Baz Here @bazhere

Your interest in pathways of light traveling through landscapes has shown up in your work since 2013 with your series Faith in Science, and comes back again with your recent work Rituals to Reveal Hidden Boundaries. Can you talk about your attraction to light and its relationship to ecosystems?

Bridget Batch

An attraction to light is a widespread physical phenomenon for animals. Deep sea creatures depend on bioluminescence and, well, we wouldn’t be here without sunlight. My practice underwent a structural shift, maybe ten years ago, the themes of which are generally present to this day. I delved into trying to understand presence and existence, our solidity even as we are completely ephemeral. In reality, light is a phenomenon, intangible, yet powerful.

Because of the weight our cultural overlays of religion, legend, and mythology have given to light, I chose to work with it as a potent symbol in order to represent forces beyond our understanding. ​Faith in Science​ portrays the ground opening up, presumably because of tectonic forces, and this illumination pours out from below the earthen surface of the work. We intuit a mystical quality to light, and when you consider it scientifically, it still seems, paradoxically, magical.

BH

The title of your series Ritual to Reveal Hidden Boundaries is a statement in itself, what type of boundaries are you seeking to uncover in this work?

BB

O​h, there are so many. Boundaries are imposed and artificial, but we often mistake them as “natural.” The root of the project lies in this exploration of tracing presence on earth, in terms of how one individual life is a speck in geologic time which is of such transcendent enormity that we can’t truly comprehend it, yet it still takes up space that is incredibly important. In researching locations for the works, paths emerged, leading me to places representative of concern for the environment and our relationship with the planet. So, some of the imagery within the project relates to metaphysics, while other photographs draw attention to places steeped in particular histories and ecological disruption.

BH

Can you tell me more about your series Ritual to Reveal Hidden Boundaries? How are you creating these ethereal trails of light?

BB

Rituals to Reveal Hidden Boundaries​ uses techniques unique to the photographic process to both create a mysterious image, and to document a performance that occured in a specific place at a specific time. I wanted to draw the performative action in a manner that could be recorded by a camera to become ‘permanently’ inscribed. For these images, I play with light as I move around, usually walking but sometimes as a dance for a predetermined amount of time. Most of them are created under full moonlight using a 4x5 film camera with exposures of around an hour where I traced the “boundary” with colored light. However, I didn’t just choose to do a video of my performance, mechanisms integral to the light-etching process are part of the work, in order to make an image that is operationally permanent, and frozen in time. This actually represents a fear of death or oblivion. The experience of being alive is so intense and then it’s simply gone. This is terrifying.

BH

This work is so performative, and yet your body as a performer is missing from the final documentation of that performance – only a trace of where you have been is visible to the viewer. Is this irony purposeful? And does it hold any implication within the work?

BB

It is absolutely purposeful. The work is about impermanent presence on the planet, so I wanted to record my trace, or an existence, without showing the physical body of the person. The missing body symbolizes that our effects and connection extend far beyond physical presence.

BH

This work is so performative, and yet your body as a performer is missing from the final documentation of that performance – only a trace of where you have been is visible to the viewer. Is this irony purposeful? And does it hold any implication within the work?

BB

It is absolutely purposeful. The work is about impermanent presence on the planet, so I wanted to record my trace, or an existence, without showing the physical body of the person. The missing body symbolizes that our effects and connection extend far beyond physical presence.

BH:

What’s your elevator speech for Critical Opalescence?

BB:​ Scientifically, the term ​Critical Opalescence​ refers to the exact point as a compound changes from one state to another, from liquid water to ice, for instance, at which the molecules vibrate so intensely that they appear cloudy and scatter light, creating an appearance like an opal. A viewer cannot see through this transition. The photographs in this project are considerations of living through this state change on Earth through which we cannot envision the results of the transition we have provoked, without necessarily being literal documentations of climate change’s impact.

BH:

A lot of your work is about a point of no return, yes?

