The PhD thesis deals with the role of archives in the contemporary artistic and curatorial practice, with an emphasis on the performance art. It also analyses the creation process, methodology and the contents of selected personal and institutional archives in both Czech and international contexts. The objective of the paper is to answer the following questions: In what way is the documentation and subsequent archiving of process-oriented forms of art performed? How is the history of the contemporary art formed and interpreted through these archives and with the help of the artistic and curatorial practice? To what extent are we able to reconstruct the history from records and performance documents that are only fragmented, thus making a reference to a real action? Do the archives leave some room for misinterpretation, creating a myth or personality cult through its system of classification of knowledge? How indeed is the performance art related to its own history; how is this history perceived by the performer alone; and how is it approached by the professional audience? The paper will also include the analysis of current state and possible solutions to the operation of the archive of the Faculty of Fine Arts, which is related to opening a dialogue among artists, theorists and institutions that might be interested in better accessibility of such an archive.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Western Sydney, 2003. / Includes bibliography.

My interests lie in the intersection of the public and private, the corporate and personal, especially with regard to self-representation within cultural power structures. Utilizing video and web technologies, performance, and painting, I create imagined realms of fantasy, desire, obsession, and anxiety. Operating within, but not bound by, feminist discourse, my work explores the vehicles and effects by which both analog and digital technologies influence the relationship between the self and the object of desire (whether physical or virtual, interior or exterior to the body) and have produced both progressive and regressive offspring. By performing the role of both producer of cultural archetypes and the compulsive consumer of signs, m­y characters embody the representation(s) of their source but, through action and voice, invent a mutant surrogate who dictates its own agency.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1982. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 54). / This thesis is an organization of my thoughts on autobiography as it concerns my own life and my work as an artist. It incorporates the study I have made of traditional elements of autobiography. It includes a discussion of my understanding of the process of self - definition and discusses how my work in the media of performance and video have united my ideas concerning contemporary and conventional forms of auto-biography. / by Peter M. Codella. / M.S.

Orientador: Sérgio Romagnolo / Banca: José Paiani Spaniol / Banca: Taisa Palhares / Resumo: Esta dissertação tem dois resultados distintos: minha produção artística, envolvendo esculturas, objetos, instalações, pinturas, performances, vivência artística e um texto teórico. Em ambos os casos, o assunto da pesquisa é sobre o espaço de exposição e o modo como as obras de arte são exibidas, comparando os locais expositivos atuais e suas especificidades aos chamados Gabinetes de Curiosidades - coleções privadas exibidas a um público seleto, sobretudo entre os séculos XVII e XVIII, que podem ser considerados precursores dos museus modernos / Abstract: The present dissertation has two different purposes: to register the artist's production - including sculptures, objects, installations, paintings, performances, artistic experiences - and to present a theoretical text. For both cases, the research focuses on the exhibition space and how art works are exhibited, comparing the present spaces for exhibition and the Cabinets of Curiosities - private collections presented to a selected public, mostly during the 17th and 18th centuries, which can be regarded as the predecessors of modern museums / Mestre

A Research Report submitted towards a MAAD by Course Work and Research Report / This is an auto ethnographic project in which I explore how my personal and cultural narratives can be used for healing and transformation through a theatre making process. I look at performance as an object of making meaning while placing myself at the centre of the study as the subject of this research. During this process, I was looking at discovering a personal theatre making language with an aim of finding my voice. The outcome of my journey was an experimental creative project titled Eenganga which was performed in an alternative and nontraditional form in terms of space, text and the overall theatre making process. This study is an account of a journey that initially began as a performance ethnography project which collected cultural narratives of black urban traditional healers from Katutura, Windhoek, Namibia. There was an internal and an external data collection process. My body as a site of knowledge was the main research instrument.

