My research has been a critical analysis, developed from the perspective of my own artistic interventions, dialogue and debate, gained through my practice as an artist. As part of my investigation, I have developed a series of artworks utilising video and photography. The work deals with issues of migration, family, home, place, identity and travel in connection to my own biography. I have undertaken four research field trips to Brazil, London, Angola, Cape Verde and Portugal. In order to create my practical research work, I participated in programmes of residencies with galleries and foundations in those countries and I have also worked with my own family network. I have been analyzing theoretical issues related to auto-biography and identity in relation to alterity, diaspora, and hybridity within contemporary post colonial art practices. I have examined theories raised by my artwork in relation to notions of travel and migration and to psychoanalytical theory , film studies, feminist postcolonial theory and psycho- geography, I connected these notions to concepts of post-modern theories. Subsequently I have been examining models of the artist as a producer, researcher, traveller, and self-ethnographer. The work that I have developed for this research are: An Ocean Between Us (2012) a short video work and some photographs connect to this work; a series of photographs entitled Erosion (2013) and the main installation piece of the research, Once Upon a Time (2012), a tryptic video. I presented the work I have been producing for my practice-based research in three exhibitions in Lisbon, Portugal in October and November 2012 respectively in Carpe Diem and Plataforma Revolver, and in January 2013 at the gallery Appleton square.

This thesis represents an investigation of composition and performance processes from gamelan music (particularly the traditional form karawitan), and the potential for their application in the medium of electroacoustic music. The research was developed through a mixture of theory and practice in a feedback relationship; the written thesis accompanies a portfolio of compositions and arrangements of traditional pieces, alongside software developed in Max/MSP to emulate and expand upon selected aspects of gamelan performance practice. The thesis is divided into two parts. Part I establishes the theoretical foundations for the thesis, introducing key concepts from ethnomusicology, gamelan music, and theory developed for electroacoustic music. Central to the thesis is a notion of “idiom” involving constraints, affordances, and individual expression. While the choice of instruments does not always influence musical style, karawitan presents examples of established instrumental roles in relation to a central framework. In the absence of a unified electroacoustic theory, Schaeffer’s musique concrète provides a starting point for discussion. Further ideas are developed using an adaptation of Simon Emmerson’s language grid (1986) to identify situations in which musical information is imposed from elsewhere, developed directly from the sound materials, or a combination thereof. This leads to the proposal of a set of strategies for composition and analysis of new works. Three areas are discussed through a set of case studies: the development of syntax and idiomatic discourse, idiomatic references and their interpretation, and the use of cues to establish discourse. Part II examines the compositions developed during the research. A description of the overall composition framework and technical considerations is presented, in which abstract algorithmic-oriented approaches are compared with a more concrete approach to sound. A general commentary leads into the description and analysis of works in the portfolio based on the methods exposed in the body of the thesis.

This dissertation is underpinned by two related materialist positions. Firstly, following in the analyses of Darwin (1871/ 2004, 1859/ 2009), Barash (2012), Miller (2001), Dunbar (1999, 2009), Donald (2009), and Grosz (2008, 2011) artworks are understood as being the material embodiment of context-specific ideals of beauty. That is to say artworks fulfil a performative, evolutionary function, one that is responsive to the corporeality of the body and the cultural and artistic values at stake in the specific material context to which that body belongs. Secondly, my body is not something I have but, rather, I am this body. However, following material readings by Barad (2007, 2009), Butler (1990, 1993), Foucault (1967), Deleuze and Guattari (1980/ 2004) and West-Eberhard (2003), like the artwork the body is also understood to be a socio-culturally, economic and politically constituted entity: the corporeal body does not exist pure and independently from the values of discourse and culture, for the latter is always already materially inscribed in it. Accordingly neither bodies nor the artworks they encounter are postulated as isolated ‘objects’ but, rather, are understood as being relationally founded material phenomena that weave in and out of one another even as they (re)configure historically specific boundaries between them and the world they inhabit. In this dissertation I apply this performative, materialist approach and the methodology implicit therein to the interpretation of selected contemporary artist’s works including ‘The Black Photo Album/ Look at Me 1890 - 1950’ (1997) by Santu Mofokeng, ‘Man’s Cloth’ (1998-2001) by El Anatsui, ‘The Blind Alphabet’ (1991 – ongoing) by Willem Boshoff, and ‘Every Sentence draws blood’ (2012) by Johan Thom. Throughout the dissertation I will show how a performative, material reading provides for an interpretive framework constituted as much by the form, subject matter and context of the artwork, as by the viewer’s embodied experience thereof. To this effect I have employed two voices throughout the text: a first-person account of specific moments in my life that have particular relevance to my meaningful encounter with - and interpretation of - specific artworks; and secondly, a questioning, analytic voice that attempts to map theoretically the deeply nuanced performative interrelationship between the material bonds and boundaries at stake in therein.

