The thesis provides an account of a series of artworks produced between November 2006 and February 2009 exploring 'sense of place' through photographic practice and sound work, responding to Victor Pasmore's Apollo Pavilion in Peterlee. The research process utilised action research and incorporated a range of formal and informal research methods including; photography, interviews, theoretical research, and the use of sketchbooks. Initially a broadly framed research question was posed in order to allow a degree of thematic fluidity and time to reflect on the artistic research. After working on a series of smaller artistic projects exploring sense of place, Victor Pasmore's involvement in the design of Peterlee emerged as the main focus for the research leading to the formulation of the following questions in relation to my artistic research. 1. Is it possible to articulate new artistic understandings of Peterlee New Town through the development of' new photographic work in combination with sound/audio? 2. What specific photographic and artistic strategies are appropriate to articulate this understanding and how might they operate aesthetically and conceptually? 3. What are the relevant theoretical, historical and artistic contexts for such practice and how do they inform the development of new work? 4. How might such work be appropriately disseminated and evaluated? Initially the consideration of these questions informed the development of a series of inter- related audio installations and photographic works titled 'An Exercise in Total Environment', which investigated the multiple narratives connected to the Apollo Pavilion by drawing on information from council planning documents, artistic surveys and interviews with long-term residents of Peterlee. A related photographic series 'While Reason Sleeps' then emerged reflecting on Pasmore's involvement in housing design around the Pavilion and relationships between photography and painting. This practical work makes a contribution to knowledge, providing a new approach to photographic representations of Peterlee, through the incorporation of audio work and the consideration of the relationships between Pas more's work on the Pavilion and the design of the surrounding houses. The discussion of these works in relation to the wider theoretical context forms the basis for the case study chapter. The development of this practice in Peterlee was also informed by my previous involvement in the revival of 8tuart Brisley's Peterlee project (2004), which is discussed in the literature review section. This chapter also examines key theoretical ideas relating to place, site specificity and the critique of documentary (in film and photography) which are relevant to my photographic practice. These ideas are then expanded into the discussion of artworks and other cultural outputs connected to Peterlee and the Durham Coalfields, in order to critically place my own practice and give an account of the working context and history of artworks made in connection to Peterlee.

In recent decades, the retrospective survey exhibition has become one of the primary sites for the presentation of art historical propositions. This thesis examines the contribution of four such exhibitions to a history of Conceptual art: L'Art Conceptuel, Une Perspective (Paris, 1989); Reconsidering the Object of Art, 1965-1975 (Los Angeles, 1995-96); Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin, 1950s-1980s (New York, 1999); and Live in Your Head: Concept and Experiment in Britain, 1965-1975 (London, 2000). These exhibitions could not claim access to an objective and empirically verifiable category of 'Conceptual art,' but played an active role in the construction of that category. Through individual case studies, this thesis analyses the processes through which the history of this relatively recent art 'movement' has been elaborated. It seeks to understand how works of art can be accommodated to a museum-based art history and how they can be called upon to support particular curatorial narratives. At the same time, it considers to what extent they may be able to resist the conditions of display imposed upon them and may, instead, continue to signify independently of curatorial intention. In so doing, this thesis re-emphasizes the notion of critical practice, as well as the performative and discursive dimensions of Conceptual art that have often been passed over in historical exhibitions. It rejects the "oppositional" model of radical artists pitted against conservative institutions and argues for an understanding of Conceptual art based upon the recognition that claims for its independence from the institutional art world were made within the available rhetorics of a discourse that sustains the self-identities of both artists and institutions. Ultimately, this thesis reflects the understanding that to continue to regard artist and institution, artwork and exhibition, in their isolated functions is to fail to attend to the ways in which art, as a social practice, may support broader ideological structures.

This research investigates ways of shaping time and identifying the characteristics of time that evolve in my art practice with reference to a synthesis of two and three-dimensional material, sound, and video. The nature of this study is a three-way material exchange between theoretical discourses, my practice, and audience response. The theoretical discourse includes a survey of the notions of time from different fields of knowledge from science, literature, anthropology, and memory studies. Additionally, an analysis of two contemporary installations, Normal & Nature by a Thai artist, Kamin Lertchaiprasert, and Going Forth by Day by an American artist, Bill Viola, is included. Project 1, A solo show by Toeingam Srisubut, featured three art pieces: time-scape, container site, and ... and a real TV. The first project explored the potential media that can give shape to time and make the characteristics of time explicit. My evaluation of this project focuses on analysing the characteristics of time that grow out of my three works, and examining the audience's multiple readings of time that reveal various indicators, e.g. spaces, narratives, audience's and my memories, and certain Thai social and economic elements. In Project 2, a sound and performance installation Rush Hour, narrative, space, and audience participation are considered specifically. I am testing out how effective the three indicators can give shape to time, and identifying the different characteristics of time of the installation placed in a specific environment of Koh Samui. Project 3, a mix-media installation, When I grow rich, say the bells of Shoreditch, re-tested the three indicators. This project demonstrates my personal, cultural engagements and interpretations of these indicators. The research identifies further areas for potential studies within various aspects of time as well as practical ways of giving shape to it.

