This dissertation reveals new findings on the art of some infrequently studied followers of the revolutionary Italian painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610). Investigations pertaining to many of Caravaggio's followers are still in their infancy, and most of the artists selected for this research project are rarely written about in English, ensuring that a range of unfamiliar foreign publications is drawn upon. As attribution and dating are inherent problems in this field, the art of Caravaggio and his followers is intrinsically linked to matters of connoisseurship. Through case-study analyses, this dissertation will explore the authorship of paintings by selected Caravaggists working in Rome and/or Naples, mainly in the two decades following Caravaggio's death. New perspectives and material on outstanding issues of attribution, style, technique and iconography will be detailed in order to present contextual accounts of these post-Tridentine pictures. The majority of paintings selected are religious images, although genre and mythological subjects are also included. The dissertation is divided into five chapters: topics range from one painting to one city, through one artist to various artists. The decision to select chapters of such diverse topics was a conscious means of presenting the medley of problems surrounding scholarship on the Caravaggisti. The first chapter provides an account of the seventeenth-century masterpiece Christ displaying his wounds (Perth Museum and Art Gallery, Scotland), broadening existing research and presenting a narrowing of the attribution following its conservation. The second chapter details the Caravaggesque work of Bartolomeo Cavarozzi. The third and fourth chapters fill the lacuna of research on Tommaso Salini and the so-called 'Pseudo-Salini,' a collective term for several artists. The final chapter assesses the impact of Caravaggio's career in Naples and the legacy that he left artists that lived there during his own time, as well as those who worked there a generation later.

The research in this doctoral thesis focuses on the mediation of place, memory and identity in experimental western documentary films and contains film theory and film practice components. It is comprised of the production of two experimental documentary films ─ Not Reconciled (41 minutes) (2009) and The Border Crossing (47 minutes) (2011) ─ and a 50,000 word written exegesis that analyses those films and films made by others. The key analytic approaches I deploy are located within the framework of film studies, trauma and memory studies and theories of space, landscape and spectatorship. My aim is to advance a critical understanding of the opportunities and limitations in the cinematic strategies that are available to experimental documentary filmmakers in the mediation of place and memory, including trauma and autobiography. The goal of the experimental film is to offer alternative and different ways of thinking to mainstream films about methods deployed in the mediation of the historical event. The notion of experimental begins and ends with uncertainty rather than verisimilitude. Experimental documentary film aims to open the window of uncertainty a little wider to offer an expanded discussion of the subject of the exploration. My thesis contextualises my discussion of experimental documentary filmmaking by outlining the history and development of independent filmmaking in Britain, with a specific focus on my own development as an independent experimental filmmaker. I argue that where subjects live and where their identities are formed, are central to memory and experience. Place may be represented in experimental documentary films, therefore, not as an adjunct to space or as a support to subjectivities but as a character that is foregrounded and interacts with memory and subjects. Subjectivities, including autobiography through the filmmaker’s voice as subject and [iii] filmmaker, are central in my cinematic mediation of memory and traumatic experiences and I devote specific focus to spectatorial engagement with films. I argue that there are difficulties in the mediation of traumatic experiences and that therefore strategies of evocation are needed. I argue that there are similar difficulties in relying on classical linear narrative in articulating memory and narratives of association may be more effective. Finally, I argue in this thesis that an experimental documentary film may deploy disparate filmic strategies such as realism, metaphor, allegory and fiction, yet still remain identifiably a documentary film.

In my PhD thesis, I analyse to the role of site-specificity in the cultural exchange between Belfast and Sarajevo within the context of post-conflict cultures. Due to the complexity of the phenomenon of post-conflict cultures, I use a multidisciplinary approach in analysing particular instances and forms of cultural exchange between these two cities, drawing on methodologies from cultural studies, theatre and performance studies, history, sociology, conflict management, and literary studies. The analysis of the phenomena of post-conflict cultures and intercultural dialogue form the basis for my analysis of cultural exchange. In drawing conclusions from this theoretical framework, I focus on the specificity of such instances of exchange particularly related to Belfast and Sarajevo. I not only try to determine the importance of cultural exchange in the process of transformation of contemporary post-conflict cities, but also use these conclusions in initiating and improving the on-going and future projects of cultural and artistic exchange between Belfast and Sarajevo. Among quite numerous examples of cultural transfer between Belfast and Sarajevo, I have chosen to concentrate on a few case studies that are most relevant to my research. I analyse the following instances of artistic exchange between Northern Irish and Bosnian artists: the collaboration of photographers Andrej Djerkovic, Sean McKernan, and Frankie Quinn; the collaboration of visual artists Susanne Bosch, Alastair McLennan and Alma Suljevic; and the project of cross-cultural collaboration between Queen's University, Belfast and the Academy of Performing Arts, Sarajevo.

