Questions and experiences regarding the Ethics of representing "others", especially women's and m... more Questions and experiences regarding the Ethics of representing "others", especially women's and moderate's voices in art and film, from the perspective and professional life of a feminist artivist mamactivist.
I explore three major examples : A group exhibition of women artists, in which the places of honor and prestige were given to... men. A solo photography exhibition project on motherhood in which I purposely and intentionally use my subjective voice as a conscious act of rebellion. Because a woman who shows and tells the truth about her subjective experience of mothering was (and still is) quite revolutionary. The money and media power manipulations going on behind the scenes of an award winning documentary film about women's voices in areas of conflict. Specifically Women's voices regarding the Israeli Palestinian conflict.
Renewed and updated by Author -2016. Originally Commissioned and Published in 2009 by Maarav (Ambush), one of Israels' leading art and culture online magazines, under the double title "Whose voice is it anyway?" and "Any Woman in the Director's chair?" (link) http://www.maarav.org.il/english/2009/07/any-woman-in-the-directors-room/
Mapping the Gap
Visual Multidisciplinary Paper
by Multidisciplinary Feminist Artist and activist ... more Mapping the Gap Visual Multidisciplinary Paper by Multidisciplinary Feminist Artist and activist Shira Richter for Mamsie M(o)ther Trouble: An International Conference on Feminism, Psychoanalysis and the Maternal 2009
The Mother Daughter and Holy Spirit Art Project: Photography, and Phototext
The sentence describing Mamsie's vision "Mapping Maternal Subjectivities, Identities and Ethics" Describes my 2005 project in which I created topographical-photographic "maps" from the uncharted left -over skin territory on my mid-body after giving vaginal birth to twins.
At the beginning I named the project In Limbo – because I felt as if I was existing in an unexisting unacknowledged -unnamed space –or planet, between identities. A gap opened between what I felt and what everyone else around me was telling me I should feel. “This collision between expectation and reality creates a kind of statelessness for many women of my generation…” writes Naomi Wolf in her own account “Misconceptions”. So I went about searching to “fill the gap”, to “solidify” my experience into form and words. To visibilize the invisible. “The Mother Daughter and Holy Spirit” is the name of one of the photographs. Living in Israel, a state based on a religion, speaking in Hebrew, made me painfully aware of the famous biblical prophecy: “In sorrow ye shall bear sons”. I was consciously angry the only “formal” reference to such a huge complex transforming event in my life was a punishment, a negative curse, of a male god. Not a blessing, miracle or achievement. There is no ceremony honoring the humongous physical mental and emotional effort of the woman, or the shift of the couple into parenthood. The name “Mother Daughter and Holy Spirit” invokes a female divinity. And also the name “The Father, Son and Holy Spirit” which creates, by way of gestalt, in one’s thought, a duality, or a double trinity, of male and female. The act of creation is never solitary the way our “hero” monogod culture pretends. Another reason for the name has to do with the complex relationships between mothers and daughters, between one woman to another. When you are not told the truth by those closest to you, those who traveled before -you feel betrayed. The women closest to me- personally and professionally, almost all lied. I wanted to create a large scale subjective monument in honor of this transition and transformation.
Short Story by Shira Richter
Published in the book of short stories: “One Hundred Mothers”
Edite... more Short Story by Shira Richter
Published in the book of short stories: “One Hundred Mothers” Edited by Anat Harari and Amit Rotbard. Babel Publishing House, Israel, 2009. Translated from Hebrew by Shira Richter
My Mother and I see monsters I paint them and she takes pills
In a small, neighborhood, two-room coffee shop, while the aquarium we sat in was warmed by the winter sun, I dared ask her what made the psychologist or psychiatrists who treated her diagnose her as " depressive " and thus prescribe a cocktail of medications for her to take until the end of her life.
Published in the book Counting on Marilyn Waring-New Advances in Feminist Economics. Edited by Ma... more Published in the book Counting on Marilyn Waring-New Advances in Feminist Economics. Edited by Margunn Bjornholt & Ailsa Mckay, Published by Demeter.