My research proposes the idea of staging as the various ways in which artworks are presented and/or enacted in relation to both institutional and non-institutional contexts. This presentation (or staging) of the artwork is seen as implicit to its production and is therefore proposed as a model of doing (as art) and not merely an adjunct to the doing of art. It is however clear that the idea of art doing or acting is problematic. Artworks are confined (to use Robert Smithson's terminology) by their prefigured relationship to the structures of the institution, even in their critical function. My research is therefore tied to questions of how art can be seen to act or do as art (or possibly as non-art) given that this acting or doing is prefigured (and confined) by the contexts within which it is performed. This involves reflection upon the various contexts and configurations of this confinement with respect to contemporary binaric conceptions of artistic practice, as split between critical and aesthetic models and the management of artworks in relation to meaning (and in extension broader philosophical and theoretical ideas of language [as discourse] and/or as a system of control). From this point my research develops dialogically to embody or enact different theoretical and/or practice-led models as a series of exhibitions, installations and performances with reference to both critical strategies (as a form of staging which predicts critically the limits of its confinement), and as the attempt to think alternative conditions of possibility - of ways of doing and staging as speculative or meaningless (as art). As my research develops this can be seen to relate to contemporary discourses and debates regarding the event and the new, and in extension the rupturing or deterritorialising potential of language-as-event with reference to the writing of Gilles Deleuze (and Felix Guattari), Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Alain Badiou. The final section my PhD research, both in the form of this written thesis, and the artwork FROZEN TEARS, is staged as a staging of the fiction of an event of infinite connectivity - as a prophesy or curse of radical deterritorialisation.

This practice-led research concerns how participatory and dialogic art practice can come to terms with conditions after the Anthropocene (Crutzen & Stoermer 2000), the epoch when humans were recognized as 'an earth-changing force' (Lorimer 2015). These forms of art practice draw heavily on a social-constructivism that emphasizes human cultural endeavour above all else. But if we are to live in an epoch when humans can no longer presume to have mastery over nature (Plumwood 1993), then how can such a anthropocentric practice remain tenable? Indeed, it now seems impossible, inappropriate even, to make such a clear distinction between humans and others things. This is not to claim the end of the human. Rather, it is an invitation to think the 'more-than-human' (Whatmore 2002; 2006), and to ask, who else takes part with us in the social forms enacted through participatory and dialogic art practice after the Anthropocene? In doing so, this research turns towards aspects of new materialism (Dolphijn & van der Tuin 2015), and despite the associated risks - most obviously an accusation of "vulgarity" in insisting on the materiality of relations which subtend cultural and social ones - concludes that the benefits abound as the rest of the universe suddenly becomes our kin (Haraway 2015), our collaborators in research (Barad 2007), participants in art, and interlocutors in dialogue. This research is conducted through art (Frayling 1993), and is presented as a series of artworks and accompanying printed publications. Together, they attempt to admit the more-than-human into art practice - both as things and as a concept.

Die Enzyklopädie der Performancekunst ist keine weitere Geschichte der Performancekunst. Der empirische und strikt materialistische Zugang zielt darauf ab, einen kompletten und systematischen Überblick zu geben über Materialien und ihren Gebrauch in der Performancekunst sowie Handlungen und ihre spezifischen Qualitäten in der Performancekunst.

