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Jenkins, Jessica. "Visual arts in the urban environment in the German Democratic Republic." Thesis, Royal College of Art, 2014. http://researchonline.rca.ac.uk/1681/.
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Since the unification of East and West Germany in 1990, most of the urban fabric of the former East Germany has been altered beyond recognition or completely dismantled. However, during the four decades of the German Democratic Republic, public spaces and the works of visual arts within them were the subject of intense critical discussion, and formed the basis for the development of theories on the socialist character of art and architecture, which evolved from the late 1960s as Komplexe Umweltgestaltung "Complex Environmental Design". This thesis makes an original contribution to knowledge by making visible and elucidating the cultural-political significance of that urban visual culture, dematerialised and dispersed since the fall of the Berlin Wall. It examines the political, social and artistic function of murals, paintings, sculptures, applied arts, form design, and visual communication within East German architecture and public spaces, and seeks to complexify the commonly understood historical narrative which traces a rupture from the doctrine of an extravagant Socialist Realism to a form of impoverished Modernism. This change is better understood as a gradual and halting evolution, in which art as a medium for projecting the ideal of socialism was displaced by an understanding of design as a means of sustaining the experience of it. Furthermore, the narratives, formal and material qualities of some of the works examined – overlooked even in contemporary re-appraisals of East German art history – rather than being marginal to Socialist Realism, actually opened up spaces for its development. The thesis centres on forms of public art during and after the transition to the industrial mass production of architecture in the mid 1950s. The early phase in the 1950s is illustrated through the two first industrial cities, Eisenhüttenstadt and Hoyerswerda, built to serve iron and coal production respectively. The "scientific and technological revolution", proclaimed by SED first secretary Walter Ulbricht in the 1960s, was to accelerate the process of modernity, in the understandings of the function of urban planning and the role of design for planning, architecture and consumer culture. This change saw a move towards functionalist-oriented planning for Halle Neustadt (from 1964), the centre of new chemical and synthetics production, and a radical move to modernity in the re-construction of city centres up until 1969. This radical change exposed the conception of architecture as an art (Baukunst) favoured by traditionalists in the Bauakademie in particular, to challenges by modernisers who held that art should be considered as primarily functional and thus separate from art. Complex Environmental Design, as this work will demonstrate, gradually replaced the Socialist Realist ideal of Baukunst and the "synthesis" between art and architecture, and became established by the mid 1970s as an interdisciplinary practice in which all visual art forms – architecture, fine arts, crafts, form design, graphic design and landscape design – were to be integrated within the complex planning of the built environment. I shall argue that this inclusion of all artistic disciplines in the design of the built environment formed a compromise between competing ideas between "synthesis" or the separation of art and architecture. Halle Neustadt was key in the conceptual transition to complex environmental design. The thesis goes on to look at how the artistic conception of the 1973 World Festival Games took up a form of complex environmental design, which functioned as both a new form of monumentality, as well as opening up a space for more democractic forms of public art. Methodologically, the research seeks to understand the influence of key actors in the field who were not resistant to the cultural political framework but sought to mediate change within it. Interviews with architects, critics, artists and designers, including architectural critic Bruno Flierl, architect, Sigbert Fliegel, artists Willi Neubert and Manfred Vollmert, designers, Rolf Walter, Lutz Brandt and Axel Bertram together with analyses of their work, and how their ideas were represented by themselves and others, particularly in professional fora, form the basis for an examination their influence. By looking at historical moments in different loci, it becomes apparent that what I term "clusters of influence" formed which pushed forward conceptual transitions. Key sources are the professional journals in which art and architecture were discussed (Deutsche Architektur, Bildende Kunst, Form und Zweck, Farbe und Raum and Neue Werbung) as well as some news and features aimed at the general public such as Neues Deutschland, Neue Berliner Illustrierte and Für Dich. Archival research has focused on the seminars and congresses organised by the professional institutions, the Verband der Bildende Künstler (Artists Union) and the Deutsche Bauakademie (German Building Academy) as well as the records of the local SED in Halle and a number of offices for architectural art which were established across the GDR in the late 1960s. The search for socialist character both in content and form which had an impact on the visual arts of the built environment in the GDR was informed by shifting definitions of the concepts of "function" and "beauty", in which historical legacies, in particular, the Bauhaus, were critically appropriated in a way which served the sometimes involuntary and sometimes intentional interplay between artistic disciplines. The research reveals how these concepts and legacies were drawn together, and plays particular attention to the way in which colour and ornament emerged as central in serving the need for the constituent parts of the urban landscape to be socialist, functional and beautiful.
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Briffa, Vincent. "Through the screen : re-examining screen culture in the light of new imaging technologies." Thesis, University of Central Lancashire, 2009. http://clok.uclan.ac.uk/21146/.
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Bradfield, Marsha. "Utterance and authorship in dialogic art : or an account of a barcamp in response to the question, "what is dialogic art?"." Thesis, University of the Arts London, 2013. http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/6063/.
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The written aspect of this practice-based thesis ‘collates’ a one-day event exploring the question, ‘What is dialogic art?’ into a textual account. The practical aspect threads through this account, with reference to its dissemination elsewhere made frequently. The event ‘documented’ here is a ‘barcamp’, a kind of ‘unconference’ that combines presentations with responsive discussion. This barcamp brings together practitioners of art, activism, education, philosophy, sociology, sociolinguistics, literary theory and criticism, and others to explore dialogic art through a dialogue that moves amongst their respective points of view. The barcamp’s collation tracks the contributors’ discursive struggle to co-author dialogic art as a dialogue-based approach to contemporary art practice. ‘The dialogic’ that qualifies this art accretes through the barcamp as an artistic disposition preoccupied with the constitutive agency of dialogue, understood here in an expanded sense. This disposition explores the myriad relations that preoccupy authorship qua authorship. These include the material and conceptual thresholds organising creative agents and their cultural production: participation and collaboration, process and outcome, the author and the authored. The epistemological foundation of this barcamp can be defined as dialogic because it understands knowledge as arising from social relations and enacted through intersubjective exchange. Similarly, the ontological basis for this project issues from a post-structuralist sense of subjectivity as simultaneously dispersed and multiple, distributed amongst authors. These philosophical perspectives underpin the theory of subjectivity evolved through dialogic art. This theory recommends the art’s authors as ‘responsive subjects’—artist-agents who are themselves reciprocally authored through their artistic practice. This reciprocal authorship explodes the twin myths of the independent artistauthor and the discrete artwork without abandoning the facticity of their historical existence. Always contingent, dialogic artworks and their artist-agents are presented in this project as polyphonic portraits of heterogeneous becoming achieved through dialogic exchange.
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Tillotson, Jenny. "Interactive olfactory surfaces : The Wellness Collection : a science fashion story." Thesis, Royal College of Art, 1997. http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/5408/.
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"Physics is a function of size ..." The aim of the research is to create a new interactive communication system by 're-cabling' fabrics for releasing fragrances in 21st century fashion design. A new development, taking inspiration from biology, conjures up Multi-Sensorial Fabrics - based around the sense of smell. Using the theory that 'Smell Is Nanotechnology' and that biology works by nano-machines, biological actions can be miniaturised (such as 'sensing' in the animal world) to create an integrated system called 'The Wellness Collection'. Fragrances (and eventually medication, monitoring devices and digital information) will be actively 'pulsed' electronically through a cabling device system which will 'mimic' the human senses and in particular the scent glands in our bodies and be literally incorporated into the fabric structure. Technology with therefore be integrated in fabrics and carried in invisible clothing. The system also acts as a new vehicle for designer perfumes, reducing the application of alcohol on skin and microencapsulation. Traditional textile design concerns passive issues relating to colour and texture (and performance purposes to a certain degree). However, this research concentrates on a more active approach to textile design, introducing the living active garment as a second skin. The aim is to combine a number of contrasting areas from the Arts and Sciences. For example : - Perfumery. Fashion Designs. Textile & Fibre Technologies. Space Age Clothing. Biosensing Techniques. 'Micro Tube' Technology. Fluid Control. 'Smart intelligence'. Human Biology & Psychology. Human Skin, Circulation & Nervous Systems. Medical Textiles. Controlled Drug Delivery Systems. Alternative Therapies. Nanotechnology. Although some might consider this project to be high risk, it is a general fact that creative and 'novel' research originates from multi disciplinary fields. Emphasis on this important fact must be acknowledged throughout the thought process of the following project which is documented as a thorough ‘library’ of valuable research information. The Science Fashion approach may therefore seem very futuristic, but as technology itself reduces in size such an approach becomes increasingly realistic.
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Gfader, Verina. "Doubling in a practice of animation." Thesis, University of the Arts London, 2005. http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/6430/.
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This is a practice based Ph.D. in Fine Arts. The subject of the research deals with strategies of doubling as a means to explore the relation between what technology promises and the fantasy of the viewer/user. The visual material that constitutes my research attempts to raise, in various interrelated ways, a set of core questions regarding the nature of surface as receptacle of images and to take into account the filiation that new media partake of, namely that computer-aided art is seen as a subset of fine art. Indeed, the first line of enquiry is to address what constitutes the 'picture plane' of a computer screen. Interrogating the nature of the digital Image and Its relations to the viewer/user, my question is "how does computer-aided art (animation, video and interactive installation) address the connection between surface and image, particularly when digital manipulation is used to consistently postpone a totalising view of the image?" This includes the analysis of how static and dynamic states of the image are generated in (digital) art, or where the phenomenon of doubling raises questions about what kind of visual economy operates with respect to art that uses advanced technologies. I critically analyse these aspects occurring in work by artists, whose practice deals with certain modes of addressing the totalising view of an image, an image that appears virtually complete. As a practising artist, in terms of the media I choose to work with, doubling is enabled by providing a certain degree of Interactivity with the computer screen, giving the viewer the illusion of control over the production of the image. However, the illusory nature of this control is revealed by the systematic Incompleteness of the image being 'painted' on the screen. Apart from provoking and frustrating the desire for totalising visuality, the deliberate incompleteness of the images holds open questions of scale, animation, and the relationship of image to surface. Given the nature of the medium in which the moving images were created, the pieces share the potential for continuing the loop in which they play ad infinitum. But, as the cyclicity of the loops makes manifest, nearly all of them are also predicated on an ontological duality whereby the same object, the same entity, can transform into something phenomenally other through the permeable interplay between emergent and receding aspects inherent within it. So integral to image-forming I find this doubling that I have extended the theme to my own public Identity, by sometimes functioning under an alias, the name of Sissu Tarka.
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Cartiere, Cameron. "RE/placing public art : the role of place specificity in new genre public art." Thesis, University of the Arts London, 2003. http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/2301/.
