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This is an orthodox thesis in that it is a “book”. However, it is also the practice element of the PhD by part-practice; i.e. it is presented as the practice and the theoretical aspects of the PhD submission. In a sense, it stands for a thesis, in which instance it has become a “stereotypical” thesis, a “straw man” at which the theoretical arguments are launched. The written text describes itself as a self-reflexive paradox, using the well known illusion of the duck-rabbit as an example of its undecidable nature. As a “test” for the representatives of the awarding institution the problem set is whether to regard the thesis as art-work or as theoretical exposition. In order to drive the point home a “version” of the thesis is presented with a spine binding on both ends thus making it impossible to open – literally, a “double-bind”. Much of the discussion is centred on current debates over whether “knowledge” can be extracted from art works — that is to say, knowledge that can be communicated and that could be called “reliable” as a pre-requisite for a PhD. The thesis argues that the available literature on the subject seems to be continually “in pursuit” of a satisfactory answer — a pursuit much like that in Lewis Carroll's nonsense poem, The Hunting of the Snark. Interpretation of art works is the mainstay of this literature and it is the hermeneutical approach that is given most critical attention from a deconstructive angle. The ontological status of “art” is examined as a consequence of the Duchampian readymade, which is often overlooked as the transparency of art works is often assumed in order to “contain” subject-matter that “embodies” knowledge. This, the thesis argues is a non sequitur and only leads to a dissemination of possible, equally valid knowledge claims and is thus a specious epistemological enterprise. By enunciating the thesis as a work of art, there forms a duality of text and object/image where each reinforces the other at the same time as each cancels the other out. The text fictionalizes the art aspect and the art aspect objectifies the text into a kind of calligram. It is anticipated that claims for the irresolvable nature of the “pursuit” lead to a sense of the uncanny which is characterized by repetition (of themes that result in circular arguments) and disembodiment — separating knowledge from aesthetic judgement and separating textual theory from the readymade that calls itself a Thesis.

This thesis examines a selection of Taiwanese women's exhibitions, held between 1996 and 2003. It explores the questions related to contemporary Taiwanese women's art and how art exhibitions can demonstrate women's role in the post-martial law period (since 1987) in the intersections of Taiwan's culture, history, economy, social classes and its relationship with the rest of the globe. It investigates the particular perspectives that women artists (as the subordinate part of Taiwan's patriarchal society) have contributed to the interpretation of the complex nature of Taiwanese presence. It also aims to identify a wide range of dimensions that women's art exhibitions enable us to question women's particular contribution to visualising the concepts and impact of what constitutes the multiple Taiwanese identities. The research is driven by a triangular relationship, consisting of theory, culture and art, in which each element influences the other two. As my focus is on the ambivalent and hybridised culture of Taiwan, I have chosen specific postcolonial and feminist theories to examine its art. I have categorised my thesis into three parts, covering six selected exhibitions. In Part I (Re-positioning History), I juxtapose both political and economic histories and examine issues related to national identity, nationalism, working-class women, industrialisation and Subaltern Studies. In the second Part (Colonial Heritage), my focus is centred on physical colonial space and on domestic micro space, where Homi Bhabha's concepts of hybridity and in-betweenness are the main themes to address the ambiguity of Taiwanese conditions. In Part III (International Perspectives), my concern is the position of contemporary Taiwan, dealing with issues related to Westernisation, globalisation, urbanism and cyberspace. I argue that a new form of identity is generated in cyberspace and that women artists are visualising hybridised culture in the virtual world. Ultimately, I propose that Taiwanese women artists are contributing to the visualisation of a hidden but essential part of Taiwan's historiography, as well as the shifting nature of contemporary Taiwanese culture, through which an open yet complex field is created for us to explore.

