This is a practice-based research project which analyses how democracy and facilitation are articulated within two different social contexts. The purpose of this research is to make apparent, through two facilitated art projects - the Elder Flowers project and the Exwick Image Project - the contingency of meanings and methods of making democratic choice with participants. The argument is that my methods of facilitation, which embrace social and cognitive difference by 'attending to' (that is, using methods of empathic listening and responsive action), their outcomes and meanings are contingent to each specific interaction. These acts of creative facilitation ask new questions of how democratic choice can be made between people who are located within multiple (historical, emotional, familial, economic) power dynamics. The thesis uses theories of complexity and difference to articulate: the need to 'frame' meanings in order for facilitator and participants to understand each other's choices and the fluidity of signification and subjectivity that deconstructs the ability to fix meaning and therefore properly understand each other. A conflict is revealed within the objective of facilitating a project in a democratic manner. This is a conflict between acknowledging that choice will emerge through interaction between facilitator and participant, and the facilitator needing to index - make sense of - what is happening in order to develop the facilitation. Additionally, the democracy of representing the complexity of the facilitations, in the 'framed' form of project record within the PhD submission, is questioned. A series of practical experiments, explore how theoretical concepts of presentation can work with project material and how an intuitive approach to the project material can reveal the complexity of choice-making during the facilitations.

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This thesis deals with cruelty, its representation and its underlying symbolic and political subtext on a psychic as well as on a social level. The perspective that will be adopted within this research is one with a strong emphasis on French theory, psychoanalysis and continental philosophy. This research provides an interface between philosophy and the visual through the angle of cruelty. The central hypothesis of this thesis is that cruelty is an archaic and transversal phenomenon which, while it finds many local, individual and specific expressions throughout cultures and histories, nevertheless indexes a global resonance of pain, desire, death and obscene enjoyment. Cruelty operates a return to the body, a return to desire, a return to archaic beliefs and representations. Cruelty is also an act of mediation between self and other, a relation where the other is integrated through destruction. This power-relation of cruelty is highly political in the sense that it inevitably begs questions of sovereignty and subjection. This power-relation survives in our imagination, contemporary culture and politics under very specific forms, psychic as well as collective figures, postures, enactments, sensations and movements. The objective of this thesis is thus to analyse the trans-cultural and trans-historical visual politics of cruelty.

Liminality, a state of being in-between, has been a conceptual tool of the social sciences for some time. In the last 30 years there has also been a growing academic concern with exile, the 'age of the refugee', migration, cultural identity, and what are arguably symptoms of the late-capitalist phenomenon that Auqe has termed 'supermodernity'. However, there is a paucity of exploration of the concepts of Iiminality and the exilic condition combined in contemporary visual art. This thesis proposes that the exilic condition can be examined in terms of its liminal aspects. More specifically it proposes that a concept of arrested Iiminality makes possible the analysis of the exilic condition as a manifestation of an incomplete transition. The research found evidence that memory is a factor in preventing the completion of such transitions. It also seeks to show that broken social bonds are a more accurate indicator of the exilic condition fhan physical displacement. The research takes as its starting point the investigation, design and . making of a creative body of work, as an explicit and intentional method of generating research data. The theoretical framework for the evaluation, analysis and synthesis of the data follows Scrivener's basic structure for the form of a creative-production project. The detailed concepts and hypotheses are allowed to emerge from the work (data) by the use of grounded theory. Researching through mixed media resulted in six sets of artworks that allowed the varied facets of arrested liminality to be made visible. The concept of arrested liminality, emergent from reflection in practice, was found to contribute to a more precise understanding of the generic condition of exile, and of the key role played by memory in generating the exilic condition.

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.