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This research is an exploration of the development and influence of place-specificity within the field of new genre public art. Over the last several years the term place-specificity and its variance, place-specific has occurred frequently in art reviews and exhibition catalogues particularly in relation to installations, permanent public art works, and public interventions. While place-specificity is now a recognised term in the current lexicon of public art discussion, within many texts the phrase place-specific is often indiscriminately interchanged with site-specific, implying that the two terms are synonymous. While the relationships between site, space, and place are actively explored within fields such as geography,cultural studies and architecture, distinctions between site-specificity and place-specificity have rarely been critically addressed in discussions of public art. Based on both theory and curatorial practice, this thesis explores a range of perspectives on the role of place within socially engaged public art practice. The study examines the difference between site and place and how place influences our perceptions of specific locations through memory, history and experience. The thesis explores place as a subject, an artistic influence, and a social and cultural signifier. Also examined is how artists use place as a means of connecting to specific locations and audiences, as well as a way of exploring their personal histories and memories. Utilising a combination of approaches, this study incorporates naturalistic enquiry, conversation as a method, a think-tank, interviews, and video documentation to uncover how a group of public art practitioners reflect on place-specificity within their work, how they utilise place, and are influenced by place. The research reflects on the potential of place-specific public art to celebrate unique cultural differences, inspire international collaboration, and provide a forum for local distinctiveness in the face of globalization The study also serves as one model for practice-based research utilising curatorship as a practice. This study identifies further areas for potential research within various aspects of art and design as well as other disciplines. The thesis is accompanied by a suite of DVD's which document the curatorial practice and address place-specific themes that emerged from the research.
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Sakuma, Hana. "The notion of 'we' : articulating ethical moments in art." Thesis, University of the Arts London, 2006. http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/5643/.
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Broadly speaking, this research involves a philosophical and socio-political investigation of creative force entailed in the realm of art. It focuses on how to assess the elusive aspect of power that is engaged with the notion of `we'; and explores what the notion contributes to art-making. The written thesis consists of four chapters, each of which is concerned with the notion of `we' in different ways. Firstly, a matter of ethics that is involved in the notion of `we' will be looked at using Derrida's reading on Levinas's idea of the Face of the Other; Deleuze's image of thought; Deleuze's becoming; Derrida's hospitality and responsibility. Secondly, the ways in which curators and artists-as-curators engage with the authoritarian voice entailed within the curatorial practice will be discussed by looking at some works of display and exhibition making. Thirdly, artwork made by artists such as Cildo Meireles and Jeremy Deller will be evaluated from the point of view that the artist does not necessarily play the role of the author who controls the meaning of their own work. In the light of this, how artists establish their different artistic strategies will be assessed. In the fourth section, some of the texts which I have produced during the research period and which are accompanied with visual images of my works will be presented to demonstrate the mutual interdependence of my writing and making. Throughout the research period, studio-oriented work, collaborative works including co-curation and co-organizing events, artist's talks, and writing as art have been developed and realized with a particular emphasis on looking at the ways and kinds of communication that are possible through works of art. This includes my final show at Chelsea College of Art & Design (19-21 May 2006); the solo shows 100 Books Which I Didn't Buy at Unit 2 (2005, London) and from the middle through the middle at Changing Room (2002, Scotland); co-curation of the video screening SCRAMBLE at Brunei Theatre (2002, London) and CCA (2003, Glasgow); the symposium Interrupting Connections: performative Interventions at West Space (London, 2003).
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McPeake, Aaron. "Nibbling at clouds : the visual artist encounters adventitious blindness." Thesis, University of the Arts London, 2012. http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/5871/.
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This thesis, Nibbling at clouds: the visual artist encounters adventitious blindness, examines how visual artists who have come to lose all or most of their eyesight in later life continue to engage with their art practice. This relates directly to my own conditio, where vision has deteriorated in recent years to a point where my visual acuity stands at a tenth of normal vision, and as a consequence I am registered blind. The condition and art practices are in many ways inseparable, as behavioural changes in response to the deterioration of vision are largely unavoidable due to powerful physical, social and psychological influences. The research draws on the personal experience of the author as well as an analysis of phenomena experienced by the adventitiously blind artists interviewed: Sargy Mann, Keith Salmon, Sally Booth and Jane Phillips. There are several pressing factors which impact on artistic practice following the loss of eyesight. These include mental health issues, physical rehabilitation, subject or modal choices in the studio, declaring one's condition (or not) particularly in terms of exhibition and more broadly, regarding the contemporary social understanding of blindness, particularly in the field of visual arts. Because of my subjective experienc of loss of vision, part of the thesis takes the form of a self-interview serving as a 'narrative washing line'. The self-interview acts as a continuous narrative throughout the document, and is punctuated by several 'volumes' addressing the above-mentioned disparate and more formal factors. Exploring the extent of my own 'making' capabilities, the research process involved working with methods and materials which were new to me including film, photography and bronze sculpture. Because of the lack of literature in the field, my use of other artists' testimonies has been emphatic. Methodologically the artwork draws on literary work, including Joyce and Borges, in conjunction with personal experience to provide the option for multiple possible readings. My resulting artworks and works by the artists interviewed are documented and discussed throughout the body of the text in the context of blindness as contributing force in making and articulating the artists' ideas, rather than being only a detrimental influence. The work's primary contribution to knowledge is through providing an account of how a visual artist renegotiated his beliefs, emotions and goals following the breakdown in self and environment caused by the onset of adventitious blindness. It also points to the value of various practices of reflective examination in the process.
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Lori, Ope. "The oppositional gaze : contemporary image-making practice and the implications of skin colour ideals." Thesis, University of the Arts London, 2014. http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/6762/.
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The thesis explores the uneven distribution of power between and of the black/white female dichotomy and, while using them as a strategic tool within the visual work, questions the implications of skin colour in constructions of femininity within visual representations. Historically as a marker of skin colour, white women and those with a lighter skin complexion have taken the role of the feminine, in comparison to the black woman and those with darker skin tones, who traditionally occupy a space of the nonfeminine. Within the thesis, this privileging of lighter and white skin, based on white aesthetics and beauty value judgments, has been named as colourism. The body of practice based work, produced as an intrinsic part of the thesis, will attempt to develop and explore this issue and develop a particularly black aesthetic response to the cultural construct of the ‘feminine’. Through researching contextual material made up of other artist’s images and films, that challenge traditions of the gaze, the thesis develops visual strategies to help re-position black, and thereby white, women’s place in visual representations, and further questions gender and identity. In approaching these questions, the thesis draws from various discourses, such as cultural studies, feminist film theory, visual cultures and fine art practice and theory. The thesis argues for new ways of constructing visual pleasures within looking relations, which go beyond the visual, which call for a conscious process of breaking away from a representational language based on the phallocentric. The presented image-making strategies aim to destroy the normative understandings of visual pleasure, using colour and the belief in the power of the erotic (Audre Lorde 1984), to enable new ways of thinking through black and white women’s positions within these debates. This thesis uses the processes of personal image-making practice within a body of original artworks using video and photography, to direct towards the 3 theoretical fields in which this research is positioned. It uses a practice leading the theory methodology.
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Haslam, Susannah E. "After the educational turn : alternatives to the alternative art school." Thesis, Royal College of Art, 2018. http://researchonline.rca.ac.uk/3479/.
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This research problematises the contemporary phenomenon of alternative arts education after art’s ‘Educational Turn’, encompassed by evidence of a critical discourse between 2006 and 2016. The thesis addresses the questions: what are the alternatives to models of the alternative art school having emerged through the Educational Turn? And, how might dialogic engagement with organisations outside of the Turn propose something other for the future of alternative arts education? Contemporary art’s capacity to instrumentalise education, through its reimagining by artists and the co-option of ‘the alternative’ by arts institutions, must be countered by considering organisational models that sit outside of the Educational Turn. The field is contextualised by a ‘crisis in education’ in the UK, contributing to an abundant manifestation of ‘alternative’ art schools. An often-overlooked plurality exists to ‘the alternative’ that, in its co-option by contemporary art, is rendered homogenised. Existing discourse considers artistic, self-organised and curatorial practices, framed by institutional and infrastructural critique, but neglects to step outside of the Turn to imagine other models for alternative arts education. ‘Knowledge mobility’, ‘the dialogic’ and ‘(trans)formation’ form a framework for the thesis, functioning according to a methodology of critique and proposition. The research derives ‘knowledge mobility’ to critique the Turn’s instrumentalisation of education, by examining existing discourse and practice that problematise the paradoxes of the Turn and frame knowledge as a form of social organisation. The research aligns ‘the dialogic’ from Mikhail Bakhtin and Paulo Freire, with Julia Kristeva and Roland Barthes’ ‘intertextuality’ and Maurice Blanchot’s ‘infinite conversation’. The function of ‘the dialogic’ is twofold: as a structural metaphor and conversational research practice. Four dialogues with organisations operating outside of the remit of the Turn consider the productive and transformative capacities of models not framed as alternative art schools. These are with: Leeds Creative Timebank, IF Project, THECUBE and Syllabus programme. Negotiating critical and applied interpretations of ‘knowledge mobility’, findings from these are reconciled with the research through a process of ‘(trans)formation’, resulting in the proposition of speculative principles to contribute to the field of alternative arts education. The research has been produced as part of the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council’s (AHRC) Creative Exchange knowledge exchange hub, providing the context for stepping outside of the domain of contemporary art. The value of this approach for the field of alternative arts education is in its capacity to have drawn together thinking from each organisation. This research makes its contribution to the field of alternative arts education by working dialogically with organisations where the practice of knowledge is central, establishing a connection between organisations outside of the Turn, which would otherwise be excluded from its discourse, with contemporary art. The research formulates and puts into practice methods of critique, conversation and proposition: producing a critical vocabulary, lens and through deriving speculative propositions towards a possible future for alternative arts education.
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Whitley, Zoe. "Against a sharp white background : dialogic and exhibitionary practices of Black contemporary artists and curators in art museums." Thesis, University of Central Lancashire, 2018. http://clok.uclan.ac.uk/23580/.
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This research seeks to better understand how Black artists experience the mainstream art museum. The thesis makes an original contribution to scholarship on curating contemporary art through qualitative analysis of subjective approaches to art museum space. It makes evident responses to institutionalised systems of address. Foundational in establishing this action research methodology (Lewin 1946; Carr & Kemmis 1986) are the dialogic frameworks provided by the theories of Mikhail Bahktin (1975), Edouard Glissant (1997), and chiefly the writing of Zora Neale Hurston (1929). It concludes that art museums can become sites of dialogic exchange (Bennett, 2006) for those who have been traditionally excluded from such spaces, though the means may be other than those formally sanctioned by the institution. Examining racial difference in museological and curatorial spheres potentially allows for multiple dialogues, referred to by Bakhtin as ‘polyphony.’ Interviews with fourteen international artists and curators suggest that critical debate around the racialisation of museum space has progressed relatively little since the 1990s, with identity politics and institutional critique having fallen out of favour in contemporary museum discourse (Bishop 2012, Haq 2014). Indeed, recent academic research into race and the art museum tends to focus on the past (Cooks 2011, Cahan 2016) or artists’ continued lack of visibility (Chambers 2015). While museum-centred research interrogates the relationship between audience and museum space (McClellan 2003; Karp et al. 2006; Bourriaud 1998; Kester 2011), little consideration has been dedicated to Black contemporary artists’ physical presence in art museums. As a critical paratext to curatorial projectsThe Shadows Took Shape and In Black and White which I co-authored, this study examines Black artists’ roles as uniquely informed generators of address (speakers) and respondents within the art museum. Given the insular and highly specialised body of curatorial writing (Hoffmann 2013; Lind 2010; Obrist 2008; Martinon & Rogoff 2015), it is therefore proposed that studying modes of Black curatorial and artistic address can ultimately yield new translations for contemporary museum-going publics.