This thesis aims to offer an unprecedented in-depth analysis of contemporary art and “immaterial labour,” a body of theory emerging from Italian Operaismo in the 1960s that argues for a new conception of labour as abstracted, or “immaterial” as it is no longer based on earlier forms of industrial manufacture. My research investigates how artists might embody the qualities of “immaterial labour” and act as innovators in new forms of exchanges, knowledge, and communication, creating the valued symbolic content of commodities in a post-industrial, service-oriented and knowledge-based global economy. The alignment of art with this new standard of production poses a challenge for today’s artistic praxis that, in the 20th century, found much of its raison d’être in defending art’s autonomy and critiquing art’s status as a commodity. Addressing the notion of art ‘work’ as both a process of making and a good produced by artists, my central research question asks how artists adopt and contest the precarious and flexible working conditions of the immaterial economy. This research offers case-studies of Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija, French artist Pierre Huyghe, American artistscollective Temporary Services, and Cuban artist Tania Bruguera, as well as brings together aesthetics, economic and political philosophy to foreground the ways in which immaterial labour might conceptualise and impact both the development of new aesthetic forms, values and uses of art, and the potential for today’s art to resist and critique the dominant forms of exchange and social conditions produced by advanced capitalism.

This thesis examines the involvement of Alfred Stieglitz – photographer, editor, art collector, impresario, talker – and his circle in the development of American modernism in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Through the analysis of photographs and artworks in other media by the Stieglitz group, the journal Camera Work, the gallery 291, a vast correspondence and art theory, criticism and social thought of the period, Stieglitz and his circle are situated in the context of an international debate about modernism. Notably, the Stieglitz strand of American modernism is considered in terms of a dialogue with German culture and philosophy, constellations that, it is claimed, proved formative for Stieglitz. The thesis argues that underlying all of his various endeavours is a specific unifying structure of thought: the romantic critique of capitalism. Romantic anti-capitalism was particularly current at the time in Central Europe as an emotional response to modernity that drew its values from the past. Most poignantly, Georg Lukács expressed it in his early, pre-Marxist writings, such as the essay collection, Soul and Form (first published in German in 1911). It is equally the aim of this thesis to theorise the interpretive category of romantic anti-capitalism, to investigate it as a Weltanschauung, an ideology and a type of discourse. As a period term itself, the category of worldview, poses a problem in its overlap with the topic of the study. It is hence treated both as a method and as an object of enquiry. Romantic anti- capitalism as a whole, neither clearly progressive nor reactionary in political terms and inherently ambiguous, allows us to disentangle the myths that have been reiterated in many previous studies of Stieglitz and his circle and define his outlook with new precision.

This thesis, portfolio of published original performances and texts, examines the extent to which one can create an equitable and convincing ‘live’ performance presence when creating performances that incorporate mediatised performers. The experimental process forefronts the dialogic relationship of the onstage to the on-screen performer, as such the devising methodology has primarily been focused on experimentation with the scripted narrative. The research illustrates significant technological and formal transitions during the research period, which has also seen the development from analogue to digital formats. In a systematic series of test-bed performances the author has created work exploring the qualitative interface between the onstage and digitally produced performer. Each new undertaking has articulated a different sub-set of research questions, but these have all been explored within the overarching framework. The argument presented here is that this research has contributed new knowledge to interpretations of our understanding of liveness and performer presence in contemporary performance. The critical contextual analysis examines twelve selected outputs. These are a combination of original performances and selected publications, where the author has reflexively discussed the findings of her practice. The critical contextual study is presented in four sections: Liveness revisited; The impact of the digital performer on our understanding of performer presence; Experiments with narrative; The actor slave and the diabolical digital performer.

This thesis is a contribution to the debate on the role of diasporic media in effecting political change in Zimbabwe in the current period. Using a constructivist paradigm whose point of departure is that the world is changeable, the thesis uses three case studies to explore how a conscious engagement with these media helps understand how people using minimum resources can engage in an activity that has a potential to create change in a restricted political environment. The case studies are: a radio station Short Wave Radio Africa (SWRA), a news website NewZimbabwe.com, and the newspaper The Zimbabwean. These media are located outside Zimbabwe owing to the thinning of media democratic space in the country. In what ways do media created by nationals in the diaspora manage to use affordable communication technologies to link with the population, providing an alternative public sphere? Despite the Zimbabwean government’s control of the media, in particular, radio broadcasting, evidence shows the rise of an oppositional communicative space conducted by a small number of poorly resourced social players. Civilians are therefore able to respond to disenfranchisement using a few resources as part of democratic ideation in a hostile environment. This constructivist argument states that the social world is not a given, but is part of a marked discursive and communicative process. This thesis further argues that diasporic media play a pivotal role in the social world in influencing notions of human consciousness; as forms of social, political and economic interactions that project thoughts, world-views, beliefs, ideas and concepts that underpin their relationships.

