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Of Non-places and Heterotopias

Of Non-places and Heterotopias: The Mise-en-Scène of Death and Terror(ism) in Antigone and the German ‘Hot Autumn’ of 1977 By Emily Babette  In this essay, I will attempt to compare and contrast the ‘mise-en-scène’ of the play  Antigone  (specifically Sophocles’ version, although the Bertolt Brecht and Friedrich Hölderlin version would work as well) with the historical events undertaken by the urban terrorist group the Red Army Faction (the RAF) in the ‘Hot Autumn’ of 1977 in Germany. In addition to real-life events of the RAF, I explore the film  Germany in Autumn  directed by Alexander Kluge, and two distinct bodies of artwork which were made in response to the actions and demise of the RAF. I use these responsive works to further my investigation of the mise-en-scènes found throughout all of them. These bodies of work are  October 18, 1977  by Gerhard Richter and  I am Ulrike Meinhof or (someone once told me time if a flat circle)  by Daniel Joseph Martinez. To begin with, I am
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Women as Infrastructure

     Historically women have been repressed to stay within the private sphere, ‘behind-the-scenes’ so to speak, as the public sphere was initially intended only to be accessible to men. This was true well into the twentieth century, but as women today in the twenty-first century continue to strive for equity and equality, the quest for accessibility is an on-going project. Part of the historic inaccessibility to the public sphere was due to the lack of occupations and opportunities available to women, as women were mostly relegated to the role of caregiver. Caregiver could be taken literally, to denote mother and/or house-wife, but for working-class women caregiver could also denote domestic-mimicking occupations such as housekeepers, cleaners, child-care workers, servers, etc. (i.e. domestic labor).        I will emphasis that this essay is not to be considered an ethnographic sweep of all women , and I go don’t want to come across as deliberately leaving out vast amounts of the fem
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Thoughts on Home, from Home.

I am writing this post as I am going into my third week of quarantine due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which is sweeping the planet. It feels like a very appropriate time to sit down and share some thoughts and meditations on home.. from home. I have an on going body of work where I explore the concept of home and domestic spaces from a feminist point of view. Additionally, my point of view has been developed from my peripatetic childhood, as I spent my formative years nomadically moving with my family between Canada, Australia, and the US. Typically we would dwell in a place for no longer than one year, and often far less. In 2018 I became a naturalized citizen of the United States, after living in this country for eighteen years under the status of "legal alien." This shift in the legality of my  permission  to dwell here, permanently and as a bonafide citizen with full rights, led me to ask the questions: "Is the United States now my home?" "What is home?&quo
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Heart is Where the Home is.

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A task of the artist is to find a suitable place or locale for one's finished artwork post-completion (if completion even exists). Art can  seem most  at home in the artist's studio where it was made. Yet most artists make work with the intention of bringing it somewhere else to dwell, even if it's only for the length of an exhibition. Interestingly, a descriptive word which stops artists dead in their tracks is the word “decorative.” A word can be no greater abhorred by a majority of visual artists. If a critic or peer describes your work as “decorative,” most of the time this  adjective  is not happily  received.  Curiously, artists who make work to sell in commercial galleries intend for their work to be bought by collectors, which generally means the work will end up “decorating” a wall. What a paradoxical predicament.  Exploring this notion further, I am now led to think of the physical wall in which the art piece is installed. What else will be hanging on tha
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Inner Realms, September 2018

Inner Realms, September 7-28 2018, Hibbleton Gallery, Fullerton, CA. Opening Reception September 7th from 6pm - 10pm From mid-July until the opening reception on September 7th I have been putting together my third solo show, Inner Realms. This was my first solo show outside of any university affiliation and an important opportunity to highlight some of the most ambitious pieces I’ve made in the last couple of years. Additionally, it was also an opportunity to weave together diverse yet interrelated pieces into one gallery space.  The title Inner Realms describes the internal psychological visions of my subjects expressed by means of personal dress and decor. Fashion becomes costume, gesture becomes performance, and the gaze becomes a window into a tailored psyche. American sociologist David Riesman draws a distinction between those who “passively accepted commercially provided styles and meanings, and a ‘subculture’ which actively sought a minority style … and interpreted
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Time and Productivity

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As I am getting older the concept of time is becoming a more frequent subject in my thoughts than ever before. Summer has been slow to announce it's self this year in Southern California, taking it's time to increase it's intensity incrementally, degree by subtle degree. Alas, I do feel that it is finally upon us at last... and we are in for the long and lethargic drudge through the blistering summer months.  There is something so very nostalgic about the summertime for me. When I was a child in Canada, Australia or Connecticut summers were synonymous with holidays, freedom from school, and long lazy afternoons pleasurably spent wasting time . My, how times have changed... I do believe it is the predicament of the creative person to feel as it there is never enough hours in the day and never enough production happening within those hours to be satisfied. Unlike the long dreamy summers of my childhood, where a day spent rearranging all the books on my bookshelf alph
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A Thought on Existence

I've been thinking a lot about human existence and history. Our lives are so fleeting and perishable. Excruciatingly so. Sometimes I feel exuberant with the knowledge that I am living. Other times I wish I could reset my life and start again; a little more graceful, a little less clumsy. Either way, I acknowledge the fact that we are on borrowed time. The earth is stable in its instability; revolving in cycles of life and death, abundance and famine. Somehow, perpendicularly to the subtle inherent chaos, we manage to live out our duplicated lives on the outer surface of this lonely planet. As we pass flame and myth down from one generation to the next, we convince ourselves that the elegant order of existence denotes personal entitlement and proof of a higher reality. Somehow, the perfected actuality of all suitable qualities needed for this life indicates the existence of an even better reality, so it is justifiable to take for granted this one. This paradox I will never wrap my
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