- Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev: What she was doing in the 60s and 70s didn't fit in the dominant philosophies or ideologies even within the art world, even with the advances so-called 'avant-garde' or 'radical' experimental art world, which was mainly dominated by patriarchal legacy. In a patriarchal way of seeing things, things are black or white, things are much simpler, things must be summarizable in a short sentence or concept. Whether you are a conceptual artist or a traditional painter, what they share is a kind of clarity of vision. And what Joan was doing was to explore the non-clarity or the beauty in the complexity.
- (Herself): What I was interested in was perception of images. And what I want to do is to communicate to the audience my way of seeing those images. Of course, they are not gonna see it in the way I see it. Everybody sees it in their own way. But I'm interested in mainly, from the very beginning, first of all, altering the image by a device, such as either distance or video, for instance and of the audience looking at something and how looking at this image will change their way perhaps or alter their way of seeing that image, or looking at the world and so on.