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South: A Psychometric Text Adventure is an artist’s book and a set of software programs. The South project re-conceptualises the artist’s book and wider bookforms, encouraging models of interaction that are aware of specific locations and individual subjects. These alternatives are a response to what this thesis frames as two rapidly stagnating forms. The thesis argues that both the artist’s book and electronic literature (see the glossary on page 343 for definitions of the key terms used throughout this thesis) have not made a significant impact on the cultural landscape of the early 21st century. Nor have they made a significant use of the key technological changes that have occurred since the first electronic literature emerged in the late 1970s (in the form of interactive fictions, sometimes called ‘Text Adventures’, such as Colossal Cave Adventure (Crowther, 1976)). In order to move forward from the increasingly problematic, disembodied, computational models used in these early digital works (discussed in chapters two, five and six) this thesis specifically recommends the formation of temporally specific, contextualised, relationships between readers and digital texts. The South project presents a multi-linear, situated and embodied form of intra-activity (see glossary) as an alternative to more linear forms of interaction. These ideas and their implications for electronic literature and artist’s books will be clarified and outlined throughout this thesis, as will the rationale for framing them as valid models for moving electronic literature and artist’s books into a position of cultural and technological relevance.

This project, based on a study of artists in London and Berlin, is an exploration of the social conditions of cultural production. I am exploring cultural production as an activity which does not fit conventional definitions of work, as it is self-directed, frequently unpaid and takes place outside of paid employment. It is precisely its irregular character which makes cultural production vulnerable to barriers to free time, such as the expensive rent and chronic overwork prevalent in London. I explore the social conditions of cultural production as an intersection of several factors: material conditions (particularly housing and the cost of living) which can shape the time and space artists have for their work, and their ability to survive on part-time and freelance employment; the politics of the cultural field, which shape the expectations artists have for their work and lives; cultural and social policies, which also impact on artists' ability to support themselves; and subjective issues such as artists' sense of themselves and their work, their sense of place and their relationship to other artists. This project explores how these factors intersect and inter-relate, in the way that social conditions can affect who can be an artist, who can sustain an artistic career, and the ways in which one can be an artist. In particular, I focus on the relationship between housing and professional identities, and how this functions differently in London and Berlin. In order to explore these intersections, the project brings together policy analysis, interviews, biographical narrative descriptions, photographs and descriptions of my travels through neighbourhoods in both cities. It is an interdisciplinary project which draws on analyses and methodologies from the fields of art, visual culture and sociology.

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This research is based on reflexive practice as a subject librarian for visual art, concerned with representation (of artists) and context (of art practice and its representation) in the academic library, as a heterotopia. My thesis is that the aim to create an ‘alternative’ art space remained operative in London between 1995 and 2005, although the term was decried. The research addresses the problem of documentation of transient contemporary art practices, by collecting and analysing ephemera and developing a resource based upon them. Art ephemera are by-products of institutions, galleries, exhibitions, and curatorialactivities that may be significant in terms of criticality but which are often not recorded adequately and remain un-archived. The strategies of representation that ephemera mobilise take place at an interface of art aims and social structures, an area that has been a vital site of contemporary practice. I review major issues in contemporary criticism of the ‘avant-garde’ and ‘alternative’,showing the discourse of the alternative to be an ethical discourse about practice. Identifying citation as means of interpretation, I draw my account from a reading ofephemera in the chapters: “Citation, marginalia, mockery, fakes and tailpieces” where I identify visual and textual qualities of ephemera, “Artists, spaces and institutions,”where I present the themes of mapping London and self-institutionalisation, and “Counter to ?” where I report a distancing from counter-cultural aims and development of complex alternatives. I evaluate existing collections of art ephemera in libraries, projects to facilitate access to them, and cataloguing and collecting policies. I advocate use of catalogues to recontextualise ephemera. In conclusion, I present a complex notion of ‘alternative space’ in art practice as a space for dialogue with, rather than opposition to established institutions and circuits of contemporary art and I endorse collection of ephemera as a source for diverse histories.

