw
topology and the persons who really live in it to create the chance of moving back
into ordinary life and into an articulable space, a place and and identity that
they can reclaim.

"I take it as given that all identities are constructed identities
and that when we construct an identity it doesnt give us (or it) any special or essential power or position."

This Summer I spent several days not sleeping driving into Newark airport at midnight and disrupting my normal patterns. (no I wasn't taking any drugs) At one point after staying up for 24 hours straight I was able to catch a couple of hours sleep. When I awoke, I was aware and conscious but my brain wouldn't start. I didn't know who I was. None of the normal thoughts upon awakening occured such as, what I was going to do, my aches and pains, sensing (locating) where I was. It was truly frightening.
I have to disagree with Christina. We may be constructing our identities every minute and that does give us a special power. Indeed, most artists, writers etc.. work within the realm of constructed identity and constructed reality. They are observers of both the internal and the external constructs even as they challenge those assumptions and propose something different.

Hi GH,

following my hypothesis,

"take it as given that all identitities are constructed identities
and that when we construct an identity it doesnt give us (or it) any special or
essential power or position. "

you write,

"I have to disagree with Christina. We may be constructing our identities every minute and that does give us a special power. Indeed, most artists, writers etc.. work within the realm of constructed identity and constructed reality. They are observers of both the internal and the external constructs even as they challenge those assumptions and propose something different. "

Probably, "power' isn't quite the word to convey my meaning. I agree with you, of course, GH, constructing identities in a deliberate way as artists do, may enable us to develop strong challenging positions against the status quo and in that sense there's a power that we activate through construction. Sure. All I meant to suggest is that as a working model I don't assume a priori superior status/ priority/ privileging of my observations and actions in a site specific practice, over against the place itself and the people who live there. I just have an instinct that if I can submerge
my 'self' deeply into the environmental conditions of the site, the work that I perform subsequently , whether it's drawing, photomontage, video installation, will unfold a layered open work, or critical space, that moves beyond the dialectic of the participant-observer vs the site.

Sort of a third space (following Soja) or tri=alectic. Engaging with an Other as a third term. This Other remains outside the construction of your identity and your actions.

Certainly I would assume that the presence of work as a consequence of this encounter with third space has power for other people. In that it's open to them to interpret and then construct new thought and content. Thus the site study (or non site ! study) may become a critical space for generative knowledge, a heuristic, even.

Christina McPhee
www.christinamcphee.net
www.strikeslip.tv
www.naxsmash.net