This thesis is a practice as research study which seeks to explore aesthetic and ethical concerns surrounding the performance of memory in a post-conflict society. Located within the Northern Ireland context, my study is focussed on the town ofOmagh- the site of the single worst terrorist attack in the history of the Troubles - and my hometown. In an exploration of the ways in which memory functions as a mechanism to articulate an4 enforce identity, I examine how this is performed in a society that is attempting to acknowledge the past while moving on from it. My enquiry employs a dual approach in which analysis of artistic interventions into Omagh's traumatic past is complemented by the use oflive theatrical process as a research tool. In an examination ofthe artist's role in memorial practice in Northern Ireland, I present case study examinations of the testimonial Theatre of Witness production We Carried Your Secrets (2009) and the Omagh memorial, Constant Light (2008). In an examination of the relationship between memorialisation and the individual experience, these models provide a framework for my own artistic practice - a site-specific community theatre play through which I investigate the concept of oral history performance as a counter-memorial, utilising and interrogating the models of practice examined within my case studies. This thesis draws upon the theories of Pierre Nora, who stated that our propensity to design and fix memory prevents us from experiencing real and ever-changing memory within ourselves. In an engagement with theories surrounding monumental memory and testimonial performance, this study explores how the expression of a lived history is translated into public performance, how it can remain owned by those who generate the material and the potential for such practice to act as a way of memorialising both a place and its people.

This research examines the history of human uses of spider silk to reassess the relationship between 'natural' and 'artificial' processes of making. It is guided by two questions: (1) How do forms and materials made by nonhuman animals affect human making? and (2) How are the properties of materials differently perceived and used by humans? My aim is to examine making as a process across species. This research makes an original contribution to knowledge in two specific areas. Firstly, in my art practice I have worked with spiders and spider silk to empirically examine historical claims and descriptions, and to create new sites of human/spider making through performances, sound recordings and videos. The second contribution has been my use of interviews and personal correspondence, which has revealed information on the uses of spider silk that did not exist in the current literature. This enriches our understanding of these techniques and highlights instances of human and spider engagement. The thesis is divided into five uses of spider silk: lining, weaving, layering, vibrating and mimicking. The research is interdisciplinary, drawing from entomology, anthropology, art history, cultural theory and my own artistic practice. Through these investigations, I argue that the making of objects cannot be fully understood through either a focus on human intention (pre-conceived idea of an object) or what the properties of the material allows. Rather, in response to recent attempts to move towards a non-anthropocentric approach to materials, the thesis argues that attention should also be given to the action of nonhuman animals in processes of making.

This project aims at reconfiguring power and agency in voice representation using the metaphor of ventriloquism. The analysis departs from ‘ventriloquial objects’, mostly moving image, housed in a fictional museum, MUVE. The museum’s architecture is metaphoric and reflects a critical approach couched in liminality. A ‘pseudo-fictional’ voice precedes and complements the ‘theoretical’ voice in the main body of work. After the Fiction, an introductory chapter defines the specific role that the trope of ventriloquism is going to fulfill in context. If the voice is already defined by liminality, between inside and outside the body, equally, a liminal trajectory can be found in the functional distinction between the verbal (emphasis on a semantic message) and the vocal (emphasis on sonorous properties) in the utterance. This liminal trajectory is harnessed along three specific moments corresponding to the three main chapters. They also represent the themes that define the museum rooms journeyed by the fictional visitor. Her encounters with the objects provide a context for the analysis and my practice is fully integrated in the analysis with two films (Voicings, Mi Piace). Chapter 1 addresses the chasm between the scripted voice and the utterance using the notion of inner speech, leading into a discussion about the role of the inner voice, not as silent vocalisation but as a fundamental cognitive tool that precedes writing. Chapter 2 discusses hermeneutics in the progressive breakdown of the semantic component in the voice, using translation as the site where politics and economics converge with aesthetics. With performance, the discussion broadens into performativity and the political aspects of agency in speech. With Chapter 3 the analysis shifts towards ventriloquial objects whose vocal component is more prominent than the semantic. Singing is considered from a gender perspective, as well as from the materialistic viewpoint of the recording medium.