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Alaluusua, Elisa. "Sketchbooks : a comparative analysis of the use of sketchbooks by contemporary artists." Thesis, University of the Arts London, 2016. http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/12167/.
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This qualitative research project aims to gain a theoretical and practical understanding of what role sketchbooks play in the creative practice of contemporary artists, and what their shared and individual sketchbook methods are. A comparative analysis of thirteen contemporary artists’ sketchbook practices is offered. During the course of the research the private and public nature of sketchbooks emerged as an important and engaging area of inquiry that helped narrow the focus of the research process and offered an entry point for the analysis. The methodology used was fundamentally that of artistic research that drew heavily upon the characteristics of artistic practice in the field of drawing; as well as from hermeneutics, (auto)ethnography, and phenomenological analysis, each of which informed my practice and processes. This research aims to be useful for those conducting research into sketchbooks, drawing, drawing and writing, the nature of artistic process, creativity and pedagogy. The outcomes of this research are presented in two parts, in the thesis text and the documentation of an exhibition. In the final analysis the outcome is a multi - layered and multi - voiced story that identifies individual and shared practices used by contemporary artists during the compilation of their sketchbooks. Both the research and resultant artwork aim to bring to the foreground the largely overlooked public aspect of the sketchbook and contribute to knowledge in the fields of drawing research, video installation art, archival research and interviewing in the context of artistic research. Throughout the project I used drawing and video practices as methods of investigating, interrogating and disseminating knowledge. Thirteen contemporary artists’ interviews were recorded as a core element of the primary research, then reconfigured as an artwork / video installation called Thirteen Narratives By Thirteen Artists About Their Sketchbooks.
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Hodgson-Teall, Angela. "Drawing on the nature of empathy." Thesis, University of the Arts London, 2014. http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/12039/.
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My research investigated the impact of introducing structured drawing activities to staff of a mixed ethnicity hospital community in south–east London, to address the question of whether drawing was a useful tool in the practice of empathy. Empathy, ‘putting oneself in the shoes of another’was examined critically through drawing as practice, conducted within the hospital environment. This research coincided with a period of major change for the hospital Trust, which had low staff and patient satisfaction and poor financial performance when the research began in autumn 2006. The long-term nature of my collaborative doctoral research enabled me to slowly expand the boundary of what was acceptable arts practice in a healthcare context, while ensuring that the‘dangerous’ practice of empathy was worked through via art practice in such a way that these dangers were encountered, analysed and understood. The research project focused on the benefits (and complications) of drawing within the hospital community, during a time of immense turmoil. Drawing was used to aid investigations, sustain the craft skills of medicine, explore emotions and thoughts, and ground and focus staff in empathic therapeutic interventions. These interventions allowed staff to slow down, play, analyse and reflect, creating a space within the context of the hospital, where the practice of empathy was reviewed. The work used dialogue between the dual practices of art and medicine to explore complex intersubjective communication. The core practice, drawing, was embedded in a longitudinal study of drawing events based in the same hospitals at yearly intervals since 2007, so that a similar body of staff had the opportunity to participate in these collaborative events. Using cross-sectional surveys centred on the Big Draw(Campaign for Drawing, 2000) I set up a series of encounters including interactive drawing events,lectures, performances and exhibitions, and participated in drawing conferences within the Trust,galleries and art colleges nationally and in the USA. Smaller scale investigations of individual practice over the same period of time, in venues for both the visual arts and music, complemented the main studies and allowed a triangulation of theory, methodology and data, bringing a number of methods to bear upon the question of whether drawing was a useful tool in the practice of empathy in hospital environments. At the core of my research is a definition of a practice of empathy based on my work in the research activities. The elucidation of a set of features, pertaining to the practice of empathy, has been defined by these events. My definition of empathy was constructed by building temporary collaborative communities during these events through which the dynamics of empathy were examined and its features analysed. In my research, art practice emerges as methodologically important to the proper understanding of the problems, dangers and opportunities of empathy in clinical practice.
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Arnold, Bram. "Walking home : the path as transect in an 800km autoethnographic enquiry." Thesis, University of the Arts London, 2016. http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/9634/.
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This practice-based project articulates the notion of an autoethnographic transect using Walking Home, a particular journey that I made in 2009, as its foundation. Borrowing key terms from the fields of ethnography and ecology, the project articulates a new contribution to knowledge by expanding the notion of a transect and using methods appropriated from autoethnography to generate visual arts practice in the wake of a long distance walk. Walking from London, England to St. Gallen, Switzerland the journey was undertaken in the wake of my father’s death. The key principle this project takes from autoethnography is that the position of the emotive self, as researcher and researched, can offer unique insights into a given field. Methods borrowed from autoethnography and ecology are re-employed throughout a transdisciplinary practice and body of research that, through the development of an ecological from of subjectivity, articulates an autoethnographic transect. The project expands the scale of a transect, from a line drawn across a field, to a journey taken across Europe; one that is drawn, walked and talked into being. Walking Home is presented in a holistic form whereby contextual and critical work is interwoven with and within practice: writing, image making, performance and installation. This interwoven process, whereby the practice and research become an inherent part of each other, is exemplified through a body of work called Fondue, a performance, taking place as a dinner party, which has evolved out of my engagement with autoethnography. An exhibition took place in Spring 2015, the outcomes of which are folded into this thesis. Articulating the notion of an autoethnographic transect as a new method within the field of visual arts practice this thesis will be of interest to performance practitioners, artists and writers engaged with the field of walking as a form of practice or process.
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Lange, Ann-Christina. "Inclusive differentiation : a study of artistic techniques and devices of innovation." Thesis, Goldsmiths College (University of London), 2012. http://research.gold.ac.uk/8003/.
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This thesis presents a study of innovation that focuses on the promotion of art as a force of genuine invention and the unfolding of a much-desired ability to profit from this development. Innovation lies at the heart of contested and divergent views on the role of artistic critique and the creation of value so pervasive in recent economic development, not least in the light of the financial crisis that erupted in 2007. This research connects to and builds upon an increasing engagement within economic sociology and social theory with the intermingling between art and business, or how art has come into view as a source of change. It takes experimental filmmaking and design methods associated with the European artistic avant-garde and anti-capitalistic critique as empirical examples. In doing so, this thesis explores an inclusive logic of differentiation centring on how ‘anti- capitalist’ critique feeds into processes of valuation, and explores how innovation practice benefits from the realities that it also excludes. The thesis draws together insights from two ethnographic studies of innovation in which artistic critique is translated into tools of innovation. In doing so, it explores the way in which artistic critique suspends, provokes and tests ‘realities’ that might stand as sources of knowledge for the purpose of business innovation. It makes the key argument that art and business exist in differential relations in which the principles and values associated with art and business coexist in multiple combinations, which are intimately bound up with new sites of action, such as the formation of camps, labs and studio workshops. Drawing attention to how such differential relations between art and business are becoming central to the construction of contemporary economies, this thesis makes a critical contribution to innovation studies expanding its vocabulary and, at the same time, its empirical field.
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Hoechtl, Nina. "If only for the length of a lucha : queer/ing, mask/ing, gender/ing and gesture in lucha libre." Thesis, Goldsmiths College (University of London), 2012. http://research.gold.ac.uk/8056/.
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This PhD uses a queer reading strategy to explore the performative sites of lucha libre (wrestling in Mexico). My research inhabits the space behind the scene, the space between the ring and the audience, and the space of being part of the audience itself. My reading of the luchas takes place through the camera, the interview, printed works, theoretical investigation, and through the work of artists who draw on lucha libre – including myself. As lucha libre itself cannot be narrowed down to one specific medium, my subject matter allows me to utilize an interdisciplinary perspective to examine its various encounters, spaces, subjectivities and gestures. As well as attending live events in the arenas, watching lucha libre on television, exploring its circulation in artistic and filmic productions and its appropriation in advertisements and political discourse, I have carried out an intervention in a regular lucha libre programme by inventing a character, promoting, constructing and staging a match in an arena in the north of Mexico City. My methodology therefore makes use of a whole range of strategies including those borrowed from the discipline of anthropology and from practices of documentary making. Through my writing and my practice, I attempt to query and complicate these disciplinary conventions and my own use of them. I place particular emphasis in this PhD upon the possibility and use of a queer reading strategy in relation to lucha libre. Drawing on the works of Gloria Anzaldúa, Judith Butler, Judith ʻJackʼ Halberstam, José Javier Maristany, and José Esteban Muñoz, the thesis argues that a queer reading strategy has the potential to complicate ways of seeing gender and sexuality as well as race, ethnicity, class, time and space in this context. I identify the rich queer legacies within lucha libre, film and popular culture, and focus on the multiple and often conflicting readings made possible by adopting queer theory and reading practices. In doing so, the thesis interrogates the different ways in which popular cultures can go beyond accepted notions of what it means to be Mexican, a woman, macho, gay and so on. Throughout this work, I pay close attention to forms of audience participation, their verbal and gestural acts and how key these are in to the event of the lucha. These verbal and gestural acts, I argue, produce a unique complicity in the arena manifesting a transient trace of queer histories, and suggesting potential utopias.
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Fernández, López Olga. "Dissenting exhibitions by artists (1968-1998) : reframing Marxist exhibition legacy." Thesis, Royal College of Art, 2011. http://researchonline.rca.ac.uk/1346/.
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The goal of this thesis is to look at the critical and dissenting value of exhibitions through the examination of four cases studies, based on six exhibitions taking place between 1968 and 1998 in Latin and North America. The exhibitions belong to the history of modern and contemporary exhibitions and curating, a field of research and study that has only started to be written about in the last two decades. This investigation contributes to it, in its creation of new genealogies by connecting previously overlooked antecedents, or by proposing new relations within established lineages, at the intersection of a specific historiography; to address exhibitions, a tradition of artists acting as curators and an emerging history of curating. The examined exhibitions were put together by artists or artist collectives and were placed in a liminal position between artistic and curatorial practice. All the cases presented a distinct proposal in relation to art and social change, a fact that connects them, in their aims and modus operandi, to a Marxist and neo-Marxist critical and transformative legacy. The cases address the following connections: exhibition as political site (Tucumán Arde, 1968); exhibition as social space (The People’s Choice (Arroz con Mango), 1981); exhibition as encounter (Rooms with a view, We the People, Art/Artifact, 1987-88); and exhibition as an exchange situation (El Museo de la Calle, 1998-2001). Key to their analysis is the concept of dissensus, as put forward by Jacques Rancière. Within this theoretical framework, these exhibitions put into practice particular cases of dissensus in a given distribution of the sensible. All of them tried to deal with their thematic concerns by performing them as a praxis. They dissent with the way in which reality was formatted in their historical moment and challenge the exhibition medium itself opening new ways of doing and making in the exhibition field. Therefore, in this thesis the dissenting value of exhibitions is closely related to its main features as a medium, namely their temporality, heterogeneity and flexibility, which contribute to their potential for creative analysis and propositioning. In the case of these exhibitions, this capability is brought into play for institutional interrogation, for offering alternative cultural narratives and also for inspiring new imaginary realms.