This paper offers a multidisciplinary investigation of the status of mothers in Israeli culture and society. The foundation of this reading is Marilyn Waring's position regarding the value system of western capitalism in which every merchandise and activity becomes visible via their monetary value. We illustrate how the concept of "value" is loaded with a double meaning and inner contradiction. Israel, a democratic, western, capitalistic, family oriented and militaristic society, puts a high value on motherhood because of public secular and religious ideology, but zero economic value. The National Insurance Institute defines the job of mothering as “not working” and a woman who has worked and paid national insurance all her life loses her rights if she works "only" as a mother four years or more. The "gap" between the official "family values" vs. the economic reality is usually against women. This chapter is the fruit of an ongoing collaboration between multidisciplinary artist, speaker and activist Shira Richter, and Head of Art Department at Hakibbuzim College Dr. Hadara Scheflan Katzav. INVISIBLE INVALUABLES is one of our major projects resulting from Warings' influence and inspiration: An exhibition of illuminated photographs extracted from domestic unpaid labor which highlights the irony of the low status of mothering by transforming mundane objects of child rearing and household work into sleek status symbols. The exhibit about maternal invisibility in the economic sphere is both personal and political. It exposes extremely sensitive nerves in Israeli society, and has contributed to a public discourse among both individual women and socio- political organizations.
Questions and experiences regarding the Ethics of representing "others", especially women's and m... more Questions and experiences regarding the Ethics of representing "others", especially women's and moderate's voices in art and film, from the perspective and professional life of a feminist artivist mamactivist.
I explore three major examples : A group exhibition of women artists, in which the places of honor and prestige were given to... men. A solo photography exhibition project on motherhood in which I purposely and intentionally use my subjective voice as a conscious act of rebellion. Because a woman who shows and tells the truth about her subjective experience of mothering was (and still is) quite revolutionary. The money and media power manipulations going on behind the scenes of an award winning documentary film about women's voices in areas of conflict. Specifically Women's voices regarding the Israeli Palestinian conflict.
Renewed and updated by Author -2016. Originally Commissioned and Published in 2009 by Maarav (Ambush), one of Israels' leading art and culture online magazines, under the double title "Whose voice is it anyway?" and "Any Woman in the Director's chair?" (link) http://www.maarav.org.il/english/2009/07/any-woman-in-the-directors-room/
Mapping the Gap
Visual Multidisciplinary Paper
by Multidisciplinary Feminist Artist and activist ... more Mapping the Gap Visual Multidisciplinary Paper by Multidisciplinary Feminist Artist and activist Shira Richter for Mamsie M(o)ther Trouble: An International Conference on Feminism, Psychoanalysis and the Maternal 2009
The Mother Daughter and Holy Spirit Art Project: Photography, and Phototext
The sentence describing Mamsie's vision "Mapping Maternal Subjectivities, Identities and Ethics" Describes my 2005 project in which I created topographical-photographic "maps" from the uncharted left -over skin territory on my mid-body after giving vaginal birth to twins.
At the beginning I named the project In Limbo – because I felt as if I was existing in an unexisting unacknowledged -unnamed space –or planet, between identities. A gap opened between what I felt and what everyone else around me was telling me I should feel. “This collision between expectation and reality creates a kind of statelessness for many women of my generation…” writes Naomi Wolf in her own account “Misconceptions”. So I went about searching to “fill the gap”, to “solidify” my experience into form and words. To visibilize the invisible. “The Mother Daughter and Holy Spirit” is the name of one of the photographs. Living in Israel, a state based on a religion, speaking in Hebrew, made me painfully aware of the famous biblical prophecy: “In sorrow ye shall bear sons”. I was consciously angry the only “formal” reference to such a huge complex transforming event in my life was a punishment, a negative curse, of a male god. Not a blessing, miracle or achievement. There is no ceremony honoring the humongous physical mental and emotional effort of the woman, or the shift of the couple into parenthood. The name “Mother Daughter and Holy Spirit” invokes a female divinity. And also the name “The Father, Son and Holy Spirit” which creates, by way of gestalt, in one’s thought, a duality, or a double trinity, of male and female. The act of creation is never solitary the way our “hero” monogod culture pretends. Another reason for the name has to do with the complex relationships between mothers and daughters, between one woman to another. When you are not told the truth by those closest to you, those who traveled before -you feel betrayed. The women closest to me- personally and professionally, almost all lied. I wanted to create a large scale subjective monument in honor of this transition and transformation.