This thesis investigates the impact of telepathy and psi on conceptual and performance art from 1968. Emerging from the author???s art practice, the thesis argues telepathy is a key leitmotif and creative concern within much post 60s art, and has become central to the practice of a number of contemporary video, performance and new media artists. This thesis is composed of two interrelated parts: an exhibition of the artwork by the author concerning telepathic processes, and a written project which uses the major themes of the exhibition to frame an historical study of a number of key contemporary artists whom, it is argued, work with telepathy. These artists, Jane and Louise Wilson, Suzanne Treister and Susan Hiller are discussed under the themes of ???twinning and doubling,??? ???technological mediums??? and ???telepathy experiments???. These themes also overlap in the authors artwork, are introduced through an overarching analysis of the work of performance artist Marina Abramovi?? and philosopher Jacques Derrida who, it is argued, provide a new model of telepathy as an art practice. In addition, the thesis argues that telepathy is an often suppressed thematic in art which may not appear to directly address it, and uses the work on the Wilsons, Treister and Hiller to re-look at other 20th Century artists and artistic themes in the light of the conclusions it draws on telepathy and art. Walter Benjamin greatly admired the Surrealists, but had virtually no time for their interest in telepathy, hypnosis and psi. Together with positive materialist misappropriations of Adorno???s Thesis Against Occultism, artistic and theoretical work with telepathy and psi has been sidelined from other important themes in art and critical theory, all of which telepathy and psi illuminate, energise and empower. The art of the author and other more recognised and established artists can be seen to work with telepathy in ways that flow into and reinforce the grain of progressive leftist practice and aesthetics. Women???s work with telepathy should be considered as important as women???s work with sexuality. Women, sexuality, Otherness, liminality, spirituality, telepathy, trauma, healing, radical politics, and other taboo areas of patriachal codes, were adandoned by macho participants of fluxus and Conceptual art. The recent conceptual and performance tilt in contemporary art sheds new light on the problem of working within and developing an effective and dynamic lineage of telepathy in post 60s art as well as early modern art movements. Contemporary developments in science, engineering, biology, psychoanalysis, warfare, popular culture and sociology show the wider relevance of discourse on telepathy. There is much at stake for visual art, aesthetics and visuality in representing, celebrating and interrogating the theme of psi and telepathy in current practice and art history. Artists??? work with telepathy and psi, although not always explicitly psychological, political or aesthetic, is often very psychologically, politically and aesthetically effective.

Biliana Velkova-The Musical is a personal story about coming of age within two distinct ideologies, communism and capitalism and the impact of immigration and assimilation. It also gives a glimpse of my two worlds and my navigation between them. And lastly, I hope that it adds to our collective memory of communism, no matter what the reality of it was. My project becomes part of the dialogue that is currently surfacing around the relevance of post communist realities and discourse.

Being is Becoming: selves are constantly changing, always in process, and never able to arrive at a coherent identity. Contemporary discussions of sexual and gendered identity have replaced the view that heterosexuality is an innate or natural category with views that sexuality is fluid and multiple. Consequently, desire is a creative force in the engendering of sexual subjectivities and new social communities, rather than a negative force that limits gendered development to a heteronormative model. With this in mind, this thesis has three interrelated, yet distinct aims. The first is to explore the concept of sexual subjectivity, asking questions such as do human beings have a knowable sexual identity? And how have Freudian psychoanalysis and Foucauldian poststructuralism contributed to our contemporary understandings of sexuality? My second aim is to clarify Deleuze and Guattaris philosophy of becoming, using the metaphor of the rhizome to link feminist philosophy, queer theory, and subsequent deconstructions of sexual identity. My third project is to identify what is meant by becoming queer, including how it challenges the authority of heteronormative institutions. In order to demonstrate the potentialities of becoming queer, I conduct a case study of Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millans performance project Lesbian National Parks and Services. Through their performance art practice, Dempsey and Millan challenge dominant narratives of heterosexuality and fixed gender identity, offering a starting point for discussions of the reciprocity between artistic practice, social movements, and academic discourse. In addition, they demonstrate how queer becomings participate in an ethics of accountability, that is, as materially-situated, localized subjectivities they are able to alter and transform their environments.

Being is Becoming: selves are constantly changing, always in process, and never able to arrive at a coherent identity. Contemporary discussions of sexual and gendered identity have replaced the view that heterosexuality is an innate or natural category with views that sexuality is fluid and multiple. Consequently, desire is a creative force in the engendering of sexual subjectivities and new social communities, rather than a negative force that limits gendered development to a heteronormative model. With this in mind, this thesis has three interrelated, yet distinct aims. The first is to explore the concept of sexual subjectivity, asking questions such as do human beings have a knowable sexual identity? And how have Freudian psychoanalysis and Foucauldian poststructuralism contributed to our contemporary understandings of sexuality? My second aim is to clarify Deleuze and Guattaris philosophy of becoming, using the metaphor of the rhizome to link feminist philosophy, queer theory, and subsequent deconstructions of sexual identity. My third project is to identify what is meant by becoming queer, including how it challenges the authority of heteronormative institutions. In order to demonstrate the potentialities of becoming queer, I conduct a case study of Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millans performance project Lesbian National Parks and Services. Through their performance art practice, Dempsey and Millan challenge dominant narratives of heterosexuality and fixed gender identity, offering a starting point for discussions of the reciprocity between artistic practice, social movements, and academic discourse. In addition, they demonstrate how queer becomings participate in an ethics of accountability, that is, as materially-situated, localized subjectivities they are able to alter and transform their environments.