Open mic poetry events are representative examples of a widespread and socially significant performance phenomenon--the relational and dialogic art and activism of the sustained encounter as a demonstration of the possibility for new social relations. Open mic performances center the pleasure of creating and sharing art and relationships in a manner that works against the value systems of capitalistic exchange and enterprise. I conduct an autoethnographic study of the Transpoetic Playground--a reoccurring open mic poetry event in Carbondale, Illinois. This study mixes performative writing, poetry, and personal narrative with the ethnographic methods of participation observation and interviewing in order to tell a story of an amateur performance poetry community and what it can teach about how to resist the constraints of contemporary socio-communicative relations.

PEDESTRIAN is inspired by my daily walking routines and my relationship to the spaces in which I walk. Through additional instruction-guided walks with volunteers, this project examines the seemingly mundane travels of walkers and their relationship to and absorption of the space around them, and encourages a reconsideration of the environmental everyday into a venue for play and discovery.

This dissertation develops a theory for analyzing the role of audiences as aesthetic resources in contemporary site-specific performance and relational art. Collaborating with three Canadian companies as a participant-observer, interviewer, and in some cases, documenter, I develop case studies that track flexible stage-audience relationships in public spaces. By analyzing how companies Radix Theatre Society, Bluemouth, and Mammalian Diving Reflex put spectators to work in sites like IKEA showrooms, disused warehouses, and theatres, I advance a method that attends to the doubled practice of the spectator as worker and witness. This framework, which I term bifold spectatorship, articulates how audiences constitute theatrical worlds through direct physical engagement with the cultural criticism and formal experimentation that artists stage. Folded into the event, spectators literally compose the scene of the action, and enter into what I call critical proximity with the discourses that shape the performance. As participants interact with and directly query the artistic expressions that they patron, they answer a challenge to perform that is typically reserved for professionals. Such novel participation begins with a hail that interpellates audiences into the action as subjects and even sites of performance. Adapting the concept of the casting call, or what I coin site-casting, miscasting, and central casting, I show how spectators are aligned with the exigencies of the site; “mis-placed” or miscast by artists (provoking performance anxiety in participants); or cast to play a role they already perform in their everyday lives. In addition to these critical frameworks, I challenge the established narrative of “liberating the audience” by forwarding a multi-sited genealogy of site-specific performance that confronts the romance of freeing spectators from stage conventions. In examining the ethical problems that arise when audiences are made responsible for representation, The Stagehands of Subversive Spaces extends debates within site-specific performance to wider conversations in performance studies about ethics, subjectivity, and audience reception.

This dissertation develops a theory for analyzing the role of audiences as aesthetic resources in contemporary site-specific performance and relational art. Collaborating with three Canadian companies as a participant-observer, interviewer, and in some cases, documenter, I develop case studies that track flexible stage-audience relationships in public spaces. By analyzing how companies Radix Theatre Society, Bluemouth, and Mammalian Diving Reflex put spectators to work in sites like IKEA showrooms, disused warehouses, and theatres, I advance a method that attends to the doubled practice of the spectator as worker and witness. This framework, which I term bifold spectatorship, articulates how audiences constitute theatrical worlds through direct physical engagement with the cultural criticism and formal experimentation that artists stage. Folded into the event, spectators literally compose the scene of the action, and enter into what I call critical proximity with the discourses that shape the performance. As participants interact with and directly query the artistic expressions that they patron, they answer a challenge to perform that is typically reserved for professionals. Such novel participation begins with a hail that interpellates audiences into the action as subjects and even sites of performance. Adapting the concept of the casting call, or what I coin site-casting, miscasting, and central casting, I show how spectators are aligned with the exigencies of the site; “mis-placed” or miscast by artists (provoking performance anxiety in participants); or cast to play a role they already perform in their everyday lives. In addition to these critical frameworks, I challenge the established narrative of “liberating the audience” by forwarding a multi-sited genealogy of site-specific performance that confronts the romance of freeing spectators from stage conventions. In examining the ethical problems that arise when audiences are made responsible for representation, The Stagehands of Subversive Spaces extends debates within site-specific performance to wider conversations in performance studies about ethics, subjectivity, and audience reception.

This paper is a conceptual, theoretical, and methodological exploration of my MFA thesis project (Dis)connections. My work combines time-based media, objects, and performance into a single installation that represents my struggles with anxiety and my desire to connect with people socially. My work is ultimately about the complexity of the structures of language and communication in all their forms and representations. I draw on research into feminist theory and gender studies as well as cultural theory as a way to ground my work in political and social issues that are continually relevant in Western culture, and to propose that by situating my stories within larger structures of power they have the ability to connect to a wider group of people.