Short Story by Shira Richter
Published in the book of short stories: “One Hundred Mothers”
Edite... more Short Story by Shira Richter
Published in the book of short stories: “One Hundred Mothers” Edited by Anat Harari and Amit Rotbard. Babel Publishing House, Israel, 2009. Translated from Hebrew by Shira Richter
My Mother and I see monsters I paint them and she takes pills
In a small, neighborhood, two-room coffee shop, while the aquarium we sat in was warmed by the winter sun, I dared ask her what made the psychologist or psychiatrists who treated her diagnose her as " depressive " and thus prescribe a cocktail of medications for her to take until the end of her life.
Published in the book Counting on Marilyn Waring-New Advances in Feminist Economics. Edited by Ma... more Published in the book Counting on Marilyn Waring-New Advances in Feminist Economics. Edited by Margunn Bjornholt & Ailsa Mckay, Published by Demeter.
This paper offers a multidisciplinary investigation of the status of mothers in Israeli culture and society. The foundation of this reading is Marilyn Waring's position regarding the value system of western capitalism in which every merchandise and activity becomes visible via their monetary value. We illustrate how the concept of "value" is loaded with a double meaning and inner contradiction. Israel, a democratic, western, capitalistic, family oriented and militaristic society, puts a high value on motherhood because of public secular and religious ideology, but zero economic value. The National Insurance Institute defines the job of mothering as “not working” and a woman who has worked and paid national insurance all her life loses her rights if she works "only" as a mother four years or more. The "gap" between the official "family values" vs. the economic reality is usually against women. This chapter is the fruit of an ongoing collaboration between multidisciplinary artist, speaker and activist Shira Richter, and Head of Art Department at Hakibbuzim College Dr. Hadara Scheflan Katzav. INVISIBLE INVALUABLES is one of our major projects resulting from Warings' influence and inspiration: An exhibition of illuminated photographs extracted from domestic unpaid labor which highlights the irony of the low status of mothering by transforming mundane objects of child rearing and household work into sleek status symbols. The exhibit about maternal invisibility in the economic sphere is both personal and political. It exposes extremely sensitive nerves in Israeli society, and has contributed to a public discourse among both individual women and socio- political organizations.
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Papers by Shira Richter
I explore three major examples :
A group exhibition of women artists, in which the places of honor and prestige were given to... men.
A solo photography exhibition project on motherhood in which I purposely and intentionally use my subjective voice as a conscious act of rebellion. Because a woman who shows and tells the truth about her subjective experience of mothering was (and still is) quite revolutionary.
The money and media power manipulations going on behind the scenes of an award winning documentary film about women's voices in areas of conflict. Specifically Women's voices regarding the Israeli Palestinian conflict.
Renewed and updated by Author -2016.
Originally Commissioned and Published in 2009 by Maarav (Ambush), one of Israels' leading art and culture online magazines, under the double title "Whose voice is it anyway?" and "Any Woman in the Director's chair?"
(link) http://www.maarav.org.il/english/2009/07/any-woman-in-the-directors-room/
Visual Multidisciplinary Paper
by Multidisciplinary Feminist Artist and activist Shira Richter
for
Mamsie M(o)ther Trouble: An International Conference on Feminism, Psychoanalysis and the Maternal 2009
The Mother Daughter and Holy Spirit
Art Project: Photography, and Phototext
The sentence describing Mamsie's vision "Mapping Maternal Subjectivities, Identities and Ethics" Describes my 2005 project in which I created topographical-photographic "maps" from the uncharted left -over skin territory on my mid-body after giving vaginal birth to twins.
