The image of Pompeii on the brink of annihilation has always suggested uncomfortable parallels with the contemporary world, where the sunlit life turns out to have dark shadows in which cruelty, pain, and death lurk at the edge of consciousness. I am excavating a Pompeii of my own invention where beautiful, affluent people live the good life innocent of the disasters waiting just around the corner. Eleanor Antin, San Diego, August 2001