No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

This thesis investigates western subjectivity from the point of view of the object; particularly, the art object, i.e. the 'ready-made', as developing from the modem art of the historical avant-guards to postmodern architecture. I attempt not only to highlight how, according to Baudrillard's notion of obscenity, this object is more and more de-materilized into the image or, better, the 'sign', but to show how this de-materialization takes place in the realm of the subject's phenomenological apprehension of the world. In so doing, it mirrors a condition of increasing dematerialization of western identity or, as Michaud would say, of 'vaporization' into and through the image. The image becomes then the only viable means through which such an identity is substantiated. In this respect, this thesis can be seen to present contemporary architecture as the supreme medium of visual culture.

This thesis presents an investigation into the potential of a self-institution to provide alternative institutional framing devices to contextualise critical art practice. This is pursued via a theoretical framework that brings critical art and improvisation studies together with the aim of developing critical art strategies in the context of neoliberalism and in relation to wider transformations in critical theory which have contributed to a rethinking of critique in non-oppositional terms. The research addresses interrelated problems found in the contemporary art discourses of institutional critique and participation which involve the need to overcome rigid binary thinking with respect to issues of authorship, aesthetics and community in art practice. These problems are brought into dialogue with jazz derived improvisation studies, an area in which similar issues are at stake. Addressing this in practice the method of self-institution is employed as a vehicle for experimentation with ideas of non- oppositional critique and of improvisatory art practice in which issues of authorship and aesthetics become transformed.The resulting Open Council project achieves a conflation of strategies of fiction and art practice through the creation of a fictional local authority institution which, with improvisation as its operational methodology, emphasises the importance of art practice to operate temporally through the continuous linking of works/events which together create a specific interpretative framework in which critical practice can be presented. The thesis charts how this was achieved in practice by conceptualising the method of self-institution itself as an improvisatory process which perpetuates itself by responding to the impulses provided by the contemporary city environment.

Art History, Visual Arts & Musicology / M.A. (Fine Arts)

Art History, Visual Arts and Musicology / M.A. (Fine Arts)

Cette thèse porte sur ce que l'on ne voit pas dans les images et qui pourtant s'y trouve. C'est ce que signale l’expression « visiblement manquant » : le foyer émotionnel au creux duquel les signes semblent s'agencer et désigner ce qui n'est pas vu mais qui est essentiel à l'image, à l'artiste et au spectateur. L’hypothèse ici développée pose qu’il s’agirait d’un moment antérieur à l’élaboration de l'image, s'originant dans la conscience par les souvenirs, les rêves, les pensées obsessionnelles, images mentales dont le corps porte et entretient la mémoire dans ses actes moteurs comme dans l’acte même de percevoir, d’anticiper l’expérience du réel et d’éprouver la présence d’une image. S'appuyant sur ma pratique artistique de la vidéo et un ensemble d'œuvres photographiques, cinématographiques et vidéographiques puisées dans le champ des Arts visuels contemporains, la recherche chemine par des analyses précises de leurs registres iconique, plastique et sémantique. Établissant des relations entre le vu, le perçu hors-vision et le nommé, elle dessine finalement les contours d'une esthétique qui pourrait être celle de la défaillance : défaillance recherchée comme l’expression d’une fragilité, que le regard du spectateur reconnaît par sa proximité paradoxale avec sa propre vulnérabilité. / This thesis explores what is not seen and yet what can be found in images: "the visibly missing". This expression points to the center of emotions in which signs seem to be organizing themselves and designating what is unseen, and nevertheless essential to the image, to the artist and to the viewer. Our working hypothesis defines this moment as prior to the creation of the image. It originates in the conscious mind through memories, dreams, obsessional thoughts, mental images which help maintain memory alive, as well as motor behaviors like the very act of perceiving, of anticipating our experience of reality, and the act of appreciating the presence of the image itself. The research is based on my fine art video practice, as well as photographic, cinematographic and video graphic works from contemporary artistic fields, and aims to analyze precisely their iconic, artistic and semantic ranges. It also establishes links between what is seen, what is felt behind the vision, and what is named. Finally, it outlines an "aesthetics of the fainting": a deliberate fainting, expressing a fragility that the viewer's eye recognizes as such by the paradoxical proximity with its own vulnerabity.

J’avais dix ans. C’était après la guerre et l’Iran était sous embargo. A l’école je n’avais que deux crayons pour écrire mes devoirs, un noir et un rouge. Les deux étaient ornés du symbole d’une marque, un crocodile noir. Cela était aussi un gage de qualité. Mes crayons crocodiles écrivaient bien. J’étais habituée à les voir, mes crocodiles. Puis je passais beaucoup de temps avec ma tante. Elle faisait de la couture. Je jouais avec les restes des tissus. J’étais fascinée par les couleurs et par des formes que je créais avec ces bouts de tissu. J’ai sans doute commencé mes premiers collages à ce moment-là. Plus tard quand je suis devenue peintre, les animaux et les couleurs étaient la base de mes peintures. Parmi ces animaux le crocodile surgissait sans que je sois consciente de la raison de cette apparition. Un jour en réfléchissant je me suis souvenue de mes crayons d’enfance ! Quand j’ai commencé à peindre, les limites et les contraintes en Iran ne me permettaient pas de m’exprimer librement. Alors le jeu d’enfance que j’avais repris dans le style de ma peinture, me rendait celle-ci agréable et ludique. J’avais mes couleurs et le jeu, et j’exprimais ce que je voulais ; j’avais réussi à trouver un langage d’expression ludique et fort et j’en étais ravie. Je n’étais pas la seule à prendre le jeu comme moyen de contourner les limites et la censure. Déjouer les limites par le jeu était le centre de notre travail. La réflexion sur l’irruption du jeu dans l’art visuel contemporain et en particulier en Iran est devenu le sujet central de ma réflexion et de mon interrogation sur les raisons qui nous ont conduit à nous exprimer ainsi. Je l’ai donc choisie comme le sujet de ma thèse. [...] / I was ten years old. It was after the war and Iran was embargoed. At school I only had two pencils to write my homework, one black and one red. Both were decorated with the symbol of a brand, a black crocodile. It was also a guarantee of quality. My crocodile pencils wrote well. I was used to seeing them, my crocodiles. Then I spent a lot of time with my aunt. She was sewing. I played with the remains of the fabrics. I was fascinated by the colors and shapes that I created with these pieces of fabric. I probably started my first collages at that time. Later when I became a painter, animals and colors were the basis of my paintings. Among these animals the crocodile arose without my being aware of the reason for this apparition. One day while thinking I remembered my childhood pencils! When I started painting, the limits and constraints in Iran did not allow me to express myself freely. Then the childhood game that I had taken in the style of my painter, made me this one pleasant and playful. I had my colors and the game, and I expressed what I wanted; I had managed to find a language of playful and strong expression and I was delighted. I was not the only one to take the game as a way to get around the limits and the censure. Breaking the boundaries through play was the center of our work. The reflection on the irruption of the game in the contemporary visual art and in particular in Iran became the central subject of my reflection and my interrogation on the reasons which led us to express ourselves thus. I chose it as the subject of my thesis. [...]