At the beginning I named the project In Limbo – because I felt as if I was existing in an unexisting unacknowledged -unnamed space –or planet, between identities. A gap opened between what I felt and what everyone else around me was telling me I should feel. “This collision between expectation and reality creates a kind of statelessness for many women of my generation…” writes Naomi Wolf in her own account “Misconceptions”. So I went about searching to “fill the gap”, to “solidify” my experience into form and words. To visibilize the invisible. “The Mother Daughter and Holy Spirit” is the name of one of the photographs.
Living in Israel, a state based on a religion, speaking in Hebrew, made me painfully aware of the famous biblical prophecy: “In sorrow ye shall bear sons”. I was consciously angry the only “formal” reference to such a huge complex transforming event in my life was a punishment, a negative curse, of a male god. Not a blessing, miracle or achievement. There is no ceremony honoring the humongous physical mental and emotional effort of the woman, or the shift of the couple into parenthood. The name “Mother Daughter and Holy Spirit” invokes a female divinity. And also the name “The Father, Son and Holy Spirit” which creates, by way of gestalt, in one’s thought, a duality, or a double trinity, of male and female. The act of creation is never solitary the way our “hero” monogod culture pretends. Another reason for the name has to do with the complex relationships between mothers and daughters, between one woman to another. When you are not told the truth by those closest to you, those who traveled before -you feel betrayed. The women closest to me- personally and professionally, almost all lied. I wanted to create a large scale subjective monument in honor of this transition and transformation.
Published in the book of short stories: “One Hundred Mothers”
Edited by Anat Harari and Amit Rotbard.
Babel Publishing House, Israel, 2009.
Translated from Hebrew by Shira Richter
My Mother and I see monsters I paint them and she takes pills
In a small, neighborhood, two-room coffee shop, while the aquarium we sat in was warmed by the winter sun, I dared ask her what made the psychologist or psychiatrists who treated her diagnose her as " depressive " and thus prescribe a cocktail of medications for her to take until the end of her life.
This paper offers a multidisciplinary investigation of the status of mothers in Israeli culture and society. The foundation of this reading is Marilyn Waring's position regarding the value system of western capitalism in which every merchandise and activity becomes visible via their monetary value. We illustrate how the concept of "value" is loaded with a double meaning and inner contradiction.
Israel, a democratic, western, capitalistic, family oriented and militaristic society, puts a high value on motherhood because of public secular and religious ideology, but zero economic value. The National Insurance Institute defines the job of mothering as “not working” and a woman who has worked and paid national insurance all her life loses her rights if she works "only" as a mother four years or more. The "gap" between the official "family values" vs. the economic reality is usually against women.
This chapter is the fruit of an ongoing collaboration between multidisciplinary artist, speaker and activist Shira Richter, and Head of Art Department at Hakibbuzim College Dr. Hadara Scheflan Katzav. INVISIBLE INVALUABLES is one of our major projects resulting from Warings' influence and inspiration: An exhibition of illuminated photographs extracted from domestic unpaid labor which highlights the irony of the low status of mothering by transforming mundane objects of child rearing and household work into sleek status symbols.
The exhibit about maternal invisibility in the economic sphere is both personal and political. It exposes extremely sensitive nerves in Israeli society, and has contributed to a public discourse among both individual women and socio- political organizations.
I explore three major examples :
A group exhibition of women artists, in which the places of honor and prestige were given to... men.
A solo photography exhibition project on motherhood in which I purposely and intentionally use my subjective voice as a conscious act of rebellion. Because a woman who shows and tells the truth about her subjective experience of mothering was (and still is) quite revolutionary.
The money and media power manipulations going on behind the scenes of an award winning documentary film about women's voices in areas of conflict. Specifically Women's voices regarding the Israeli Palestinian conflict.
Renewed and updated by Author -2016.
Originally Commissioned and Published in 2009 by Maarav (Ambush), one of Israels' leading art and culture online magazines, under the double title "Whose voice is it anyway?" and "Any Woman in the Director's chair?"
