egyptian thread: 2nd thread A Woman´s place

egyptian thread: 2nd thread A Woman´s place http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=SjxY9rZwNGU&feature=related

egyptian thread: first thread

egyptian thread: first thread es.youtube.com/watch?v=Iou7pMWEiTA

Third thread -THE IMAGE (itself), the image of oneself

After several month of reading, writing, rewriting, collecting, recording, sewing, printing, etc. I have just realised that I haven’t been able to produce a single image for the upcoming show. From the very first beginning of the project I wanted to talk about the IMAGE we produce of other and the IMAGE we project of ourselves and, what was an initial intuition became clearer through time passing by ( getting responses to my proposed readings and writings, building up –little by little- the blog and trying to produce the installation: I am now at the point that the idea of THE IMAGE has become a negative concept being something that has to be located on the opposite site of were we may find real thing(s). THE IMAGE is always reductive, a reversed and fragmented part of something, which has a wider and extended multiple reality that refuses to be captured within the frame. THE IMAGE always is a mirror and in its pretension to present reality it can only aspire to show the real conditions that are (secretly) enclosed in the gaze of whom is looking at the subject or the object, of whom is looking what is outside of her or himself. Therefore THE IMAGE always is distant and in its distance it functions as a border that defines what is I and what is the OTHER(S). I have been thinking for a while if there was such as an image of myself. I can hardly think of anything that would describe/visualize me that does not come from an outer reflections on my person. What I mean is that if I tried to give an image of myself I would have to use stereotyped images and the reflected image that comes from how I am perceived by others. This non precise image of myself which I would try to produce, fades along as soon as I try to inscribe me into the wider context of any kind of group: me as a westerner, me as a woman, me as a mother, me as a foreigner, me as lecturer, me as an artist, …and, if I precede making variations such as me as a foreign mother, me as a western woman, me as an foreign artist mother it becomes more and more impossible to use an original, not beaten concept…because there are and there have been always pre-existing images that are already in the mind of the receptor. But the, do I (and do you) respond, correspond to that image of myself (yourself)? Do I, can I and do I want to identify with such an image? And, if the answer is NO, what does this image then stand for? For what do we produce and what for are we using them? Is it true that, as Fatema Mernissi wrote, the western men (obviously a stereotype) does use the image to control the woman (obviously another stereotype), while eastern men use space to dominate women, meaning by extends that we in our culture need the image to control anything that is outside of ourselves as the only way of being able to establish for sure who we are? And, would that mean that the western world has won the final battle ( after colonialism, after World War II) gaining control over any society whose identity had not been based on visuality by introducing the image as the Trojan Horse in any private space around the world? Or, does it mean, on the contrary that the western world as lost the final control over the rest of the world giving the image to others who now may use the mirror to produce a reflected and reversed view of this part of the world. Would that mean that we are now all the same- men and women, westerners and easterners, etc? Or, does it just mean that now everyone has got the same tools to reduce, manipulate or fragment the reality that takes part outside of the frame? And, if so, which are the tools that are left to establish borders and define the limits of property, private and public space, to exclude or include one or the other into whatsoever groups. Or would it mean that we do not have or do not need borders anymore, because the image, space and time have finally become one and the same thing.... Left without the image I’ll wait for your reflections…