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Pedder-Smith, Rachel. "The glow of significance : narrating stories using natural history specimens." Thesis, Royal College of Art, 2011. http://researchonline.rca.ac.uk/430/.
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The subject of this project is natural history specimens and the exploration of their qualities in visual artwork. The first part is a 533cm watercolour painting composed of an image of at least one specimen (or part thereof) to represent each flowering plant family, of which there are 505. The ‘Herbarium Specimen Painting’ was created using dried plant specimens from the herbarium collection at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The plant families are painted in systematic order following one of the recently developed DNA classification systems. The painting was produced with scientific rigor and under the constant supervision of Kew botanists. It aims not only to illustrate the chosen classification system but to explore the aesthetic beauty of herbarium specimens and celebrate many of the incredible and varied narratives contained within the Kew collection. The second element of this thesis constructs a context for the above artwork among similar projects. Natural history institutions worldwide were contacted for information about artists using natural history collections to produce art with a strong narrative element that ‘discussed’ the notion of the specimen. These artists were then contacted and many interviewed. In parallel, the literature review concentrated on theories developed in the field of material culture where the human relationships between groups of objects are analysed. These theories proved fundamental and on occasion inspirational in uncovering deeper meanings and narrative possibilities. The concluding section of this research discusses whether the findings of this project, which uses and develops material culture theory can contribute to that field of research. It analyses the possibility that specimen-based artwork can benefit science and/or help revitalise museum collections, and comments on whether institutions can improve the public communicability of the objects in their care by treating them as a potential source for new art.
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Button, Victoria. "The portrait drawings of Hans Holbein the Younger : function and use explored through materials and techniques." Thesis, Royal College of Art, 2013. http://researchonline.rca.ac.uk/1357/.
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This thesis examines the materials and techniques of sixteenth century artist Hans Holbein the Younger, with particular reference to his portrait drawings. The research reinstates the drawings as the primary source-material for investigation, thereby demonstrating the link between the materials and techniques chosen by Holbein, and the function or end-use of the drawings. Although around one hundred Holbein portrait drawings survive, the focus of this research is the eighteen that relate to currently attributed oil and miniature paintings. By focusing the research in this manner, it is possible to establish how Holbein constructed and used the drawings in the preparation of the finished oil painting. Furthermore, it explains how his choice and use of materials and techniques can help to establish the original context and function of the drawings. An important outcome of this research is a detailed description of the eighteen drawings that relate to a painted portrait. Having developed an effective method of examining and describing Holbein’s drawings, this research provides a thorough analysis of the materials and techniques used by him. This not only increases our understanding of his drawing processes, but also broadens the limitations of traditional connoisseurship by offering a more accessible tool, allowing objective visual analysis of an artist’s technique. This method of investigation can be applied to drawings in a wider context of sixteenth century artistic production. Moreover, it can also be used as a potential model for how to effectively ‘read’ a drawing in order to better understand its function and method of production. The results inform art historical and conservation research. A comprehensive, systematic visual examination of the drawings has helped to reveal new information on Holbein’s methods and materials, and offers insights into 16th century workshop practice. In many cases examination has clarified the sequence in which the media was laid down. Holbein’s emphasis on the contours that define sitters’ features has been much disputed, and their role, media, and application methods were unclear. What has previously been described as metalpoint marks were discovered by the author to be indentations, which have become filled with loose media, thereby giving the appearance of a drawn line. The indentations actually show evidence of tracing of the salient lines that capture likeness for transfer. The research has also revealed that red chalk was the preliminary media for defining features, and that Holbein developed standardised techniques for rendering flesh tones, making the drawing process more efficient. It is apparent that Holbein chose techniques to fulfill a particular role, and that there are clear links between these techniques and their location on a drawing.
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Kapelouzou, Iris Stavroula. "Harming works of art : the challenges of contemporary conceptions of the artwork." Thesis, Royal College of Art, 2010. http://researchonline.rca.ac.uk/1629/.
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The aim of this thesis is to consider the role of conservation in response to the theoretical and ethical challenges posed by contemporary art phenomena. This is pursued through the investigation of various theoretical conceptions of artwork ontology, of artwork and heritage identities, and of the ways in which these articulate the concept of ‘harm’ and the principle ‘dono- harm’ in conservation ethics. The thesis focuses on the harms that may be brought about to artworks by conservators by committing wrongs or injustices in decision-making processes due to the inadequacy of conservation’s conceptual frame for guiding decisions. The perceived complexity of emerging conservation challenges has led to a widespread recognition that traditional conservation ethics cannot be reconciled with the demands of contemporary art forms. Against this, it is argued that the conception of conservation as a system, and the suggested subsumption of key concepts defining the object of conservation and evaluating conservation practice under broader ones, provide an adequate conceptual frame. The new frame incorporates the particularities of both traditional and contemporary art phenomena, as a unified methodology for conservation decision-making.
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Cook, Duncan. "Art, agency and eco-politics : rethinking urban subjects and environment(s)." Thesis, Royal College of Art, 2014. http://researchonline.rca.ac.uk/1645/.
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This research aims to examine the extent to which cultural agency can be seen to ‘act’ in an ecopolitical context and how its operations urge a rethinking of the processes that govern the production of urban subjects and environment(s). Responding to the fact that in recent decades, art and architectural cultures have converged around a shared concern for ‘ecological matters’ and that discourses in visual/spatial culture have become increasingly ‘ecologized’, this research broadens the points of reference for the term ‘ecology’ beyond that which simply reinforces an essentialist perspective on ‘nature’. The thesis re-directs the focus of current theoretical discourse on ‘ecological art’ towards a more rigorous engagement with its frames of reference and how it uses them to evaluate the role of cultural production in enacting ways of thinking and acting eco-logically. In doing so it develops an eco-logical mode of analysis for mapping and probing the attribution of cultural agency, how it intervenes in the production of the commons and how it discloses the participants and mechanisms of a nascent political ecology. Setting cultural agency within a more expansive and multivalent field of action, means that the nexus of agency (and intentionality) is dislocated and translated between ‘things’. Reconfigured in this way, ‘an ecology of agencing’ demonstrates the profound implications this has for any ‘bodies’ of action, cultural or otherwise. Locating this exploration within the socio-natural environment(s) found in urban spatialities this thesis attends to the relatively under-theorised, but highly significant area (in eco-logical terms) of aesthetic praxis operating at the interstices of art and architecture. Pressing at the boundaries of the formal and conceptual enterprises of both disciplines, critical spatial practices represent a distinctive form of eco-praxis being cultivated ‘on the ground’. Through a series of encounters with its operations this research looks to the ways in which practice and theory, in relation to the question of ecology, are becoming increasingly co-constituted.
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Wick, Jodie. "The infrastructure of the animation industry in the East of England between 2009 & 2011." Thesis, University of the Arts London, 2016. http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/12066/.
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This research investigates how the animation industry in the UK is defined. It proposes a new framework for data collection to quantify the extent of the sector, with particular focus on infrastructural requirements in the East of England. This thesis is designed to develop a potential model based on robust and methodologically sound research, that can better quantify animation and related activities from a regional perspective. It is not intended that this thesis will offer a solution to the understanding, or support requirements of the animation industry at a local level. Through developing enhanced measurement and definition, the research has the potential to affect the way that UK animation as a whole is understood, valued and supported. Based on detailed mixed method research and thorough analysis using the East of England as a case study, the thesis proposes recommendations for new approaches to data collection and classification. The application of a ‘Grounded Theory’ approach has been developed using defined procedures and sounder theories and structures for potential future policy development. Previous studies of the creative industries recognised that Norwich and the East of England were identified as centres for excellence in Animation. This view was primarily based on assumptions rather than on mapping specific business and employment data. Inadequate subject analysis resulted in the development of unsubstantiated policies and therefore placing immediate limits on their effectiveness. By studying the East of England animation industry sector in detail, using primary research as well as government-recognised data, it was possible to develop new methods for collection and definition. Through analysis of a cross section of the UK animation sector and applying original models at regional level, the research clarifies the landscape of the animation sector and proposes a new framework model to contribute to future policy development.
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Hewitt, Andy. "Art and counter-publics in Third Way cultural policy." Thesis, University of the Arts London, 2012. http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/5679/.
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In the UK, over the past decade, the rhetoric of ‘Third Way’ governance informed cultural policy. The research sets out how the agenda for cultural policy converged with priorities for economic and social policy, in policies implemented by Arts Council England, in the commissioning of publicly funded visual art and within culture-led regeneration. Hence visual art production was further instrumentalized for the purposes of marketization and privatization. The practice-based research examines the problems issues and contingencies for visual art production in this context. Public sphere theory is used to examine ideas of publics and publicness in Third Way cultural policy context, in state cultural institutions and programming. Using Jürgen Habermas’ conception of the public sphere, the research proposes that cultural policy functioned as ‘steering media’, as publicity for the state to produce social cohesion and affirmative conceptions of the social order, i.e. the management of publics. In contrast, public sphere theory is concerned with societal processes of opinion formation, of selfforming, deliberating and rival publics. The research also applies theories of the public sphere to the theories of art and participation associated with socially-engaged art practice - theories that articulate art in relation to its publics. While socially-engaged artists have produced new modes of art practice that have shifted arts ontology, the research points to how Third Way cultural policy was quick to seize upon socially-engaged art for its own agenda. Public sphere theory informed the strategies and tactics of the Freee art collective (Dave Beech, Andy Hewitt, Mel Jordan) in the production of publicly-funded artworks. The artworks were a means to test the hypothesis and to find evidence by intervening in Third Way cultural policy with alternative ideas. Freee’s public spherian art proposes new modes of participative art to counter Third Way cultural policy - a ‘counter-public art’.
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Alev, Adil Reid. "Drifting in the Dead Zone in Cyprus : the mediation of memory through expanded life writing." Thesis, University of the Arts London, 2013. http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/5851/.