Since the 1970s, the work of Los Angeles-based artist Paul McCarthy (b. 1945) has included live performance, video, sculpture, kinetic tableaux, and installation. Tracing the development of McCarthy’s work between 1974 and 2013, I undertake a critical discussion of the development of performance in relation to visual art practices. Using one artist’s work as a guide through a number of key discussions in the history of performance art, I argue that performance has influenced every aspect of McCarthy’s artistic practice, and continues to inform critical readings of his work. My thesis follows the trajectory of McCarthy’s performance practice as it has developed through different contexts. I begin with the early documentation and dissemination of performance in the Los Angeles-based magazine High Performance (1978-83), which established a context for the reception of performance art, and for McCarthy’s early work. I then examine specific examples of McCarthy’s practice in relation to his critical reception: live performances and videos from the 1970s are discussed alongside critical readings of his work influenced by psychoanalysis; and the wider public recognition of McCarthy’s object-based art in the 1980s and early 1990s. I then look more broadly at the recent trend of re-enacting historical performances in the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time project (2011-12), as a mode of engaging with performance history and exploring how histories of ephemeral art are re-iterated over time. Finally, I discuss a number of McCarthy’s recent exhibitions and installations that mobilises a wider consideration of the histories of performance and ephemeral practices in art institutions. McCarthy’s work is firmly established in the art world, and I argue that his work also provides a significant touchstone for histories of performance. I look historically at how McCarthy’s work has been documented, disseminated, curated, and re-performed, and open wider discussions about ways of engaging with performance history. In turn, I complicate the relationship between performance and the art world; between ephemeral art and object-based art practices; and between scholarly engagements with performance history, and the public presentation of performance in curatorial practices and institutional contexts.

Die Enzyklopädie der Performancekunst ist keine weitere Geschichte der Performancekunst. Der empirische und strikt materialistische Zugang zielt darauf ab, einen kompletten und systematischen Überblick zu geben über Materialien und ihren Gebrauch in der Performancekunst sowie Handlungen und ihre spezifischen Qualitäten in der Performancekunst.

A partir de mon expérience personnelle en tant que myope, j'ai eu l'idée d'une «contre vision» dans la création artistique. Les philosophes et les artistes ont longtemps pensé que le sens de la vue occupait la place la plus noble par rapport aux autres sens. Mais il y a une autre tendance à l'opposé de ce point de vue. Le paradoxe de la supériorité de la vue établit la théorie de base de cette thèse. Le concept de cette recherche vient de l'ouvrage d'Aloïs Riegl, qui a défini I' «haptique» comme une vision de près, spéciale car devant obligatoirement se référer au sens du toucher. Mon hypothèse est la suivante : Est-ce que le sens du toucher peut être le moyen le plus efficace pour percevoir et pour créer une œuvre d'art? Quel serait l'apport privilégié de la vidéo à cette perception ? Trois séries d'œuvres sont réalisées comportant tableaux, broderies, sculptures et vidéos. Elles se présentent en trois chapitres pour répondre à l'hypothèse : le toucher de la main est analysé dans le premier chapitre; puis c'est au tour de celui de l'œil dans le deuxième ; Enfin, au troisième chapitre, la caméra-toucher mêle les deux fonctions. La thèse tente de briser la règle de l'«interdiction de toucher» dans le musée. Par l'inspiration de la manière de faire d'un groupe de personnes qui ne voient pas, elle propose que l'œuvre d'art puisse être appréciée par le toucher des handicapés visuels et des personnes voyantes. Elle présente la vision haptique - une vision corrigée par l'expérience du sens du toucher. A travers l'intervention de l'art vidéo, la recherche s'inscrit dans l'art contemporain. Cette thèse conduit à «la réhabilitation du toucher», réfutant la théorie selon laquelle «la vue est supérieure aux autres sens». / From my personal experience as myopic, I had an idea of « cons-vision » in artistic creation. For a long time, philosophers and artists have thought that the sense of sight occupied the nobles place of senses. But there is another tendency is opposite to that view. The paradox of sight's superiority establishes the basic theory of this thesis. Concept of this research comes from the work of Aloïs Riegl, who defined "haptic". As a near and special vision because it must refer to the sense of touch. My hypothesis is: Does the sense of touch can be the most effective way to perceive and create an art work? What would be privileged contribution of video to that perception? Three series of art works are created including paintings, embroideries, sculptures and videos. They are presented in three chapters as a response to the hypothesis: touch of hands is analyzed in first chapter; then the sense of sight in the second; finally in the third chapter, the touch-camera combines these two functions. This thesis tries to break anti-contact rule in museum. Inspired by a group of blind people, it proposes that the artwork can be appreciated by the touch of blind and sighted people. It shows that the haptic vision -a vision corrected by the experience of sense of touch. Through the intervention of video art, this research becomes a part of contemporary art. This thesis supports "rehabilitation of touching”, refuting the theory that “sight is superior to other senses”.