This thesis examines the work of artists Lucas Samaras, Lee Bontecou and HC Westermann, specifically the way in which they have been excluded from dominant accounts of 1960s sculptural practice. I explore the ways in which a theory of 'secrecy' provides a framework through which to think about each of these artists. Chapter one focuses on Samaras's use of small-scale boxes in relation to his dialogue with the Minimal cubic structure, whilst the second chapter examines the structures of Bontecou in terms of their 'secrecy'. Working from welded steel armatures, Bontecou developed a unique practice of stretching dirty, worn skeins of fabric over the metal structure, always with a gaping hole backed with black felt, a disturbing void around which the surface is organised and the spectatorial encounter disturbed. Unlike the voracious mode of looking Bontecou's works engender, or the partial, fragmented 'peering' offered by Samaras's boxes, Westermann's works require a type of looking that has more in common with the physical act of 'drifting'. I cast both the viewing experience and the mode of construction Westermann's works demand, in terms of 'bricolage' and 'braconnage' (or 'poaching'). The concluding chapter analyses the role of the artistic homage and notion of influence, taking as model the work of psychoanalysts Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok on haunting and secrecy in relation to the work of Westermann alongside that of Bruce Nauman and Rachel Whiteread. In chapter four I introduce the idea of the 'phantom', as a way of thinking through the problems of inheritance at work in the artistic homage in terms of a series of ruptures, using Abraham and Toroks' concept of the 'transgenerational phantom', in which familial secrets are unwittingly inherited by one's ancestors. In this final chapter, I attempt to undermine the usual way in which influence and artistic lineage are understood.

This thesis considers the dynamic relation between the physical presence of the body and its presence as a screen image, through which I examine the impact of visual media technologies on our conceptions and perceptions of the body as a physical presence. The effects of these technologies on traditional notions and conditions of physicality and representation mark, I suggest, a shift in our relationship to, and understanding of the body as a physical presence as we become more used to interacting and communicating with the body through the immediacy of screen images. This has led I further suggest, to questions regarding the body as a material presence and to the technologically mediated image becoming associated with notions of disappearance and disembodiment. I understand however, the condition of the body as being very much embedded in a material world and I approach this project therefore, through the proposition of ‘the physicality of an image’ through which I argue for a reconceptualisation of the materiality of the body through its physical presence as an image. The research examines the relationship between video and performance in fine art practice, through which I consider the rhetorics of presence in relation to the politics of representation and reproduction inherent throughout the histories of their close alliance. It is my assertion that early experiments by artists using video to document performance acts during the 1960s and 1970s reveal a prescient understanding of the development of visual media technologies in ways that prefigure our contemporary moment. My understanding of this dynamic is extended through a consideration of concepts of visibility and invisibility and of formal structures of representation, to arrive at the paradoxical notion of embodied vision through an affective dimension of the body as it could be applied and conceived of as material or physical in relation to (or as a consequence of) temporal concerns in film and video works.

This thesis explores trashy tendencies as creative and critical challenges to a reputable logics of cultural production. It outlines two approaches: the first considers a re-valorisation of trash through trashy aesthetics, antagonism and modes of knowing or ironic appreciation; the second considers art that renders trash precisely because we don’t have words to describe it, or don’t know how to value it. The latter in pushing at the limits of representation often gets relegated to the status of “shit”. This is precisely what Twinkle, the protagonist of my video-performance I Wanna be in that Film, (2010) calls performance art. Through artistic and theoretical methods it asks two overarching questions: • Can trashy tendencies push beyond cultural binaries, or are they dependent upon, and remain caught within, the dualities of “high” and “low” art, “legitimate” and “illegitimate” culture? • And, how to stage, read, and write about trashy tendencies without recuperating them into institutional logic, or without producing an unsympathetic thesis? On calling forth the trashy, determined on the one hand as “low” or “cheap”, and on the other as something of indeterminate value, this thesis explores ways to push beyond the binaries, but also refuses to always line up with queer theories or complex concepts of becoming, which might strategise trash, eradicating its trashy affects. As such this thesis explores trash as a tactic, which incorporates and subverts trash aesthetics to offer something distinct from the oppositional strategies of trash cinema and political art, but also something different to conceptual strategy, non‐ representational art, or relational aesthetics. It argues that by paying attention to trashy tendencies (personal and impersonal) the very vital ethical, epistemological and ontological questions of art, performance and criticism are brought to the fore. Employing my art practice as a site of inquiry, it also makes use of a rigorous theoretical framework and archive of artistic and critical practices to provide focus and context for this project in the field of art history and performance studies.