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Nicosia, a medieval walled city in Cyprus, was divided by a ‘green line’ in 1964 and remains the last divided capital city in Europe. This thesis deploys poesis and performance to interrogate the border as a site of reminiscence at the intersection of multiple and contested collective memory-narratives. In order to explore the nature of individual and collective memory the thesis challenges a series of physical and conceptual border zones: the disciplinary and discursive boundaries between poetry and philosophy; the border between memory and identity; the border between collective and individual memory and the physical terrain of the border that divides Nicosia. The dérive, translocated from Paris to Nicosia, is used to explore these borders through an autoethnographic poetics that crosses the fields of poetry, anthropology and art practice. Walking and the practice arising from it speak back to the border. The connections between poetry, performance, collective memories and mediated subjectivities are investigated through a multimedia totality of poetics that deploys film, photography and live performance as well as writing. The thesis consists of this written exegesis and documentation of the performance Memory in the Dead Zone, the website MemoryMap, the film-poem DVD An Architecture of Forgetting and The Archive of Lost Objects, a book of poetry and photography. This multimedia collection seeks to capture the complexity, diversity and fluidity of the phenomenological experience of memory and subjectivity. This thesis proposes and identifies a field of expanded life writing that is distinct from but related in ethos to the category of expanded cinema, to define such practice. The knowledge that arises out of the dérives is represented in a thesis that attempts to capture the multiplicity (though not the totality) and interrelationships of the discourses and practices that inform my border memories.
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Park, Sungsil. "East Asian and Western perception of nature in 20th century painting." Thesis, University of Brighton, 2009. https://research.brighton.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/e1cdcb78-5148-4de7-9d84-4c701af7ad29.
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The introduction aims to investigate both my painting and exhibition practice, and the historical and theoretical issues raised by them. It also examines different views on nature by comparing and contrasting 20th Century Western ideas with those of traditional Asian art and philosophies. There are two sections to this thesis; Section A contains an historical overview of Eastern and Western philosophy and art, Section B presents observations on my studio and exhibition practice. Section A is divided into two chapters. Chapter 1 examines concepts of nature in the East and West before the eariy 20th Century. It discusses examples of different approaches to nature and cross-cultural perceptions, especially Taoism and Buddhism, which emphasize harmony within nature and the principle of universal truth. It also gives pertinent and relevant examples of attitudes to nature in the Korean. Chinese and Japanese art of the 20th Century. Chapter 2 discusses new and changing attitudes to ecology, post 20th Century, and the environmental art movements of the East and West. Their ideas have a great deal in common with traditional Eastern views on nature and the mind, so have the potential t change both our identity and our relationship with nature. Section B draws together this material to establish the main argument of the thesis, concerning a connection between modem ecological approaches and traditional Zen Buddhist ideas which emphasize the interconnection of all natural forms. The section consists mainly of observations on studio practice divided into 3 chapters and a conclusion.
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Stockburger, Axel. "The rendered arena : modalities of space in video and computer games." Thesis, University of the Arts London, 2006. http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/6507/.
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During the last 30 years computer and videogames have grown into a large entertainment industry of economic as well as cultural and social importance. As a distinctive field of academic inquiry begins to evolve in the form of Game Studies, the majority of approaches can be identified as emerging either from a background of literary theory which motivates a concentration on narrative structures or from a dedicated focus on the rules of video and computer games. However, one of the most evident properties of those games is their shared participation in a variety of spatial illusions. Although most researchers share the view that issues related to mediated space are among the most significant factors characterising the new medium, as of yet, no coherent conceptual exploration of space and spatial representation in video and computer games has been undertaken. This thesis focuses on the novel spatial paradigms emerging from computer and video games. It aims to develop an original theoretical framework that takes the hybrid nature of the medium into account. The goal of this work is to extend the present range of methodologies directed towards the analysis of digital games. In order to reveal the roots of the spatial apparatus at work an overview of the most significant conceptions of space in western thought is given. Henri Lefebvre's reading of space as a triad of perceived, conceived and lived space is adopted. This serves to account for the multifaceted nature of the subject, enables the integration of divergent spatial conceptions as part of a coherent framework, and highlights the importance of experiential notions of spatiality. Starting from Michel Foucault's notion of the heterotopia, game-space is posited as the dynamic interplay between different spatial modalities. As constitutive elements of the dynamic spatial system mobilized by digital games the following modalities are advanced: the physical space of the player, the space emerging from the narrative, the rules, the audiovisual representation and the kinaesthetic link between player and game. These different modalities are examined in detail in the light of a selected range of exemplary games. Based on a discussion of film theory in this context an original model that serves to distinguish between different visual representational strategies is presented. A chapter is dedicated to the analysis of the crucial and often overlooked role of sound for the generation of spatial illusions. It is argued that sound has to be regarded as the privileged element that enables the active use of representational space in three dimensions. Finally the proposed model is mobilised to explore how the work of contemporary artists relates to the spatial paradigms set forth by digital games. The critical dimension of artistic work in this context is outlined. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the impact of the prevalent modes of spatial practice in computer and video games on wider areas of everyday life.
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Haworth, Michael. "Thought into being : finitude and creation." Thesis, Goldsmiths College (University of London), 2013. http://research.gold.ac.uk/8053/.
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This thesis is a response to the increasingly widespread belief in the potential for technology and modern science to enable finite subjects to overcome the essential limitations constitutive of finitude and, hence, subjectivity. It investigates the truth and extent of such claims, taking as its focus quasi-miraculous technological developments in neuroscience, in particular Brain-Computer Interfacing systems and cognitive imaging technologies. The work poses the question of whether such emergent neurotechnologies signal a profound shift beyond receptivity and finitude by effectively bridging the gap between interiority and exteriority. Organised around a quadripartite division, the thesis pursues this idea firstly with regard to the act of artistic creation; secondly through an exegesis of Kant’s account of the original or infinite creativity of the Supreme Being; thirdly through readings of Freud and Jung and their respective models of the psyche; and finally through an interrogation into the possibility of telepathy and the various ways in which it can be conceived. Each chapter thus takes place as an extended thought experiment, exploring the consequences of a seemingly unprecedented proposition that promises to eradicate the finite gap between internal and external. This is followed to the limits of conceivability before asking in each case whether we may in fact need to rethink the very premises around which each proposition has framed the problem.
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Avgitidou, Angeliki. "The artist as subject in creative stasis and drasis, explored through performative subjectivity in media art and diary practice." Thesis, University of the Arts London, 2003. http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/2020/.
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This research began as an investigation of the artist's subjectivity within the process of creating art. The focus of the research was the state of stasis, experienced by the artist as absence of action and nothingness. Reflexive methodology and autobiography were chosen as the basic epistemological and methodological approaches in order to fulfil the framework, questions and needs of this research. Diaries and Meta-Diaries as tools of the methodological approach were significant in the understanding of the artist's subjectivity and its manifestation in the written document. Diary entries were treated as instances of subjectivity rather than symptoms of the truth of the subject. I referred to diaries as part of a 'diary practice' which is inclusive of the time not writing in the diary. Additionally diaries developed an exchange with the artist's practice, became part of the concerns of this research and finally became part of the practice as much as a way of exploring it. Stasis was examined through diary practice and artworks and its characteristics were mapped out. These characteristics were uncertainty, frustration and anticipation of action for the subject. The artist's own diaries and works were examined within the contemporary artistic and theoretical context to determine the strategies the artist adopts to escape stasis. These strategies were initially determined as: Repetition creating a refuge for the subject; Submission to arkhé as a way of providing continuity and The creation of a network of complicity as an affirmation of existence. Drasis, a Greek concept the meaning of which includes both 'act' and the 'performance', was adopted to describe the strategy by which the eventisation of stasis is performed. In drasis the focus of my artwork would become stasis and not action. Through drasis the eventisation of stasis was carried out, marking a strategy of the artist in stasis. Drasis, a strategy for the artist as subject in stasis, is, together with the creative work, my main contribution to knowledge in this research.
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Moreira, Maria. "Urban image and otherness : an investigation through practice of installation art." Thesis, University of the Arts London, 2004. http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/2305/.
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This research examines the hypothesis that installation art: -is not a medium but a mode of address, addressing the world as a multiplicity; -uses tactics of 'dispersal', which as perceptual gesture is in affinity with notions of multiplicity. The explanatory framework, which legitimates 'dispersal' as installation's defining tactic, is introduced step by step, through the articulation of certain concepts such as: 'field of activities' (Kaye, 2000), 'intervening screen', (Deleuze, 1968), 'dilation' (Ahearne, 1995), afterwardness' (Laplanche, 1992), 'the knowing not to know' (Derrida, 1992), 'emotion-value' (Barthes, 1977) and 'autopoetics closure' (Luhmann, 2000). Structured by this framework, the practice for this research addresses, on one hand, the concept of otherness - understood as the infinite learning of 'differential truths' (Ahearne, 1995, p. 192) and on the other hand, a notion of urban image - understood as fragmentary imagery able to accommodate a sense of public space over imprints of experienced time. From the analysis of this practice the research concludes that: -the employment of 'dispersal' as a defining tactic allows the work to surface into visibility as a sharing of a system of relevance; -this sharing aims to displace meaning, by pushing it away from an autonomous condition, located on the work's surface; -meaning, when presented as a sharing of a system of relevance, is relocated throughout different 'levels of immersion' inside the work; -from this new positioning, meaning will only be retrieved by the work-in-situ of a particular viewer's reading; -this condition of random retrieval implies that the work will generate meaning as 'differential truth' (Ahearne, 1995, p. 192), which exists outside 'the disease of identity' (Certeau, 1969, p. 179); -as 'differential truth', meaning becomes a function, not of the authority of a specific voice, but of the ability to respond [a response-ability], exercised by the maker in facing the world, and by the viewer in the face of the work.
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Kilcoyne, Janet. "A case for art as a socially engaged, politicising force, utilising the work of Alfredo Jaar." Thesis, Royal College of Art, 2018. http://researchonline.rca.ac.uk/3768/.
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My original contribution to knowledge is a framework constructed via the writings of Antonio Gramsci and Walter Benjamin for understanding what distinguishes art as a political object from art as a socially engaged, politicising force. The dominant understanding of art's reformative social agency raises two ethical problems that the thesis addresses. The first involves the artist's right to assume the authority to represent people and social conditions. The second involves an ethical aesthetic of tastefulness that engages with viewing as opposed to action. The framework I develop argues that art's functionalisms, for good or for ill, do not work with categories of art but are embedded in the politics of all cultural production. By disentangling art from the elitist paradigms enmeshed in concepts of artistic skill and art's own internal history of development, the thesis clarifies what separates art as political object from art as a socially engaged, politicising force. In the thesis, I argue for the advantages of the framework I develop via critical engagements with influential approaches such as those advocated by Clement Greenberg and Roland Barthes, artworks such as those produced by Judy Chicago and Art & Language, and theorists of art's social and political role such as those offered by Chantal Mouffe and Jacques Rancière. A key point made across the thesis is that political art is not necessarily politicising art, with the former being more interested in modifying the forms taken by art - what art is - and the latter asking how art can contribute to social and political change - what art does. Subsequently, the thesis outlines in detail the aforementioned framework inspired by Gramsci and Benjamin. This sets the scene for the second half of the thesis, which discusses the installations and interventions of Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar, whose practices are an exemplary case for illustrating the potential of the framework outlined above. As a self-professed Gramscian, Jaar works to actively participate in practical life as a constructor, organiser and 'permanent persuader' (Gramsci, 1971, p.10), through creating models for 'learning to think, for solving a problem' (Jaar, 2006, p.76). Moreover, as someone who is explicitly political in his practices, and who has been lauded worldwide for his works since the late 1970s, Jaar is a highly appropriate artist through which to highlight the challenges inherent to attempts to make the most of art's social and political potential. The chapters on Jaar consider, in turn, his Chilean works in the late 1970s and early 1980s, his photographic installations, and his explicitly political interventions. I argue that, while at times the work has embodied a politicising dynamic, more often than not the work has remained political and thus within more traditional understandings of art and of the artist. As such, the thesis offers a richer, more holistic approach to theorising art and discussing artistic practices compared to existing scholarship and criticism, and it also enables us to develop more nuanced analyses of artworks which are presented as political and potentially transformative than has hitherto been the case.