In this thesis I develop a pragmatic account of how similes are understood within the framework of relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson, 1995). Similes, or ‘poetic comparisons’, (Achilles is like a lion) and non-poetic comparisons (Wasabi is like mustard) are understood in similar ways. While non-poetic comparisons communicate that A is like B in terms of a (relatively) determinate range of respects in which the comparison is taken to hold, poetic comparisons achieve relevance by virtue of weak implicatures which are evoked, in part, in pursuit of certain respects in which the comparison holds. However, the outcome of simile understanding does not necessarily involve deriving a determinate range of points of comparison as part of the content of the comparison. In these cases, the speaker/author simply communicates that the relevance of the comparison lies in the fact that two entities or activities are being compared and the hearer/reader has the responsibility for deciding where relevance lies. This account explains: (i) why certain comparisons achieve relevance in this way (why certain comparisons are poetic); (ii) why metaphors and similes, nonetheless, can achieve similar effects; (iii) why competing accounts (which tend to conflate metaphor and simile) are vulnerable to counterexamples; (iv) why qualifying similes (Achilles is a lot like a lion) and supplying additional linguistically-specified content which relates to potential points of comparison (Achilles is like a brave lion; Achilles is like a lion in the parched savannah) does not make a comparison less ‘poetic’; (v) why certain relationships between tenor and vehicle tend to obtain in similes but not in non-poetic comparisons; and (vi) how certain types of metaphor/simile interaction work.

This DMA portfolio contains materials and a written critical commentary relating to the work I have completed towards a Doctor of Musical Arts in Performance degree at the University of Salford. The concept behind this study is born of a concern that the euphonium can be seen as culturally ‘standing still’, an instrument featured within traditional band concerts, with an important historical yet limited repertoire, and one that has successfully carved only a few further artistic outlets. Often new solo works can be heavily influenced by the tradition of the virtuoso euphonium soloist, sometimes using identical templates and compositional forms of popular works from the past. This research is an exploration of how the euphonium as a solo instrument can be presented in new and varied musical environments, moving it away from the shackles of tradition and towards a broader musical plane. I also hope this approach can potentially create more varied performance opportunities which attract a wider range of listeners. The work explores repertoire that is innovative within the euphonium’s natural musical habitats, as well as repertoire that frames the instrument in surroundings it is rarely associated with. This is presented through commissions, adaptations of existing repertoire, premières and commercial recordings. The work also endeavours to ensure that the new repertoire output is widely available and accessible for euphonium players worldwide by working with a music publisher with international reputation, marketing and distribution facilities. This submission adds significant new works to the substantially limited solo repertoire of the euphonium and explores new areas of artistic output, which I hope other performers and composers will be able develop after this study period is over.

Blackface minstrelsy just ain’t what it used to be. This statement should not be understood as a call for the return of the minstrel show. Quite literally, minstrelsy and its central feature blackface manifest themselves in divergent ways from their nineteenth and twentieth century manifestations, convey a range of meanings, and serve a number of social and artistic functions in the twenty-first century. Through the analysis of a variety of texts and practices from across cultural fields including music, television, film, journalism, social media, and academic discourses of minstrelsy this thesis identifies how blackface and minstrelsy are manifested, their function in critical, artistic, and social contexts, and the effects of their appearance in popular culture. To achieve this, discussion utilises the analytical methodologies of semiotics and discourse analysis to identify the themes and tropes and consistencies and inconsistencies that form the image and concept of blackface minstrelsy in the twenty-first century. Initial conclusions point to a number of contrasting functions and effects: the notion of equivalency with cultural and industrial practices; use as a discursive and iconographic signifier of racism, exploitation, and marginalisation in cultural criticism; application in comedic, dramatic, and artistic contexts as a tool of satire, parody, and irony; and public displays of blackface, seemingly ignorant of its problematic signification. In conclusion, the thesis locates its findings within wider discourses of race, appropriation, and marginalisation in American society. Moreover, this is positioned in the light of recent tensions between African American communities and the police, the fiftieth anniversary of the ‘Bloody Sunday’ confrontation on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, and the proposal of post-racialism following the election of Barack Obama as United States President in 2008.