Conversation with SE Barnet at Nancy Buchanan's house, Los Angeles, 2002

The conversation begins with artist SE Barnet expressing a sense of intimidation at being asked to address a comprehensive list of questions. Instead, she chooses to share insights into her practice. She presents her project, Mary Shelley’s Daughter, an interactive video installation inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Barnet notes, “She was actually the daughter of one of the early women’s rights advocates named Mary Wollstonecraft.” Barnet describes the piece as a means of questioning authorship, allowing participants to “re-author” her work: “I videotaped my body in various costumes and then made those tapes of the various outfits available for our viewers to interact with.” She elaborates on how this playful manipulation of her own image relates to “the notion of assuming control of my own figure... and questions around appearance and larger issues of control.”

Barnet reflects on the artistic interplay between surveillance and power dynamics. Her project with artist Kathy Chenoweth involved performing in Tweety Bird costumes in front of various stores’ surveillance cameras. These performances subvert expectations, using playful, mediated personas to draw attention to legal and ethical concerns surrounding surveillance in public versus private spaces. Barnet shares insights into her video installations, where themes of control, voyeurism, and personal boundaries are central. In one piece, a woman’s silent, detached filming of a man is juxtaposed with his escalating frustration at losing control over his image. This reversal of the male gaze challenges traditional power structures and evokes a confrontational dynamic that some viewers found unsettling. Barnet recalls, “I was surprised at how confrontational it became... Maybe that’s my contribution to feminism. How many generations of women have been objectified, yet the moment a woman holds the camera, it’s considered manipulative or ruthless?"

Barnet's work often investigates secrecy and subterfuge, such as in a piece where a woman changes her clothes publicly but discreetly: “Private actions portrayed in public spaces conflate privacy and publicness... secrecy operating in full view." The conversation also addresses the crossover of public and private domains, questioning the ownership and ethics of imagery captured inadvertently in shared spaces. Barnet is interested in the concept of masquerade—performing roles as a survival mechanism or form of resistance—where she plays with the layered complexity of surface and appearance. These ideas connect to larger feminist discourses and the inherent performativity of identity: “Women are always putting something on, actively engaging with the construction of identity, as there’s no ‘underneath.’"