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Working from the perspective that assessment is a social practice, this thesis argues that assessment practices are grounded in local contexts but are also influenced by broader socio/cultural/political concerns. My central research question was as follows: Can fine art assessment be based on connoisseurship and still be rigorous? I carried out twelve in-depth interviews with fine art lecturers working in HE art and design departments. In these interviews respondents were asked a range of questions about their approaches to the assessment of student artwork in the studio. The interviews also focused on the individual assessor’s position within their course team and university and their working relations with their external examiners. In my analysis I explore the respondents’ assessment practices with a particularfocus on connoisseurship; team-based approaches to assessment; narratives of subjectivity and objectivity; the culturally-based uses of the percentile mark range and the ways that successful and failing students’ identities are discursively constructed through assessment. I critique techno-rationalist approaches to researching assessment in this study and build a case for understanding assessment as a complex social practice rather than a technology. Throughout this thesis popular understandings of transparency in assessment are contested by focusing on the role of language in assessment and by understanding language as meaning-making and co-constructive.

Drawing on the wealth of manuscript material in his personal notebooks, my thesis presents Humphry Davy through the lens of his published and manuscript poetry. Having transcribed and examined Davy’s poems in groups and from a literary critical and historical perspective, I argue that his poems are historically contingent on the mutability of his career, and in them, Davy adopts and redeploys literary, scientific and medical ideas to confirm his imaginative and controlled emotional connection with nature. Chapter One traces the way in which Davy expresses his youthful ambitions in his published poetry through a nexus of literary and medical ideas. Chapter Two compares Davy’s manuscript poetry with his physiological work at Bristol to reveal that he explores the different ways in which the sublime can be both transcendent and physiological. Chapter Three examines Davy’s use of rhetoric in his lectures on chemistry and the lyric in his poems on Anna, wife of Thomas Beddoes. Chapter Four contrasts Davy’s poetry written during his first and second trips on the Continent. The natural landscapes, which in 1813 are imbued with Davy’s confident perspective as a natural philosopher who can find the harmonies in nature, later become a means for reassurance on the workings of the mind and body. Chapter Five examines a notebook used from 1827 as Davy’s final act to gather some of his poems into a group. In many of his new and hesitant poems, Davy considers the possibility of immortality and conveys his Platonist beliefs. By reading Davy’s poetry as a product of the literary and scientific culture of the Romantic period, my thesis aims to broaden awareness of Davy’s knowledge of complex ideas in literature, science and medicine, and the common cultural stimuli of literary and scientific figures in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.

This Ph.D. portfolio of compositions demonstrates the development of a musical language and practice that draws on a number of strands that have been prominent in my study of – and practice in – electroacoustic composition. These strands are Denis Smalley’s concept of spectro-morphology and Trevor Wishart’s concept of “evolving timbre-streams” (1996, p. 27); Wishart’s writings on breaking away from the tradition of “lattice-based” compositional practices (1996, p. 23); R. Murray Schafer’s writings on the soundscape; field recording, and Bakhtin’s writings on narrative and form. The motivation behind the development of this portfolio is to draw together the sometimes disparate practices inherent in instrumental and acousmatic composition in a new musical language - different to that of the Spectralist composers - that incorporates the rhythmical and timbral flexibilities of electronic music with the communal, interactive practice of acoustic composition. In turn, concepts of form drawn from both instrumental and electroacoustic composition and the properties of acoustic performance are explored within an electronic medium. These concepts are explored initially through electroacoustic composition and indeterminate notation that then leads to the development of a notational practice that, although bound to the lattice, creates the impression of multiple lines travelling at different tempi. The concept of “evolving timbre-streams” is developed in the acoustic works partly through the use of multiple temporal streams, but also by exploiting multiphonics, microtonal inflections and extended techniques. Later pieces in the portfolio fuse the acoustic with the electroacoustic by incorporating fixed- medium or live electronics into instrumental compositions. The final two pieces in the portfolio reconcile acoustic and electroacoustic – or practices developed from the study of electroacoustic music – within the genres of opera and music theatre in a way compatible with the practice and performance of these art forms.