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Hewish, Andrew. "Tropologies of the line." Thesis, Royal College of Art, 2018. http://researchonline.rca.ac.uk/3540/.
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This thesis articulates a tropology of the line, when presented in the singular, across theory, literature and visual art. It articulates and tests the singular line’s rhetoric and associated values exhibited in these modes of cultural production, suggesting that they cross-refer in light of Agamben’s arguments put forth in his Signature of All Things (2009), using a discourse following Lyotard’s concept of ‘drift’ put forth in his Driftworks (1984), and addresses the question of how such a study might be written from within the locus of the subject matter itself.
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Sacchetti, Maria José. "A minimal aesthetic : the relationships between fashion and art in New York and Paris, from 1964 to the present day." Thesis, University of the Arts London, 2013. http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/6528/.
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This thesis identifies and characterises a minimal aesthetic evident in a strand of fashion emerging in New York and Paris from 1964 onwards. It examines the way in which a minimal aesthetic has been applied to the practice of fashion design and retail architecture, specifically in a high-fashion context. The research establishes that the earliest manifestation of a minimal aesthetic in fashion design, took place in 1964, in the work of the French fashion designer André Courrèges. Designers who later adopted similar principles include Jil Sander (1968), Calvin Klein (1968), Zoran Ladricorbic (1976), Donna Karan (1984), Helmut Lang (1986) and Narciso Rodriguez (1997), among others. The study identifies the origins of the principles of a minimal aesthetic and examines them through two distinct case studies that consider the practice of designers Donna Karan and Helmut Lang, both of whose work emerged during the 1980s. The investigation re-evaluates the significance of Minimalism in fashion history. It challenges accepted views of Minimalism in fashion as merely a trend of the mid-1990s, or as a local phenomenon. The thesis maintains that these principles find expression in the designers’ work, in the architecture of the flagship stores and in the inter-relationship between the two. Additionally, it investigates the meanings that these products convey to the consumer. Through an evaluation of the retail architecture, it establishes parallels between the principles of this aesthetic and earlier elements of a post-war Modernist architecture. The study of the dynamic inter-relationship between elements of fashion design and those of architecture focuses on the definition of a minimal aesthetic. Furthermore, these claims are contextualized within other fields such as material culture, cultural and historical studies and sociology. The thesis employs a qualitative methodology comprising empirical research based on case studies and object-based analysis, all of which draw upon theory that addresses the means of interpretation. The study has developed through an analysis of dress and the retail architecture associated with the case study designers’ work. Through empirical research, the research shows how contemporary attitudes, practices and theories have emerged which are essential for the analysis of dress and the spaces it inhabits. The primary sources, garments from the collections of André Courrèges, Donna Karan and Helmut Lang held at key international costume archives at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London and the Fashion Institute of Technology and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, are discussed in relation to other archival and published sources.
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Franco, William. "Cross-cultural collaboration in New Zealand : a Chicano in Kiwi land." Massey University, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10179/878.
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In my exegesis, I will explore the different social, political, cultural and artistic themes, influences and methods that direct my art practice. I will dissect my current work, outlining these transformations and how they impact my work here at Massey, as well as how they will continue to inspire my art practice in the future.
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Clements, Wayne. "Always follow the instructions : rules and rule following in visual art." Thesis, University of the Arts London, 2005. http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/6506/.
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The thesis examines the role of instructions in art by developing a theory of a text machine. This machine is explored through a discussion of its rules and instructions and its codes and inscriptions. The text machine is defined independently of particular instances of its making, of specific technologies, but for the practice part of this submission text machines are simulated by computer. This occasions a discussion of the impact of one machine (the computer) upon another machine, the text machine. This became my research question. This question is posed in this form: "What is the impact of the computer on the text machine?" A complex response to this question is developed by a discussion of rules and instructions, codes and inscriptions and their interrelationships. Larger questions are also raised, such as the use of text machines in day-to-day situations.
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Hjelde, Katrine. "Constructing a reflective site : practice between art and pedagogy in the art school." Thesis, University of the Arts London, 2012. http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/5890/.
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Constructing a Reflective Site is a fine art practice-based research project, which considers the relationship between art practice and teaching. It does this through a critical examination of reflection in art, in pedagogy and in philosophy. Contemporary art forms, like relational practice, discursive practice and artists appropriating education as their medium, raise new questions regarding the mechanisms by which practice informs or can inform teaching within Higher Education. Reflection can be one way to elucidate and question this interrelationship towards an understanding of how notions of knowledge can be seen to operate across practice and teaching. This research is undertaken from within a dual position on practice: art practice and teaching as practice. The concept of practice-based research has been adopted from emerging positions in relation to artistic practice and artistic research, and this position has also been employed in the study of teaching as practice. This is thus a dual study, which has employed an indisciplinary approach towards an examination of subject specificity in fine art teaching. Notions of site have been used both as an artistic position in relation to the research, and as a theoretical framework, drawing on Miwon Kwon’s genealogy of site-specific practice. The research sought to explore the relationship between reflection in teaching and learning and reflection within an artistic practice and has found that, in epistemological, cognitive, social and historical terms, reflection does not necessarily constitute the same experience across pedagogy and art practice. This has consequences both for art students when asked to critically reflect on their work and also for developing the field of artistic research and concepts of artistic knowledge. Furthermore, these differences highlight the need to continually examine contemporary arts practices for models contributing to subject specific pedagogies in fine art, in order to keep the relationship between the subject and the academy critical and productive.
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Brasó, Emma. "Parafictional artists : from the critique of authorship to the curatorial turn." Thesis, Royal College of Art, 2018. http://researchonline.rca.ac.uk/3541/.
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This thesis examines the intersection of authorship and fiction in artistic practices from the 1980s until the present. Based on a series of examples of imaginary or partially fictional artists who are, nevertheless, able to function as authors in the contemporary art world, the thesis proposes the term “parafictional artists.” The concept of the parafictional, coined by the art historian Carrie Lambert-Beatty, is here revised to emphasize the capacity of these artists to interact with the art world in a plausible manner despite the disclosure of their imaginary nature. Such interactions include exhibiting and selling works, giving interviews, publishing books, or performing under their own name. Rather than focusing on why numerous artists from a broad geographic background have decided to employ fictional authorial strategies, this thesis explores a different set of questions: How does the extended practice of developing and exhibiting parafictional artists reflect as well as modify the ways in which contemporary authorship functions in todays’ highly institutionalized, mostly global, art world? And, what are the consequences of the introduction of these fictional explorations into artistic identity for the interpretation, presentation, and encounter with artworks? In order to answer the above questions, the thesis is divided in two parts. Part I utilises an art historical framework to propose interpretative models to analyse parafictional artists. Starting from the critique of authorship and its articulation by new art history in the 1980s, the thesis applies revised ideas on the importance of biography and intentionality to a number of selected case studies, including Reena Spaulings, Barbara Cleveland, Robbie Williams, The Atlas Group, and the three Janez Janšas, amongst others. Part II brings these debates up to date and questions the working logic of the critique of authorship from the 1990s onwards. This second part draws a parallel between the emergence of parafictional strategies and of curating as a professional activity and discourse, as a consequence of changes in the organization of the art world. The thesis concludes by examining a series of exhibitions and argues for a curatorial understanding of parafictional artists that, beyond critique, contributes to the production of knowledge through fiction.
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Noronha, Feio Carlos. "Practices of everyday emancipation : an artists' toolkit." Thesis, Royal College of Art, 2017. http://researchonline.rca.ac.uk/2841/.
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Through practice-based research, I propose to reflect critically on my practicethrough a dialogue with the work of other artists and theorists that include Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, Gilles Deleuze, Theaster Gates, Marine Hugonnier, and Claire Fontaine. I explore the possibility of self and collective emancipation from sedimented socio-historical and political violence. The forms of violence that concern me are those produced by legacies of war,colonialism, economic ideologies and religious practices. As an integral part of the methodology, I have selected examples of modern and contemporary artworks considered as being engaged with art's social significance. Through a dialogue with these artworks, I draw out significant pressures and develop a toolkit of concepts: dispositif-of-dissent,able-agent, and universim. The selected examples of artworks suggest potentially disseminable strategies of social, political, critical and ethical value. Socially engaged art has been a constant presence for over a century, the Wanderers in Russia, William Morris in the UK, and Oswald de Andrade in Brazil are great examples of its span. My thesis selects an aspect of current socially engaged practice that argues for a particular conceptual strength and socio-political agency. I assert the idea that small strategic gestures are of far greater critical significance than grand reactionary actions. I also focus on the idea that empowerment and emancipation can only come from an engagement with the structures of power already at play — and the social, political and economic conditions that these have produced. My approach foregrounds the construction of the aforementioned toolkit aiming to contribute to the widening of a field of inquiry, born of already existing practices. These practices produce encounters with others and suggest ways of discovering agency in everyday life and experience in ways that are potentially collective and social in orientation. The artists of interest to my research forge modes of production open to experimentation, and offer critical expressions of being and relating to others. This toolkit, its terms of use and the artworks I create in relation to it, aims to reflect and animate the development of this field of practice. Throughout this thesis I ask: how individuals become socially engaged, and how the strategies employed by these individuals inform the construction of tools of everyday emancipation? I address these questions through the creation of exploratory artworks, the developement of a toolkit of terms and an exposition of practices that pervade this field of production.
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Dzuverovic, Lina. "Pop art tendencies in self-managed socialism : pop reactions and counter-cultural pop in Yugoslavia in 1960s and 1970s." Thesis, Royal College of Art, 2017. http://researchonline.rca.ac.uk/2850/.
