This project uses the McGill Pain Questionnaire as a point of departure in exploring the ways in which we express, understand and engage in dialogues about pain.

This piece is an exploration of the metaphors surrounding interiority and exteriority within a system juxtaposing organic and inorganic components. In this piece I am attempting to develop a vocabulary that speaks of the body and what surrounds the body; architecture and our domestic setting.

https://www.natashahovey.com/

REMOTE OVERRIDE

With the crash of Core Six in XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX, many MENA experience a massive surge in growth. With transhuman forces focused on protecting the core and outmaneuvering [L!], MENA in sector seven were freed from the pressures incurred by near constant purges. Man of the microclimates that MENA produced during this twenty-seven year period became stable self-regulating systems. Tenable ecosystesm were able to grow to their current sizes as a direct result of this activity.

https://www.dougbosley.com/

The images that I’ve selected to represent my final project, are three stills from Laura Yusem’s 1986 production of Antigona furiosa. It was difficult to find video or snapshots from productions, but I think the three I’ve selected represent key aspects of my final paper very well. The images come from Diana Taylor’s book Disappearing Acts. One represents the two buffoons, Antinoo and Corifeo as they represent the ‘inner-spectators’, or watchers of trauma that mock, make light of, and create black humor in a space of trauma. They are seated at a cafe table, an activity common to Buenos Aires, representing every-day citizens that are complicit with violence or who simply don’t question or speak out against violence in the years following the fall of dictatorship. Another image shows the interaction between Antigona, Corifeo and Antinoo, and the audience. We see Antigona inside her floor-to-ceiling cage in the center of the stage, eternally trapped inside her own suffering, while Antinoo and Corifeo mock her from outside the cage but are still on stage, and finally, we can see how the audience surrounds the center stage area, fulfilling the role of complicit spectators as well. The final image shows with dramatic lighting, Antigona hung. The intriguing thing about this shot is that it is either the very beginning or very end of the play, but specifically which one it is we cannot know because the play both starts and ends with her hung, dead. This highlights the cyclical, nature of the performance, and the endless, continuous nature of this trauma. While it would have been ideal to include some images of Realidad nacional desde la cama as well, it is not a play, like Antigona furiosa, and therefore has not been produced on stage to my knowledge. Although the reading of this novel leaves me with strong mental images that could have worked well to illustrate the topic of humor in my final project, unfortunately, these are images that as of now, do not exist.

The image attached features a stack of books and a small red dumb-bell. I am not a visual artist, so it was difficult for me to think of how to represent a purely academic paper. Ultimately, I photographed the books I used–either directly in my paper, as background research, or as inspiration–next to a weight. As I wrote (and as I carried the stack of books around), I couldn’t help but feel the deep, bone-tired heaviness of the thoughts and ideas I was carrying around with me. I feel like there is a responsibility and accountability that I have to face up to in my work and my research. Such weighted-down emotions deserve a better representation, perhaps, but it is important to me to show, as best as I can, the importance of such heaviness.

In this paper, I began with the question of why we are able to ignore a cry for help. Much has been written on how we are able to shut ourselves off from the visual representation of another person’s pain, but little of that has been equally tested in auditory representations. In Manjula Padmanabhan’s play, Lights Out, a traumatic event is happening right outside the window. Set in an apartment, the play chronicles the reactions of the people inside to the gang-rape happening outside. While the audience is not able to see the action outside the window, we can hear the sound of a woman screaming and begging for someone to help her. And yet, no one responds. By connecting notions of apathy, voice, subaltern studies, and affective response, I argue for the importance of the expression of pain in creating the potential for empathetic action in members of the audience to Lights Out.