Submitted by Cláudia Bueno (claudiamoura18@gmail.com) on 2016-08-12T20:50:55Z No. of bitstreams: 3 Dissertação - Don Gomes Alves - 2016 - Parte 1.pdf: 19865406 bytes, checksum: a4c84fd69265ce5cf489205f1f898847 (MD5) Dissertação - Don Gomes Alves - 2016 - Parte 2.pdf: 2744141 bytes, checksum: 13e48b4ac9a9ad38c6e97e3b04158555 (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Luciana Ferreira (lucgeral@gmail.com) on 2016-08-15T13:43:09Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 3 Dissertação - Don Gomes Alves - 2016 - Parte 1.pdf: 19865406 bytes, checksum: a4c84fd69265ce5cf489205f1f898847 (MD5) Dissertação - Don Gomes Alves - 2016 - Parte 2.pdf: 2744141 bytes, checksum: 13e48b4ac9a9ad38c6e97e3b04158555 (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-15T13:43:09Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 3 Dissertação - Don Gomes Alves - 2016 - Parte 1.pdf: 19865406 bytes, checksum: a4c84fd69265ce5cf489205f1f898847 (MD5) Dissertação - Don Gomes Alves - 2016 - Parte 2.pdf: 2744141 bytes, checksum: 13e48b4ac9a9ad38c6e97e3b04158555 (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-04-06 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / The project "Symbiosis" aims to bring reflections on human beings and their relationship with the means they inhabit, whether for the environment, their habitat and/or other beings of our specie. In developing this search an experience was made in the Recycling Cooperative Healthy Environment (COOPERMAS), with activities and reflections that brought to light the prejudices surrounding that space, culminating in the use of art making how a relational tool among members and neighborhood working collective characteristics in a collaborative proposalIt was being built step by step. Human habits are put to debate this process and raise the power that cultural activities have to intervene in hostile environments, human working towards a connection between beings that circumscribe the cloth of Gaia. / O projeto artístico “Simbiose” se propõe a trazer reflexões sobre os seres humanos e sua relação com o meio em que vive, sejam com o meio ambiente, seu habitat e/ou os demais entes de nossa espécie. No desenvolvimento desta pesquisa foi realizada uma vivência dentro da Cooperativa de Reciclagem Meio Ambiente Saudável (COOPERMAS), com atividades e reflexões que trouxeram à tona os preconceitos que envolvem aquele espaço, culminando no uso do fazer artístico como ferramenta relacional entre cooperados e vizinhança, trabalhando características coletivas em uma proposta colaborativa que foi sendo construída passo a passo. Os hábitos humanos são colocados em discussão neste processo e suscitam o poder que ações culturais têm ao intervir em ambientes hostis, trabalhando o humano em prol de uma conexão entre os seres que circunscrevem o tecido de Gaia.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the Slovene artist Marjetica Potrc works with sustainability and empowerment in her “On-Site” projects. An analysis of various indicators of sustainability in the projects clarifies what the projects have in common. Balance in the relationships between people and nature stand out as a major theme in the projects. The artist works with tools such as “participatory design” where all participants are of equal importance, and “relational objects” with which the participants negotiate and transform the common space. The theory of “relational aesthetics” by Nicolas Bourriaud is applicable to the relational qualities of the projects, and the concept that all parts in the works functions as “forms” could be used here. Nature can be read as “form” together with the rest of the participants, on a “stage” of action in the projects. In all the projects one or more solutions are presented. By creating ideal prototypes of reality, where everyone, including nature, is empowered to participate on equal grounds, a solution is presented for a sustainable lifestyle.