This thesis deals with questions about how to deal with recombinant works concocted from large media collections; how these different kinds of music can be represented; about handing over control to performers or an audience and how these pieces as a whole can be conceived of and presented to the public. It puts forward the database as a method for dealing with libraries of material, examines different representations for dealing with collections of sounds and music, appraises strategies for interactivity such as hypernarratives and suggests metaphor as a method for understanding all of this. These themes are dealt with in both the portfolio of works presented on the disk and this written dissertation. Out of this comes contributions to the bodies of work exploring the appropriation of everyday objects in art, the fields of algorithmic and generative music, generative video synthesis, online mass participation artworks, interactive pieces and local network instruments.

This study sets out to consider alternative creative, collaborative and career possibilities for the classically trained singer in current industry practice. By means of three music theatre works written, or co-written, co-produced and performed by the author/ researcher, the thesis maps and interrogates the process of creating and producing the projects under industry conditions, from inception through to performance and final evaluation. The dissemination of these dual creative and professional processes is tracked via the methodological framework of the Pro-Create cycle, a model conceived by the researcher and presented as a new contribution to integrated practice-led performance research. Current models, for example Robin Nelson’s and Melissa Trimingham’s, map and analyse the creative process on its own terms; the researcher’s model, by contrast, tracks and reviews not only the cyclical developmental progress of the creator and the creative work itself, but the dialogic dynamic of how that work’s production is affected by the external factors of industry acceptance and promotion. Through the trajectory of the three self-created performance projects, the Pro-Create model concurrently examines the singer-actor’s collaborative and agential journey, the interaction between the singer-actor’s autobiography with the authorial process, and links between creative responsibility and enhanced performer agency. Finally, the thesis explores the inherent tension between creative autonomy and professional agency for the singer-actor as independent producer, in current industry conditions.

No description available.

Interfaces of location and memory is a conceptual framework that invites an understanding of context-led arts practice that is responsive to the particularities of place, rather than a model of practice that is applied to a place. ‘Socially engaged’ and ‘relational’ practice are examples of contemporary arts field designations that suggest a modus operandi – an operative arts strategy. The presence of such concepts form the necessary conditions for investment in public art sector projects, biennales, community outreach and regeneration programmes. The problem here is that the role of the artist/artwork can be seen as promising to be transformational, but in reality this implied promise can compromise artistic integrity and foreclose a work’s potential. This research project proposes that a focus on operative strategies applied to a situation (as a prescribed or desired effect) is counter-productive to the context-led processes of responding to the relational complexities of a particular place. As such, Interfaces of location and memory calls for an integrative conceptual framework to make sense of the immersive, durational and relational processes involved. Practices and theoretical texts concerned with place and process within the fields of arts, geography and anthropology inform the development of the research and the fieldwork project – caravanserai – an arts residency based at a caravan site in Cornwall, UK. Expanding on Lippard’s educative proposal for ‘place ethical‘ arts practice (1997: 286-7) Interfaces of location and memory offers a contribution to existing knowledge in the field of contemporary public arts; as well as being of interest to disciplines beyond the arts, concerned with the understanding and future visioning of the places we inhabit.

No description available.

The main aim of theis thesis is to construct a critical concept of performance within a generic concept of art through a two-fold operation. Firstly, it reconstructs the development of a generic concept of performance - distinct from the performing arts - in the period of post-WWII art in North America by focusing on task-dance and the event-score as two emblematic artistic strategies of this period. Task-dance and event-score practices, it argues, had a central role in the practical transformation from a medium-specific to a generic concept of art. Secondly it examines the key philosophical concepts that are inseparable from a generic concept of art, and are necessary for the reconstruction of a generic concept of performance: 'practice', 'labour', 'autonomy', 'abstraction', 'medium', 'mediation', 'subject', 'object', 'structure' and 'abstraction'. The central argument of the thesis is that a critical reconstruction of the concept of performance within the context of post-WWII art must take into account a generic and a autonomous concept of art. The latter refers to a post-medium-specific concept of art, which is still autonomous in Theodor Adorno's understanding of the term: art as derived from, yet distinctively and formally separated from empirical reality. Embedded but formally abstracted from the social relations from which it comes, the category of 'performance', the thesis argues, is a practice of relations. It is a practice in the sensein which Karl Marx formulates practice in his early writings as social and sensuously empirical. It also refers to practice in the sense in which Marx articulates a radically new concept of the subject through this category. The thesis also aims to make a contribution to art theory through its critical methodology. It forces a reconsideration of performance within the framework of 'art in general', and more specifically, it emphasises dance's central role in this history. It employs a number of terms and categories central to task-dance and event-score practices that, it argues, are internal to the generic category performance as it operates within the context of a generic concept of art. The central problem from which this thesis sets out concerns the way in which the dominating concept of performance - derived from cultural theory - is used within art theory. Cutting across disciplines such as Cultural Studies, Performance Studies and Theatre Studies, this conception fails to distinguish between art and culture more generally, and between art and other modes of reality. In short, the thesis confronts a cultural concept of performance - and the related category of performativity - as well as its application to performance practices in art, with a critical one that is reconstructed through a different set of philosophical categories and methods. Chapter 1 argues that the development of a generic concept of art and performance is best described as a shift towards practice, primarily through Marx's account of this. Chapter 2 confronts art-theoretical conceptions of the event-score and task-dance, based in structuralism and pragmatism with Immanuel Kant, and demostrates how John Dewey;s notion of art relies on a conflated notion of Aristotle's practice/poiesis-distinction. Drawing on Husserl's 'phenomenological reduction' and Kant's 'acts of abstraction', Chapter 3 argues that they negation of a medium-specific conception of the object in event-score and task-dance practices constructed a new conception of the art object: the performative structure-object. Chapter 4 considers the role of negation in task-dance, in relation to Adorno's concept of autonomous art and Marx's notion of abstract labour. Chapter 5 demonstrates the way in which the performative-structure object is transcendental and performative, and argues that it must be understood as the practical condition for the generalisation of the category of performance within art.