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This thesis will explore how South African portrait and documentary photography produced between 1994 and 2004 has contributed to a wider understanding of the country’s painful past and, for some, hopeful, for others, bleak present. In particular, it will examine two South African photographic works which are paradigmatic of the political and social changes that marked the first decade after the fall of apartheid, focusing on the empowerment of both photographers and subjects. The first, Jillian Edelstein’s (2001) Truth & Lies: Stories from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, captures the faces and records the stories of perpetrators and victims who gave their testimonies to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa from 1996 to 2000. The second, Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin’s (2004a) Mr. Mkhize’s Portrait & Other Stories from the New South Africa, documents the changed/ unchanged realities of a democratic country ten years after apartheid. The work of these photographers is showcased for its specificity, historicity and uniqueness. In both works the images are charged with emotion. Viewed on their own — uncaptioned — the photographs have the capacity to unsettle the viewer, but in both cases a compelling intermeshing of image and text heightens their resonance and enables further possibilities for interpretation. In their contributions to the critical theory of photography Roland Barthes, Victor Burgin and Max Kozloff underscore the centrality of the interplay between image and text in the meaning-making process anchoring a critical engagement with photography. Burgin (1982) states that “Even the uncaptioned photograph, framed and isolated on a gallery, is invaded by language when it is looked at”, and Kozloff (1987) claims that “However they are perceived, images have to be mediated by words”. This thesis singles out emotionally charged and forceful photographs in Edelstein, Broomberg and Chanarin’s repertoire to consider both the complex process of the construction and interpretation of photographic meaning and question if/when photographs do, in fact, depend on language. Central to the architecture of photography is the layering of the representations, firstly through the specific photographic language and form of address which characterises the portrait genre, and secondly through the verbal text accompanying the images. I argue that the viewer’s experience of the photograph unfolds at two distinct moments of viewing. The first moment is defined by the “raw” encounter with the photograph — mediated by an affective response to its emotional or symbolic content — and the second moment encompasses the response to the photograph’s compositional elements, or signifying units, in articulation with the text/narrative accompanying it. This analysis brings to the fore the relation and exchange between photographer and subject and, ultimately, between photographer, subject and viewer. Emmanuel Levinas and Hannah Arendt’s theoretical insights provide a platform for exploring the lived, concrete experience of ethical choice and action at the core of the photographer–subject-viewer humanistic triangulated relationship. Germane to this discussion, Ariella Azoulay’s (2008) conception of “the civil contract of photography” extends the possibility of questioning and/or examining, firstly, the complex intertwining roles of the several participants in the photographic act/encounter and, secondly, the photographic image as an intercultural nexus wherein photographer, subject and viewer meet. The triangulation of photographer-subject-viewer, which constitutes the guiding thread of this study, is further explored and illuminated from the perspective of Mikhail Bakhtin’s conceptualisation of the “utterance”, enabling me to engage with the dialogical dimension of photographic practice. The affinities between Levinas and Bakhtin — two philosophers of alterity — revealed through a common language of responsibility in the relation with the other, inform my reading and discussion of the ethical project of photography in post-apartheid South Africa. Phenomenology, narrative theory and social semiotic visual analysis guide the methodology adopted in this study, creating a synergy between a reflective/dialogical, a discursive/sociological and a more semiological/aesthetic approach. From this perspective, my concern will be in establishing the interdisciplinarity between Visual Culture and Cultural Studies and, in so doing, I will explore the relationship between the photograph, documentary practice, social processes, modes of representation and/or visual testimony, confirming Irit Rogoff’s (1998) claim that “[I]mages do not stay within discrete disciplinary fields (…), since neither the eye nor the psyche operates along or recognizes such divisions. Instead they provide the opportunity for a mode of new cultural writing existing at the intersections of both objectivities and subjectivities”.