BB:​

Yes

BH:

In your statement, you mention this series is more of an elegy. Even if we change our perspective and unite our efforts to fix the problems at hand as a result of the Anthropocene, do you think we are past the point of no return as your work suggests?

BB:​

I think we very likely are. Humans are very adaptable and we will accustom ourselves to climate change. But, because of our natural inability to really comprehend the grand scale of time beyond our own immediate self gratification, we are going to be making these accommodations in the face of climate disaster rather than averting it, which is an absolute tragedy. I am more concerned about what might be an impending colonization of other worlds, in order to terra-form them. Our history of encounters with strangeness is not peaceful and I do not foresee this proceeding well.

BH:

Can you talk about the process of including your son in your work? What was that experience like for him?

BB:

​ I’ll have to ask him! I am considering it becoming the way he could make some extra money – participating in my artmaking. This will be a nod to the idea that all labor should be compensated.

I’m going to guess that sometimes he finds it interesting and other times he finds it boring.

For me, however, it is ideal. I want to work, and I want to spend time with him, and I find it bedeviling as a parent that this cannot be more integrated. In fact, it is indicative of how truly unfriendly to children and life our culture actually is. The work versus home dichotomy is hardcore. The pandemic quarantining experience is exploding this in certain ways. I’d love to see a certain residual patience with child-rearing and children being considered part of existence — rather than separated out, after the isolation period is over.

But, his preference is that I play with him, over anything else, including art making.

( I did ask him, he said it was “boring.”)

BH:

Can you speak to your experience of making your project Rub My Belly for Good Luck, as it’s very much an exploration in social boundaries? Perhaps you can offer some musings on how you might reframe it given our current social restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic?

BB:​

This is such an interesting question! I have been thinking over what is true intimacy and its expression. The experience of self-isolation has had such a profound impact on the environment that I can imagine a silver lining to the horror in possibly adjusting our lives to working more remotely and commuting less. We could truly reduce our emissions profile while increasing the ability to spend less time in transit and more time engaged with loved ones or otherwise doing what you value. However, this also takes away from social togetherness and promotes even more time spent on the screens and processing ourselves into data.

Rub My Belly for Good Luck​ was completed six years ago, but I could tell stories about it for hours. With my partner’s support and contribution in considering the particulars of the project, I went to beach areas in Los Angeles on six different occasions holding a sign, inviting passersby to “rub my belly for good luck.” I was very pregnant, presenting my uncovered belly while wearing only a bikini top and a skirt. Since I was fortunate enough to have an uncomplicated birth and a healthy child, it may have worked!

It was quite difficult to force myself to do it, precisely because of the fact that I was definitely breaking social norms and my own personal boundaries. My excitement would build and then, I would become extremely nervous. I felt foolish, often, and at times, no one touched me for many, many minutes, so the sensation of being on display would become acute. Sometimes people tried to give me money. Each session lasted about 45 minutes, which is all I could manage, emotionally. However, a variety of people did respond to the invitation, many of them teenagers who were extremely excited about the idea of interacting with a new life. As I walked away from the boardwalks, I felt radiant with hope and positivity, as if I were being truly uplifted with the positive energy that had been passed onto me and my unborn child. Also, given the goofy smiles on folks’ faces, I think they may have felt somewhat the same. That expression of our humanity really only happens through touch and intimacy.

In this world shaped by a new pandemic and quarantines, as some people go crazy from intimacy that they’ve been forced into, and others find themselves to be so isolated, in what ways will we transform, culturally and individually?

I also think of the movie, ​Children of Men, (2006),​ directed by Alfonso Cuarón, in which infertility is destroying humanity, yet one last woman is pregnant. As I was pregnant, I was engaging in post-apocalyptic considerations in my work, but having a child is about hope. It is terrifying to bring a child into the world in the face of so many fearful issues — pandemics, climate change. However, aspiration is essential to our humanity and children are the ultimate representation of our dreams. Humans are pretty good at hope.