Through treatment of selected interventions and artworks, the thesis investigates relationships between cybernetics, conceptions of intelligence and artistic practice. The works in question are primarily the artist's own, documented in the thesis and a separate portfolio. Specifically, intelligence's downside, the controversial notion of stupidity, has been reappropriated as a means of considering the way artists intervene and how art, as a system, functions. The term ‘artificial stupidity' was invented in reaction to a particular construal of what Artificial Intelligence (AI) meant. The notion has been employed since, and the thesis discusses interpretations and uses of it. One meaning relates to an ability to become, or make oneself, ‘stupid' in order to facilitate discovery. In the conclusions, the arguments are extended to ‘art as a social system' (Niklas Luhmann), suggesting that it survives and reproduces through a wily kind of pretend idiocy combined with occasional acts of generosity to other systems. The research methodology is threefold. Firstly, unapologetically playful approaches, characteristic of the artistic process, were utilised to generate ideas. Thus, art becomes primary research; an equivalent to experimentation. Secondly conventional secondary research; the study of texts; was conducted alongside artistic production. Thirdly the works themselves are treated as raw materials to be discussed and written about as a means of developing arguments. Work was selected on the basis of the weight it carries within the author's practice (in terms of time, effort and resources devoted) and because of its relevance to the thesis themes i.e. contemporary and post-conceptual art, the science of feedback loops and critiquing intelligence and AI. The second chapter divides interventions and outputs into three categories. Firstly, the short looping films termed ‘simupoems', which have been a consistent feature of the practice, are given attention. Then live art, in which a professional clown was often employed, is considered. Lastly a series of interactions with the everyday technological landscape is discussed. One implication, in mapping out this trajectory, is that the clown's skills have been appropriated. ‘Artificial stupidity' permits parking contravention images to be mistaken for art photography, for beauty to be found in courier company point-of-delivery signatures and for the use of supermarket self-checkout machines, but to buy nothing. The nature of the writing in chapter 2 and appendix A (which was a precursor for the approach) is discursive. Works are reviewed and speculations made about the relationship with key themes. The activities of artists like Glenn Lygon, Sophie Calle, Samuel Beckett are drawn upon as well as contemporary groupings Common Culture (David Campbell and Mark Durden) and Hunt and Darton (Jenny Hunt and Holly Darton). Chapter 3 includes a more structured breakdown and taxonomy of methods. Art theories of relevance including the ideas of Niklas Luhmann already mentioned, John Roberts, Avital Ronell, Mikhail Bakhtin, Andrew Pickering and Claire Bishop are called upon throughout the thesis. Interrogation of the work raises certain ethical or political questions. If there are good reasons for the unacceptability of ‘stupid' when applied to other human beings, might it be reasonable to be disparaging about the apparent intellectual capacities of technologies, processes and systems? The period of PhD research provided an opportunity for the relationship between the artist's activities and the techo-industrial landscape to be articulated. The body of work and thesis constitutes a contribution to knowledge on two key fronts. Firstly, the art works themselves, though precedents exist, are original and have been endorsed as such by a wider community. Secondly the link between systems and engineering concepts, and performance-oriented artistic practice is an unusual one, and, as a result, it has been possible to draw conclusions which are pertinent to technological spheres, computational capitalism and systems thinking, as well as art.