This thesis examines relationships between community, heritage and identity in a diasporic context, exploring how national identities are imagined, expressed and sustained outside the nation. It is based on case studies of four Welsh American community heritage sites in the US, which involved detailed surveys with visitors to the sites, interviews with curators and managers, and in-depth analyses of their collections, exhibitions and events. The thesis starts from the assertion that heritage is a cultural and social communicative process (Dicks 2000a, 2000b; Smith 2006). It investigates how and why self-identifying Welsh Americans use community heritage sites to construct, perform and consume a range of personal and collective identities. Narratives of Welsh identities expressed by visitors are analysed using theories of symbolic ethnicity (Gans 1979) and elective belonging (Savage, Bagnall and Longhurst 2005). It is argued that the construction, performance and consumption of Welsh identities in the US are sustained by social groups and networks. The case study sites are further maintained to belong to a transnational heritage network incorporating a variety of community, academic and professional stakeholders from Wales and the global Welsh diasporic community. This challenges the division found in much museological theory between community initiatives in the "official" and "unofficial" heritage sectors. This thesis suggests that community heritage initiatives in both sectors are influenced by a mixture of "bottom-up" community and "top-down" professional interests and agendas. Acknowledging the inter-relationships between these sectors prompts a re-examination of processes of production and consumption. Rather than a linear continuum of performer/audience (Abercrombie and Longhurst 1998) or self/other (Dicks 2003), this thesis argues that processes of production and consumption are more usefully conceptualised as a network. It develops an audience network model as a means through which to create a better understanding of the variety of different ways in which individuals can engage with heritage narratives.

Unforeseen Outcomes: The Role of Aleatory and Rhizomic Processes in Sculptural Form and Written Equivalents The aims of this research are subsumed under two main questions: • What means and materials can be used to balance the relinquishing of authorial control in sculptural production with outcomes which retain formal and semantic coherence? • Is it possible to devise a written equivalent both to elucidate this aim and reflect subjective creative processes in sculptural practice? The research aimed to apply aleatory, generative and research-based approaches to contemporary art practice in order to articulate an experience of abjection. A review of relevant writing on these themes developed an argument for abjection to be understood as a state of ambiguity or being overwhelmed. A review of relevant artworks suggested clay, physical text and natural processes of change as materials and methods appropriate to answering the first research question. The work submitted in response to this comprises three distinct but connected bodies of art work: • Four terracotta sculptures of script, submerged in seawater, as substrates for living marine organisms to determine the final form of the works. • Eight large sculptures, an accompanying etching and two videos whereby monologue was rendered in extruded clay and shaped by gravity to express the vulnerability of its speaker. • Six digital prints in which interventions by colonies of ants on ineffectual imperative slogans are juxtaposed with photographs of 1930s Italian architecture for children. In response to the second research question, and in line with the aleatory strategies of writers and artists influential on this project, five separate booklets without a predetermined sequence present background research relevant to particular aspects of this practical work. The writing of these reflexive discourses draws on the prose style of Sebald, a writer whose work is analogous to the creative processes of contemporary visual artists. Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the rhizome provides a non hierarchical model for such practice as a structure which establishes connectivity between apparently disparate ideas. In the thesis, the production of the above works are described and discussed in relation to the contextual review and thematic concerns. The contributions of the research are outlined. The adoption of chance strategies and generative processes enables a fresh understanding of abjection to be expressed in contemporary sculpture; these are best deployed when the artist embraces abjection by allowing these processes to overwhelm their work. The more artistic control is relinquished to aleatory practice, the more innovative such strategies are in articulating this idea of abjection. Directions for future research building on these conclusions are suggested.

This study of Bruthwaite Forest in north Cumbria investigates interaction with a changing rural landscape, seeking to map connectivity by transcribing subjective experience of place. The random exercise of walking stimulates thoughts and observations that generate a textual and visual narrative of personal involvement in the landscape. Intensive fieldwork and historical research are the basis of an art practice that embodies the material reality of the place in the creation of new artefacts that investigate and comment upon structural change and decay, the topography of place-names, and the human traits of finding and collection. The research area is defined by the boundary of a former hunting forest, now mostly within the Geltsdale nature reserve and the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. My contribution to the history of Bruthwaite Forest includes the location and photography of extant and ruined houses and structures including cairns, bridges, boundary stones, wells and other features of significance to inhabitants in the past. I have tentatively identified and located several medieval shielings, documented all the sheepfolds, and re-placed some ‘lost’ place-names, thus bringing back into current memory names and places which were once common knowledge to those who lived here. The photographic and ceramic artworks are integral to the study, responding to the characteristics of this upland area and acting as a stimulus to reflection on the human place within the natural world.