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This thesis explores forms of Pop Art on the territory of the former Yugoslavia in the 1960s and 1970s, seeking to identify its local variants. Yugoslavia, a single party state, built on the legacy of the anti-fascist Partisan struggle, principles of solidarity, egalitarianism, self-management and a strong sense of internationalism due to its founding role in the Non-Aligned Movement, was, at the same time, a country immersed in what has been termed 'utopian consumerism'. The thesis examines how Yugoslav artists during this period dealt with the burgeoning consumer society and media boom, kitsch and the Westernization of Yugoslav culture, phenomena which were ideologically at odds with the country’s own socialist principles. Starting from an analysis of the role of the artist in post-war Yugoslav system of self-management, the thesis proposes that Pop in Yugoslavia can be read as a critical site of articulation and negotiation of that role. Yugoslavia’s founding principles, formed as a legacy of the People’s Liberation Struggle (1941 – 1945), were based upon self-management and the introduction of social property, with art being a democratizing force with a central emancipatory role in the building of the new socialist state. But socialist modernism gradually relegated culture to a more illustrative role, as a form of ‘soft power’ for the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The thesis proposes a reading of artists’ diverse engagements with popular culture and materials as varied expressions of resistance to the severing of links with Yugoslavia’s founding principles. My original contribution to knowledge lies in the identification of two strands of Pop in the country–‘Yugoslav Pop Reactions’ and ‘Yugoslav Countercultural Pop’ which each turned to popular culture and cheap everyday materials as an alternative channel through which to respond to socialist modernism. My claim is that the two positions represent two diametrically opposed responses to the disenchantment with socialist modernism and artists’ roles in society – both using the language of Pop Art but representing two different conceptual positions. The thesis is structured around three core questions. Firstly it asks whether it is possible to retrospectively apply the category of Pop Art to artworks which never originally claimed this term. Secondly it examines ways in which Pop tendencies altered the position of Yugoslav female artists, who, marginalised in a heavily male-dominated environment, looked to Pop as an enabling force, allowing new working methods and‘giving licence’ to new types of practices. The third question is concerned with the relationship between power, politics and Pop Art in Yugoslavia, asking to what extent Yugoslav Pop was a form ofpolitical practice, and to what extent is it was a local adaptation of international currents and themes. This thesis is associated with Tate’s multiannual research into ‘global pop’, which culminated in the exhibition ‘The World Goes Pop’ (September 2015 – January 2016, Tate Modern) through a Collaborative Doctoral Award (AHRC). This involved an advisory role in the exhibition research on the territory of the former Yugoslavia, identifying artists and artworks for potential inclusion in the exhibition. The methodology of the thesis was in part shaped by this context, beginning with close studies of artworks, their critical reception, and the study of their context–the sites of production and exhibition in the country at the time. Whilst both local and international literature on Yugoslav art history, global Pop Art as well as Yugoslav material culture and political context has been important, the core research involved oral histories, and visits to artists’ studios, museum collections, depots and archives in search of original artworks. The thesis draws on approximately twenty interviews with artists, curators, art historians and other art workers who were active in 1960s and 1970s, combined with the above-mentioned scholarship.
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Balaskas, Vasileios (Bill). "Mapping utopian art : alternative political imaginaries in new media art (2008-2015)." Thesis, Royal College of Art, 2017. http://researchonline.rca.ac.uk/2844/.
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This thesis investigates the proliferation of alternative political imaginaries in the Web-based art produced during the global financial crisis of 2008 and its aftermath (2008- 2015), with a particular focus on the influence of communist utopianism. The thesis begins by exploring the continuous relevance of utopianism to Western political thought, including the historical context within which the financial crisis of 2008 occurred. This context has been defined by the new political, social and cultural milieu produced by the development of Data Capitalism – the dominant economic paradigm of the last two decades. In parallel, the thesis identifies the “organic” connections between leftist utopian thought and networked technologies, in order to claim that the events of 2008 functioned as a catalyst for their reactivation and expansion. Following this analysis, the thesis focuses on how politically engaged artists have reacted to the global financial crisis through the use of the World Wide Web. More specifically, the thesis categorises a wide range of artworks, institutional and non-institutional initiatives, as well as theoretical texts that have either been written by artists, or have inspired them. The result of this exercise is a mapping of the post-crisis Web-based art, which is grounded on the technocultural tools employed by artists as well as on the main concepts and ideals that they have aimed at materialising through the use of such tools. Furthermore, the thesis examines the interests of Data Capitalists in art and the Internet, and the kinds of restrictions and obstacles that they have imposed on the political use of the Web in order to safeguard them. Finally, the thesis produces an overall evaluation of the previously analysed cultural products by taking into account both the objectives of their creators and the external and internal limitations that ultimately shape their character. Accordingly, the thesis locates the examined works within the ideological spectrum of Marxist and post-Marxist thought in order to formulate a series of proposals about the future of politically engaged Web-based art and the ideological potentialities of networked communication at large.
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Rocha, Watt Dionea. "Tracing loss, touching absence." Thesis, Royal College of Art, 2017. http://researchonline.rca.ac.uk/2846/.
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This research considers an artist’s encounter with works of art that carry or evoke the affective traces of an experience of loss. Examining images, photographs and sculptural objects and installations that inscribe and in turn expose absence in presence, this research through writing as a practice simultaneously investigates and performs the work as a response to loss. The thesis proposes that the work of art evokes loss by materialising absence. The work of art, like the work of mourning, works by inscribing a trace of the affective experience – the absence of the presence of the other. It is through the affective materiality of the work of art that we come to sense loss; when confronted with, and wounded by, the inscription of absence and its powerful relation to time. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, the study shows how loss can silence but also move us to create a new language when existing forms of representation fail to signify. Shifting between asignification and signification, the new poetic language carries an imprint of the body; it reconnects to affects to inscribe loss. In the languages of writing, photography and sculpture, I suggest, art attempts to give shape to what cannot be said, to what cannot be shown, to what resists representation. Through close readings of works by Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Louise Bourgeois, the thesis suggests that by resisting representation these artists create works in which textile materials indicate a fundamental encounter with a material sign that gives rise to affects. I analyse works in which fabric is infused with the trace of an absent other. The analysis of contemporary works rubs against the narratives of the origins of art in the ‘Corinthian Maid’ and in the history of prehistoric handprints on cave walls, both of which reveal the gesture of inscribing a presence that anticipates absence. The study draws on philosophy to consider that what is inscribed is not only the absence of a presence but existence; what is inscribed is the vestige or trace of a ‘passing through the world’. The research is generated by a transformative encounter with loss and with art that invites yet resists interpretation; an affective encounter through which what is other can touch, and what touches can be thought. Art, I suggest (after Deleuze), can move us to recover the creative potency of thought in order to inscribe the singularity of the encounter. To write through loss is to write what is impossible to represent and yet insists on being written.
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Rome, Amy. "The voice embodied : a practice-based investigation through the Praxes of Noah Pikes, Enrique Pardo, and Linda Wise." Thesis, University of Central Lancashire, 2007. http://clok.uclan.ac.uk/18915/.
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What is the voice embodied? How is it possible to understand the voice as a gesture: a movement perceived as body? What are the creative processes of expressing voice? An interdisciplinary study into the artistic training and performance of voice, the aim of this thesis is to explore these research questions by examining three contemporary voice practitioners in conjunction with my practice. The practitioners, Noah Pikes, Enrique Pardo, and Linda Wise, are original members from the Roy Hart Theatre (1969-1990). Founded in the 1960s on the pioneering work of the German musician and voice teacher Alfred Wolfsohn (1896-1962), Roy Hart and the Roy Hart Theatre extended Wolfsohn's distinctive interdisciplinary approach to voice training within theatre practice. This investigation brings together the practices of Pikes, Pardo, and Wise for the first time to explore a lineage of Wolfsohn and Hart's work. Examining the practitioners' interdisciplinary methodological approaches to voice training and performance, the research reveals how these original members of the Roy Hart Theatre are challenging conventional methodologies to the way in which the voice of the actor-singer-dancer is trained through practice. My interaction with these international practitioners and their practices produced primary documentary evidence in the form of video footage and interviews. This primary research material presented within the thesis, was filmed in the artists' studios in London, Zurich and Paris over a five-year period, and provides rare experiential insights into these contemporary interdisciplinary approaches to training voice and performance in multicultural professional workshop settings. In addition, the thesis contains DVD recordings of the documentary: 'The Whole Voice' (2002) detailing Pikes' praxis, and my contemporary solo theatre performance: 'The Badlands' (2004). Demonstrating elements of the practices central to my investigation, the performance of the 'The Badlands' should be viewed as one example in practice, of how the ideas explored in the thesis might be realized. Whilst the study of artistically training and performing voice is a practical endeavour, pedagogically the practice poses a number of complex theoretical questions concerning the nature of how the integral brain/body is experienced. My research endeavours to bring theory and practice together. It reveals variations in the practitioners' praxes, including a shift from Wolfsohn, who drew directly from the psychological theories espoused by C.G Jung, to Post-Jungian perspectives. The study explores the significance of this development, placing a particular emphasis upon how agency and the imagination are conceived in practice. Exploring beyond the fundamental Jungian and post-Jungian psychological theoretical frameworks underpinning the practices central to this study, I propose through my practice to examine the significance of extending Wolfsohn's original ideas about the voice embodied from an existential phenomenological line of thought and the parallels this philosophy shares with more recent research stemming from neuroscience.
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Dhillon, Kim. "More than words : text art since conceptualism." Thesis, Royal College of Art, 2017. http://researchonline.rca.ac.uk/2765/.
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Since 2009, there has been an increased presence of group exhibitions in public institutions in the UK and the US which address the ways contemporary artists in the past two decades have used text as a material, a subject, and a conceptual device. Significant amongst these exhibitions are Poor. Old. Tired. Horse. held at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London in 2009, and Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2012. Within their curatorial strategies, and independently from one another, both exhibitions draw a binary of the genealogy of text in art practice as emerging either from the international movement of concrete poetry of the mid-1950s to 1971 (including the work of Décio Pignatari, or Haraldo de Campos), or from conceptual art of the mid-1960s-early 1970s (including the work of Joseph Kosuth, Art & Language, Robert Smithson, or Mel Bochner). Such group exhibitions have overlooked how feminist, second generation conceptual artists embraced language as material. Artists of this second generation of conceptual art were critiquing conceptualism by introducing subject matter which looked outward from art and which demanded the audience to engage with language as a material through their use of the printed word, typography, written language, and methods of printing. For these artists, such as Mary Kelly, language was not presumed natural, and the materiality of text was necessary in order to engage an art audience in questions of power, representation, gender, and socialisation. With the rise of the digital age, the materiality of the linguistic signifier offers artists today something different than it did in the 1960s. Since the late 1990s, there has been a proliferation of works by contemporary artists in the UK and US that I refer to as text art, made by artists such as Fiona Banner, Janice Kerbel, Shannon Ebner, Pavel Büchler, or Paul Elliman. Part of my original contribution to knowledge is to explore the ways contemporary artists use text, to interrogate how this is different from work seen before, and to question the demands it places on the audience who reads it, as well as the challenges it places on the act of reading an artwork made of words. The literature emphasises a turn away from looking or the visual to a turn towards reading which occurred in conceptualism (Kotz, 2007; Blacksell, 2013). I explore the binary of this turn in the conceptual art period of 1966-1973 and I suggest that artists are engaging with text today not only to challenge how an audience encounters written language as art, but the very act of reading text in a digital world. The first three chapters explore the materiality of text in a historical genealogy of conceptual art, conceptual art in relationship to concrete poetry, and the feminist critique in second generation of conceptual art. The latter three chapters explore the materiality of text in contemporary art practices. This is the focus of the thesis, which builds on the foundation for materiality of text argued in chapters one, two, and three. I argue not for a cohesive movement of contemporary text artists, but rather, that diverse, contemporary artists’ practices are making similar investigations across text in art, and that this warrants attention to explore how we consider text as a medium today.