This thesis focuses on the notion of play in the theory and practice of art in the 20th and 21st centuries. I approach play both as an internal element of the concept of art (following the philosophical tradition) and as the external model for the creative process (as applied by modern and postmodern artists). The main purpose is to produce an interpretation of play that would span various, often contradictory, features of this concept and would serve to reinterpret the notion of artistic representation, traditionally linked with the vocabulary and approaches coming from the domain of work (production, mastery, preconceived outcomes, fixity, and the nature/culture dichotomy). My thesis defends representation, however, supplemented with the notion of play. In my project of highlighting the role of play in the discourse of art and aesthetics, I draw on Jacques Derrida's reading of Kant and Plato. Derrida s analysis of the logic of supplementarity in Western thought and terms such as parergon, pharmakon and undecidable, help me to argue that the ambivalence of play and the movement in between the opposites allow us to understand play as a condition of artistic representation. I also use Mihaly Spariosu's distinction between the interpretations of play as rational or prerational to inscribe play into the argument between representation and non-representation in the theory and practice of art. In terms of practice, I link the emergence of the strategy of play with the rhetorics of primitivism in modern avant-gardes from Dada to Fluxus. I analyse play as a tool of transgression and an attractive supplement of the creative process a way to activate the public and change the traditional proper function (ergon) of art. I trace the assimilation of play in recent participatory (relational, dialogic) art intended to go beyond representation. I argue that play has become a commonly used tactic and an undercurrent of today's artistic and social network. In the final discussion I reinterpret the notions of work (ergon, essence) and play (parergon, supplement) in the light of the 20th century artistic revolution. Using vocabulary and approaches coming from the domain of play (and specifically Role-Playing Game) I attempt to overcome the prejudice against the notion of representation.

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No description available.

After the evacuation of a transcendental ethic as a universal yardstick or law for action, notions of justice, morality and the law nevertheless remain policed, and are still invested in by strong systems of belief and prejudice. This thesis sets out to analyse the tradition and prevalence of “idealising” moments of consequence, judgement and decision and their specific relation to a transcendental-style aesthetics of violence. In this written thesis and in my studio-based work I examine the themes of “naturalised justice” and “decision” as means to achieve autonomy, hinged as they are upon critical, theoretical and cultural representations of, and responses to, the problem of the ubiquity of violence. As such, my thesis also asks how the rhetoric of this apparently mutual or shared conviction of autonomy as aggression, violence or force, produces judgement within culture in general, upon and within the condition of absolute finitude. It is through the empirical examination of my studio practice that I consider the universalising forces of individual authorities using the “worn out metaphors” of the post-tragic hero genre. Here, I create movie poster type images and pop-music style videos in which my appropriation of the powerful propaganda of Hollywood movies lives out the impossibility of exteriority, that is, the difficulty of separating this use of the medium from my being caught up within it. These apparently abstract and generic narratives of agency are the focus of my practice throughout. Through them, I investigate (i) the rhetoric of “violence as decision” as something which undermines its own determinism; (ii) the political force of such rhetoric in relation to the naturalisation of belief, (such as traditional, conventional and assumed agreements in the social); and (iii) the procedures and consequences of performances of the rhetoric of violence practiced in the judgements and convictions of individual subjects. (Abstract, A. Beech)

The project grounds the use of mimesis in my video art practice. In the written element I query equivalence between mimesis and performativity in Judith Butler's conception; I consider the tragic and hyperbolic faculties of these, as ways of promoting expansion of context in received convention. My video clips have performance in them and mime destructive regimes in mainstream conventions of visual culture, of sexual identity and of political position, to challange these. They mobilize convention and deviation from it, through ineptitude of performance or my ambiguous relation to the convention that I use. Butler conceives the generative possibility in regulation (prohibition and/or "law). This is my source for prioritizing failure, and conceiving mimesis a practice of power in modification. Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe is an additional source in my writing, and Luce Irigaray a hovering presence. They are deployed to support my conviction that speculative theory mimes tragic art; Hegelian dialectical philosophy and Freudian psychoanalytic discourse founded in tragic art endow a mutual system of logic and belief that mobilizes rejection of 'difference'. In these tragic discourses mimesis links death and desire. As a force in hyperbole and the constitutive site of all discursive and artistic conventions or tropes, mimesis may suspend as much as confirm the very truths it promotes. Mimesis may turn or exceed anything that can be mimed - I propose. Throughout the project (art practice and written element) I ask - 'how is it possible to re-conceive the terms of the representational conventions to which I object without sharing in the mechanisms that demote those terms?'