(link) http://www.maarav.org.il/english/2009/07/any-woman-in-the-directors-room/
Visual Multidisciplinary Paper
by Multidisciplinary Feminist Artist and activist Shira Richter
for
Mamsie M(o)ther Trouble: An International Conference on Feminism, Psychoanalysis and the Maternal 2009
The Mother Daughter and Holy Spirit
Art Project: Photography, and Phototext
The sentence describing Mamsie's vision "Mapping Maternal Subjectivities, Identities and Ethics" Describes my 2005 project in which I created topographical-photographic "maps" from the uncharted left -over skin territory on my mid-body after giving vaginal birth to twins.
At the beginning I named the project In Limbo – because I felt as if I was existing in an unexisting unacknowledged -unnamed space –or planet, between identities. A gap opened between what I felt and what everyone else around me was telling me I should feel. “This collision between expectation and reality creates a kind of statelessness for many women of my generation…” writes Naomi Wolf in her own account “Misconceptions”. So I went about searching to “fill the gap”, to “solidify” my experience into form and words. To visibilize the invisible. “The Mother Daughter and Holy Spirit” is the name of one of the photographs.
Living in Israel, a state based on a religion, speaking in Hebrew, made me painfully aware of the famous biblical prophecy: “In sorrow ye shall bear sons”. I was consciously angry the only “formal” reference to such a huge complex transforming event in my life was a punishment, a negative curse, of a male god. Not a blessing, miracle or achievement. There is no ceremony honoring the humongous physical mental and emotional effort of the woman, or the shift of the couple into parenthood. The name “Mother Daughter and Holy Spirit” invokes a female divinity. And also the name “The Father, Son and Holy Spirit” which creates, by way of gestalt, in one’s thought, a duality, or a double trinity, of male and female. The act of creation is never solitary the way our “hero” monogod culture pretends. Another reason for the name has to do with the complex relationships between mothers and daughters, between one woman to another. When you are not told the truth by those closest to you, those who traveled before -you feel betrayed. The women closest to me- personally and professionally, almost all lied. I wanted to create a large scale subjective monument in honor of this transition and transformation.
Published in the book of short stories: “One Hundred Mothers”
Edited by Anat Harari and Amit Rotbard.
Babel Publishing House, Israel, 2009.
Translated from Hebrew by Shira Richter
My Mother and I see monsters I paint them and she takes pills
In a small, neighborhood, two-room coffee shop, while the aquarium we sat in was warmed by the winter sun, I dared ask her what made the psychologist or psychiatrists who treated her diagnose her as " depressive " and thus prescribe a cocktail of medications for her to take until the end of her life.
This paper offers a multidisciplinary investigation of the status of mothers in Israeli culture and society. The foundation of this reading is Marilyn Waring's position regarding the value system of western capitalism in which every merchandise and activity becomes visible via their monetary value. We illustrate how the concept of "value" is loaded with a double meaning and inner contradiction.
Israel, a democratic, western, capitalistic, family oriented and militaristic society, puts a high value on motherhood because of public secular and religious ideology, but zero economic value. The National Insurance Institute defines the job of mothering as “not working” and a woman who has worked and paid national insurance all her life loses her rights if she works "only" as a mother four years or more. The "gap" between the official "family values" vs. the economic reality is usually against women.
This chapter is the fruit of an ongoing collaboration between multidisciplinary artist, speaker and activist Shira Richter, and Head of Art Department at Hakibbuzim College Dr. Hadara Scheflan Katzav. INVISIBLE INVALUABLES is one of our major projects resulting from Warings' influence and inspiration: An exhibition of illuminated photographs extracted from domestic unpaid labor which highlights the irony of the low status of mothering by transforming mundane objects of child rearing and household work into sleek status symbols.
The exhibit about maternal invisibility in the economic sphere is both personal and political. It exposes extremely sensitive nerves in Israeli society, and has contributed to a public discourse among both individual women and socio- political organizations.