Abstract Representational Space: Uncanny Aliens and Others is an article written in response to historical cinematic representations of females, and the exclusion, exploitation, stigmatization, misinformation, denial and abuse that they have received, which is still going on, but can be changed by empowerment, which we hope to achieve this millenium.  Specifically it was triggered by the Santilli Autopsy Footage, which has had men giggling and gossiping (as always) and while the topic has thus been derided, denigrated and despised - I uphold my right to describe it from my point of view.  

Ten years down the line it remains as enigmatic as the Turin Shroud.

And I am concerned by the disappearance of Mr Ray Santilli who vanished into obscurity with his wife after a distressing miscarriage.  He closed his business, he moved his office and he has taken an enormous amount of stigma.  I hope he is alive and well, but how are we going to know now that he is in hiding?

I was alone when I saw this Footage for the first time on August 28th 1995.  In my flat on Camden High Street, I tuned my portable tv and found an image of a desert.  I began watching what I found to be a military mystery, with b/w film from the '40's and '50's.  Airplanes/Aeroplanes, bombs and scrubland - the threat of nuclear annihilation.  That was fine and what happened next was a shock.

 Lightning flashed up and there was a prone body.  I was appalled - it seemed to be in 'a state of grace' ie demanding respect and reverance through faith, like a holy relic - yet it was paraded like a Frankenstein.  The documentary threw it at the viewer like a horrific freak show exhibit.  Yet what it was seemed so out of place in the desert landscape format.  I felt sick and scared at how victimized she was. I came to standing in the corner of the room watching a grey spinning thing dissolve.  It wasn't flies, it wasn't smoke.  I rang Channel Four and kept ringing for a couple of weeks until I had spoken to John Purdie.  I tracked down Ray Santilli's Merlin Office in Baker Street.  The secretary gave me a free video and I clutched it to me as if it was an icon of the Virgin Mary.  

Earlier I had been afraid that this was some sort of pornographic abuse, a snuff movie  where a live actor is used and murdered in the making of the film (later I saw ufological cartoons with the same idea depicted) and on that basis I complained, to the police and  to the film censors.  

I have a very kind letter from John Purdie (Producer) who was obviously strongly affected by the documentary and went on to make Riddle of the Skies in 1999, as was Tim Shawcross (Director) who published The Roswell File book in 1997.

 I spent the next six months or so, afraid that something other worldly would approach me through the kitchen (I kept the door shut).  I heard them request contact and I psychically replied "I'm not ready yet".  The fear and the nausea remained for a few months more and one morning the wall dissappeared and there was a 'weapons platform' outside, I guess that was a dream or a representation.  One Channel Four employee told me that they had to stop thinking about the Footage in order to be able to hold down their job and keep their life stable.  I focused my interest in it into art and theory.  Weird things had happened before that, but that was an intense time - where connections of meanings spun together and the mysterious yet interrelated nature of knowledge was a tapestry of fine intricate pattern.  Weird things have happened since.  The main thing was that to me she seemed alive.  Her eyes showed presence, awareness, movement.  Unable or unwilling to move, she is at the mercy of the standing people.  They cut her apart.  They do not seem to respect her and this haste, this clumsiness is what viewers pick up on when they criticise the footage.  They say if that was an alien the doctors would take their time and would not scoop the innards out like dog food, however if as reported there was a 'terrible smell', then that would be a good enough reason.  They like to write it off  as a 'hoax' because it is uncomfortable.  It is cruel.  This cruelty was picked up on in the movie of the incident - Roswell as a cruel diservice done to Jesse Marcel.  But as a woman, I see it more clearly from a feminist angle - in the context of women who up until the 1960's were incarcerated in mental institutions for having children out of wedlock for example.  We know this is an issue because one person in particular has dissappeared from the narrative of the Roswell Incident and that is the nurse (Naomi Maria Selff).  You may say that this Footage (six fingers, six toes) is not similar to the reports of aliens (four fingers no thumb) given by Roswell witnesses, and this should make it more important for us to find out who this was.

If Santilli wanted to make a hoax, would he not as he has said himself, make it look more alien, more like the reports which have been coming out since 1978?  Why is it so human and yet not human?  Why six fingers instead of four? The Christian Bible says we were made in God's image - doesn't that mean that 'aliens' (or celestial beings) would look like us?