Adrian Piper’s project known as “The Mythic Being” was definitely on the more controversial side for the 1970s. Adrian went out in the streets, dressed as a man, repeating a sort of mantra that sounded like gibberish to the onlookers’ naked ears. Adrian embodied what would be considered to others as a truly mythic being, however, in reading her notes, it is clear that this mythic being is a deeply personal reflection of her inner self ,while also being a complete stranger. Some ways that Adrian tries to put this mythic being into words are, “and abstract entity, a nonmarital art object, product of my own self-conscious, product of unrealized history, and a therapeutic device”. While it is all of those things for Adrian, she also explains it is also a thing that has no conclusion or no intended meaning beyond her need to express it. However, in the photo that I attached of Adrian in drag, embodying this Mythic Being, I can see few things being indexed!

The first thing that came to mind for me was how extremally “stereo typically” masculine this photo is while still having a smaller more feminine body type. I think this is an important observation because Adrian’s first words about her identity and how it is tied to the piece are about her sexuality, liking women and men, and her observations on how society would take it if she wasn’t one step ahead of them. Her masculinity in the video and this photo index how deeply this side of herself is in her genetic make-up. For Adrian, this mythic being, this man, is intrinsically important and just as prevalent within her identity as her feminine side. However, I think it is worth also looking at the inverse of this. The slight hints of femininity in herk shape or tone of her voice also index her femininity when in drag. It sort of reminded me of the cigarette example of indexing. Although the ash of a cigarette does not physically resemble the cigarette, it shows that a cigarette was once there, that the person smoking it was also once there.  As Adrian pointed out in her notes, she is not really changing at all, she has the exact same history, but a different appearance to society.