Notre recherche se fonde sur une forme de relation particulière entre lʼœuvre et le spectateur, lorsque la participation de ce dernier est interactive, cʼest-à-dire physique, active et effective. Or, à partir de 1950, de nouvelles formes artistiques apparaissent et de nombreuses œuvres partent, en quelque sorte, à la recherche du spectateur. Cʼest en les parcourant que le premier chapitre pose les bases dʼune participation interactive. Nous avons aussi choisi de réordonner ces œuvres ou mouvements selon des catégories qui échappent aux classifications standards en les groupant selon leur modalité de participation : regarder, entrer, ressentir, assister. Le second chapitre est ensuite consacré aux œuvres les plus participatives qu'il puisse exister, cʼest-à-dire, des œuvres qui ont réellement besoin du spectateur pour exister, dont la forme est tout autant définie par le spectateur que par lʼartiste, voir même davantage par le spectateur. Quatre nouvelles catégories sont alors dégagées : figurer, agiter, expérimenter, partager. Lʼobjectif de cette classification typologique est dʼoffrir une vue dʼensemble qui soit claire et qui permette de mieux comprendre le vaste panorama des œuvres dʼart participatives. Notre réflexion se construit aussi à lʼaide de ces deux questions successives : de quelle façon le spectateur a-t-il la possibilité de participer ? Quel est le but recherché par lʼartiste ? Nous prenons aussi la mesure de la contribution du ou des spectateurs dʼune part, évaluons les valeurs éthiques que tendent à véhiculer certains projets artistiques de lʼautre, et nous décelons un certain nombre de pièges et de dérives qui semblent guetter ces œuvres, tantôt faisant lʼobjet de banales animations culturelles, réduites au divertissement, tantôt se perdant au sein de luttes sociales et politiques. Analysant les critiques formées à leur encontre, en formulant dʼautres, puisant dans les domaines de la philosophie, de la sociologie ou de lʼanthropologie, nous cherchons donc à cerner les enjeux spécifiques de chaque forme de participation. Lʼœuvre dʼart participative révèle alors sa pleine ambivalence, une nature ambiguë qui constitue sa force comme sa faiblesse. De même, lʼacte participatif, entre action et passivité, proximité et distance, dessine la figure nouvelle dʼun spectacteur. / Our research bases on a particular form of relationship between the work of art and the spectator, when the participation of the latter is interactive, that is to say, physical, active and effective. However, since 1950, new art forms appear and many works go, somehow, in search of the spectator. It is by reviewing them that the first chapter thus lays the foundation of an interactive participation. We also chose to reorder these works or movements in categories beyond the standard classifications by grouping them according to their modality of participation : look, enter, feel, attend. The second chapter is then dedicated to the most participatory works that can exist, that is to say, works that really need the spectator to exist, whose shape is as much defined by the spectator by the artist, and even more by the spectator. Four new categories are then identified : figure, shake, experiment, share. The objective of this typological classification is to offer an overview which is clear and which allows to understand better the vast panorama of the participatory art works. Our thought also builds using these two successive questions : how has the spectator the possibility to participate ? What is the purpose looked for by the artist ? We also take the measure of the contribution of one or several spectators on one hand, estimate the ethical values which tend to convey some artistic projects on the other, and we detect a number of pitfalls and deviations that seem to watch for these works, sometimes being the object of commonplace cultural activities, reduced to the entertainment, sometimes getting lost in social and political struggles. Analyzing the criticisms formed against them, by formulating others, drawing from the fields of philosophy, sociology or anthropology, we identify the specific issues of each form of participation. The participatory artwork reveals then its full ambivalence, an ambiguous nature that is its strength as its weakness. Similarly, the participative act, between action and passivity, proximity and distance, draws the new figure of a spectactor.

This texts examines the potential of the documentation of socially engaged art to affect change. It looks at how it can extend the goal of political action inherent in much socially engaged artwork, particularly with reference to Corrie Peters thesis exhibition: All the rooming houses on my street have had their front door removed. / October 2015

96f. / Submitted by Suelen Reis (suziy.ellen@gmail.com) on 2013-04-05T15:47:47Z No. of bitstreams: 1 robertoantoniopitellajuniorseg.pdf: 1657900 bytes, checksum: 5a4a2e814ff707f76d6ddfe9180b6f22 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Lêda Costa(lmrcosta@ufba.br) on 2013-04-18T12:27:25Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 robertoantoniopitellajuniorseg.pdf: 1657900 bytes, checksum: 5a4a2e814ff707f76d6ddfe9180b6f22 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-04-18T12:27:25Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 robertoantoniopitellajuniorseg.pdf: 1657900 bytes, checksum: 5a4a2e814ff707f76d6ddfe9180b6f22 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011 / Esta dissertação tem como objeto de pesquisa a fotografia como fator relacional, através do conceito de arte relacional proposto por Nicolas Bourriaud. Entende-se aqui a arte relacional, ou mais precisamente a fotografia relacional, como um método, um procedimento. Propõe-se também neste procedimento que a imagem em si já é um lugar. Um lugar de relações. Por isto a discussão sobre a noção de geopoética visual. Reflexões a cerca do tema pesquisado, do caminho percorrido, a trajetória do processo criativo desenvolvido, buscam situar a fotografia historicamente enquanto arte visual contemporânea. Autores como Nicolas Bourriaud, Zygmunt Bauman, Geoges Didi-Huberman, Cecília Salles dão o embasamento teórico à investigação. / Salvador