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Oechsler, Monika. "Interstitial space : the Eagle Document : performativity and spatio-temporal assemblage in the contemporary moving image installation space (MIS)." Thesis, University of Brighton, 2011. https://research.brighton.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/08db6f60-822e-4ed3-96ac-577b307369d7.
Full textAbstract:
This study investigates the perceptive modalities constituted by the multi-screen projection installation and its architectural and spatial forms. The thesis explores the hypothesis that the affective spatial experience created by the spatially configured moving image space (MIS) produces changed spectatorial positions from that of the single screen (or one-directional multi screen). The research asks: How can we understand the spatially configured multi-screen projection installation as constituting a changed aesthetic perception for the spectator? The MIS comprises two major temporalities, the multi-image structure and the mobile spectator whose physical interaction articulates the receptive process. Thus, perception in the MIS is not purely constructed through vision. Instead, the spatio-temporal assemblage shapes other direct sense phenomena. These are the spatial intensities produced by the spatial field, i.e. variable sensations of spatial receptivity, which are not mediated by the gaze but experienced directly by the body. Further, the mobile gaze of the moving spectator intersects with the moving images, and constructs vision as fluid and transient. Merleau-Ponty (2006), first published 1945, proposed that the mobile orientation of the body in space creates changing points of reference and alters both vision and embodied experience of space. The analysis of two inter-related concepts aims to contribute to a new understanding of the MIS. The first is the interstitial modality established by the screen architecture which engenders temporal and spatial gaps that interrupt the process of perception. Interstitiality here serves as an analytical tool in discerning the specific spectatorial positions instituted by individual installations. The second is the process of inter-animation which is constituted by the corporeal interaction of the spectator in the animated space of the MIS. Spatial and temporal effects act upon the body of the viewer. In turn, the viewer negotiates the unfamiliar space and multiple interstices through intuitive reaction. Deleuze (1994), first published 1968, suggested that spatial intensities and differences create immediate sensory impact which is experienced as intuition. Intuition intervenes in the visual process and expands perception from observation and reflection to intuitive action.
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Beech, Dave. "Neither capitalist nor wage-labourer : an economic examination of the exceptionalism of artistic production vis-à-vis the capitalist mode of production." Thesis, University of the Arts London, 2017. http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/12374/.
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This PhD by Publication is a contribution to art and art theory through the book Art and Value in the context of the practice of the Freee art collective. This thesis situates Art and Value within contemporary art practices and debates. Art and Value addresses itself directly to misrecognitions of the relationship between art and capitalism within the humanities and social sciences. The conviction that art was a commercial activity had penetrated the discourses of contemporary art in the UK, Western Europe and North America since the 1960s and therefore constituted, in part, the milieu in and against which Freee has operated since 2004. The historical study of the emergence of the theory of art’s economic exceptionalism in classical political economy gives an alternative historical framework in which to situate the discussion of art’s relationship to capitalism. The rationale for my economic analysis of art – comprising separate critiques of the economics of art in classical, neoclassical, welfare and Marxist economics – is to reset the coordinates for thinking politically about art’s relationship to capitalism. Art and Value does not claim to cover every aspect of art’s encounter with capitalism, which would require sociological, semiotic, psychoanalytic, geographical, philosophical and historical inquiries, at the very least, but establishes the economic groundwork for the interdisciplinary study of art’s relationship to capitalism. Economic analysis provides this ground; not because economics is the master discipline of the social sciences, but because the question of art’s relationship to capitalism must be understood, first and foremost, by understanding what capitalism is and how the production of art has or has not been incorporated into the capitalist mode of production.
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Savage, Polly. "Um só povo : transnational solidarity and art education in Mozambique, 1961-1986." Thesis, Royal College of Art, 2018. http://researchonline.rca.ac.uk/3459/.
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Between 1961 and 1986, the contexts in which artists could train and practice in Mozambique radically shifted. During the country’s transition from overseas territory of Portugal’s quasi-fascist Estado Novo regime, to Marxist-Leninist vanguard state, to neo-liberal democracy, expressions of international solidarity with the Mozambique liberation front (FRELIMO) generated dynamic flows of people, objects and ideas into and out of the country. This state of flux produced a range of opportunities for artists, as well as contingent expectations for the role of their work in the new nation. Understanding art education and patronage as both an apparatus of power and a locus of transnational exchange, this thesis focuses on the experience of three artists who navigated this shifting terrain: Malangatana (1936-2011), João Craveirinha (born 1947) and Celestino ‘Cejuma’ Matavele (born 1959). Whilst these artists all articulated, in different ways, the struggle against colonialism and their vision for a future nation, their approaches often ran counter to the prevailing political discourse and aesthetic pedagogies. Ultimately, I argue that this dissonance reveals how deeply the parameters for art in Mozambique were contested by artists during this time.
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Denton, Michael. "Crowdsourcing the production of public art : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the degree of Master of Design, Massey University College of Creative Arts, Institute of Communication Design." Massey University, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10179/1345.
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Many people that would like to contribute at some level towards creating art in public spaces. However little is currently being done to make use of this untapped potential. The difficulties involved with collecting and coordinating dispersed talent often prevents it from being utilized. But now the Internet offers new opportunities to make harnessing latent talent much easier. Successful online platforms (such as Wikipedia and YouTube) demonstrate the potential value that can be derived from volunteers when appropriate systems are in place to utilize their contributions. Jeff Howe refers to this idea of harnessing distributed volunteered effort via the web as ‘crowdsourcing’. Which he explains as “the process by which the power of many can be leveraged to accomplish feats that were once the province of a specialized few” (2008). This thesis aims to investigate how an online platform might harness voluntary contributions in order to produce public art. The design objective for this project is to develop an online platform that allows people to contribute towards creating art in public spaces. My research explores the needs and motivations of potential contributors as well as techniques for harnessing voluntary contribution and coordinating group effort. As understanding human behaviour and user interaction is central to this project I have adopted a user-centered approach to research and development. To better understand the requirements of the proposed online platform user research was initially conducted in the form of focus groups with potential users and then via an in depth case study. In order to tackle the challenge of designing an entire platform the process was divided into distinct elements that could be addressed individually. These elements included the core functionality, the brand identity, the structural design, the interface design, and the visual design. For each element I consider what techniques might help to better harness voluntary contribution. The final result provides an online environment for people to get involved with specific art projects around their city. Projects are presented as separate challenges and users can contribute at many different levels such as sharing designs online, attending events, or simply providing feedback
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Clement, Julie. "Un i form "consisting of one" : a written component presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Design at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand." Massey University, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10179/1035.
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Uni form is an exploration into the act of getting dressed. The act of dressing or assemblage of dress is negotiated and explores how personal identity is constructed. My design research contributes to a current understanding of self, dress and social identity. I begin with an analysis of wardrobe as a personal collection and I propose that, in our everyday dress, much of what we choose to wear constitutes a uni form of one sort or another. Focusing on the shirt dress as an ‘ordinary’ everyday style of generic dress, I set out to experience the wearing of a personal uniform. What emerges from this research is a proposal that a uni form – a metaphoric garment – can meet the needs of everyday life in the postmodern urban metropolis.
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Qian, Fenggen. "The transformation of central design organisations in modern Britain, France and China." Thesis, University of Brighton, 2009. https://research.brighton.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/c8e47386-3026-4e1f-8edb-72f2fb734f80.
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This thesis proposes that a conceptual structure of ‘modernity’ and ‘national identity’,interrogated through an analytical model of ‘modernism’ and ‘modernisation’ contributes substantially to decoding the institutionalisation of design as reflected in the transformation of central design organisations.
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Chu, Hsiao-Yun. "R. Buckminster Fuller's model of nature : its role in his design process and the presentation and reception of his work." Thesis, University of Brighton, 2014. https://research.brighton.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/76f945d8-9def-4642-b27c-16518382bed5.
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R. Buckminster Fuller's design and architectural work is frequently described as being "inspired by nature". However, to date there has been little investigation of his claim. What was Fuller's understanding of "nature" and how did it affect the conception, production and presentation of his work? This thesis attempts to characterize R. Buckminster Fuller's understanding of nature, which will be called a model of nature, and to trace its impact upon his work over the course of his career using an interdisciplinary historical approach.
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Throp, Mo. "Trauma, performativity, and subjectivity in art practice." Thesis, University of the Arts London, 2006. http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/2039/.
Full textAbstract:
Abstract: This is a practice based PhD of predominantly video works/installations which seek to examine, alongside the accompanying reflective writing on these works, a particular dynamic set up between the artwork and the spectator which allows a rethinking of the model of the subject's relation to the 'other'. This investigation which is lead by my ongoing practice (presented as six artworks) is informed and underpinned by feminist theoretical concerns seeking a way out of the deadlock of Lacanian thinking which characterises the feminine as problematic (the other of the other). Though I make reference to psychoanalytic theories (as well as the writings of Deleuze), I will not give accounts of this background (though I will footnote key terms); I am therefore presuming a certain knowledge of these theories by my reader. The thesis (as practice and dissertation) explores more enabling accounts for the construction of identity which move beyond the fixed, traumatic model to propose that the encounter with the artwork enables more positive accounts of the self as fluid and open to change. This shift which now proposes a more productive relation to desire and otherness has been opened up, particularly by Elizabeth Grosz and Rosi Braidotti, through a consideration of Gilles Deleuze's notion of 'becoming' as a creative flow, an active force of connections and relations. This challenge to dominant accounts (both psychoanalytic and philosophical) that characterize desire negatively as a longing for something lost (tragically and impossibly), allows me to propose (theoretically and practically) the artwork as allowing us to 'become' by creating affect, where, immersed in a creative ongoing flow of connections and relations we 'become-hybrid' through an encounter with the other. As my contribution to knowledge and understanding, my thesis explores this affirmation of a new subjectivity through a sense of self as interactive (mobile) in the process of viewing; an inter-subjectivity which allows a freeing of the subject from the impulse to complete the self, allowing an engagement that does not set the subject against itself but produces new possibilities especially in a consideration of sexual difference. My practice argues for an engagement and creative response which allows for a dialogue of difference as non-oppositional; sensuous and expansive, the artwork proposes a new relation to gender, as beyond hierarchical (traumatic and fixed) oppositional accounts of the self. This shifts from an account of sexuality as problematic (or not) to one where the viewer is open to a renegotiation with questions of otherness and difference that underpin any notions of identity) to become productive of fluid accounts of the self.