This thesis analyses the representation of so-called human curiosities in recent visual art, by drawing a connection to historical practices of exhibiting 'monstrous' and deformed bodies within institutions such as freak shows, anatomical collections and medical museums. The last two decades have witnessed a surge of scholarly interest in the histories of these institutions, particularly through the work of Robert Bogdan, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Rachel Adams, Richard Sandell and Samuel J.M.M Alberti, whose research can be situated in interdisciplinary humanities fields such as disability studies, museology, history of science and literary and visual studies. Concurrently, a remarkable number of contemporary artists have also turned to the history and imagery of these spaces to explore the politics of display in exhibitions of non-normative bodies. This study addresses the critical gap between these two parallel domains of inquiry, drawing upon recent studies concerning historical exhibitions of monstrous bodies to analyse how contemporary artists have simultaneously confronted and extended these traditions through their artworks. In order to show that the very notion of 'monstrous bodies' is inextricably bound up in the curious display practices that frame them, I analyse the representation of human curiosities in the work of Zoe Leonard, Joanna Ebenstein, Diane Arbus, Mat Fraser, Pauline Boudry & Renate Lorenz, Marc Quinn and John Isaacs. Each chapter examines a distinct institutional context – the anatomical collection, the freak show, the art gallery, and the contemporary medical museum – to investigate how these artists challenge the meanings conferred upon extraordinary bodies within each space, bestowing new significance upon these forms within the context of their various art practices. I argue that, by doing so, artists themselves can take on roles like curious collectors, freak show talkers and teratologists, revealing the potential for 'art' to act as yet another display framework that imposes a particular set of meanings onto anomalous bodies.

This doctoral study is concerned with identifying the determinants of the institutionalisation of art (IoA) in general and institutionalisation of contemporary art (IoCA) in particular. It focuses on the influence of the state and the private sector on economics and politics of arts as artworld in Turkey. The proposed relational framework is based on the current controversial problematisation of social theory in terms of various understandings of modernity and post-modernity. Here, modern art is taken to be based on an orthodox (classical) modernity understanding. In contrast, contemporary art (CA) is regarded as either a rejection of modern art from a post-modernity perspective or an intensive criticism of it from inside modernity. Both positions direct their criticisms to the basic assumptions, methodological tools, epistemological sources and ontological basis of the classical understanding of modernity. Within this scope, this study formulates and operationalises the research problem in terms of relational sociology and uses grounded-theory to establish the significant interactive relations that define IoA. The unit of analysis is the interactive relations of individuals as artists. The boundaries of the study are primarily limited to national level. The research questions are, in general, framed with qualitative research techniques and specifically substantiated with data sources primarily obtained from a self-employed semi-structured survey method complemented by observations and an extensive review of the relevant literature as documentary-historical data. The analysis of the data and the interpretations of the findings are undertaken within the scope of relational sociology and using the tools of grounded-theory methodology. The empirical data collected from a sample of artists actively involved as producers of works of arts and/or academicians, advisors and art critics from Turkey. Within this conceptual framework, the roles of the state and the private sector are questioned in terms of the economics and politics of arts, including their cultural couplings. The domain of social relations remaining outside the private sector, specifically the art public and the groups, collectives and initiatives of arts are assessed as the civil domain of arts. Knowledge of the arts and its formal (institutional) and informal relations provide an essential source and play a central role in this study. Within this framework, the art market is considered as an emerging hegemonic construct in the economics and politics of arts. Furthermore, artists and artworks are considered as the primary constituting components of the interactive relations of IoA. The findings of this thesis have implications for increasing the knowledge about and practices of IoA and contribute to the development of a framework of research questions that explains the interactive relations of the IoA in Turkey and offers an insight into a growing body of literature on art and includes recommendations for the directions of future research. The proposed relational framework is based on the current controversial problematisation of social theory in terms of modernity and post-modernity understandings. Here, modern art is considered to be based on orthodox (classical) modernity understanding. In contrast, contemporary art (CA) is regarded as either a rejection of modern art from post-modernity perspective or an intensive criticism of it from inside modernity. Both positions direct their criticisms to the basic assumptions, methodological tools, epistemological sources and ontological basis of classical understanding of modernity. Within this scope, this study formulates and operationalises its research problem in terms of relational sociology and uses grounded-theory to establish the significant interactive relations defining IoA. The unit of analysis is the interactive relations of individuals as artists. The boundaries of the study primarily remained at national level. The research questions are framed in general with qualitative research techniques and substantiated specifically with data sources primarily obtained by self-employed semi-structured survey method in addition to observations and extensive review of the relevant literature as documentary-historical data. The analysis of the data and the interpretations of the findings made within the scope of relational sociology and with the tools of grounded-theory methodology. The empirical data collected from a sample of artists actively involved as producers of works of arts and/or academicians, advisors and critics of arts from Turkey. Within this conceptual framework, the role of the state and the private sector is questioned in terms of economics and politics of art, including their cultural couplings. The domain of social relations remaining outside of the private sector, specifically the art public and the groups, collectives and initiatives of arts are inquired as the civil domain of arts. Knowledge of arts and its formal (institutional) and informal relations provide an unavoidable source and play a central role in this study. Within this framework, art market is considered as an emerging hegemonic construct in the economics and politics of arts. Furthermore, artists and artworks were taken as primary constituting components of the interactive relations of IoA. The findings have implications for knowledge and practices of IoA and contribute in the developing a framework of research questions that explains the interactive relations of the IoA in Turkey and adds an insight to a growing body of literature on art including recommendation for future research directions.

This practice-as-research project investigates how a piece of site-responsive Installation Art, titled Triple Point Dunnage (exhibited in Royal William Yard, June 2009), can be used to generate knowledge about memory work through experience of site. Working in dialogue with the ideas of Daniel C. Dennett, Lucy Lippard and Gaston Bachelard, I attempted to create a permeable and fluctuating creative setting for the memory work of participants. An approach that used site as a stimulant within a process which also incorporated theoretical themes. During the period of design and construction, I interacted with and recorded interviews with people who had a personal connection with the site or with an interest in how memory works. The final installation presented layers of spoken fragmented content in a dialectic relationship within the installation’s spatial construction. The responses of the installation’s visitors and participants were collated through a response book and interviews. These were analysed in order to discover to what extent, if at all, the properties I had developed and designed into the work had shaped the engagements of the participants. The multi-valented properties of the work generated an array of responses that suggested that the viewers had fashioned their experience by blending the fragmented stories of others with their own personal histories. This engagement resembles Dennett’s concept of “self-narrator” and resonates with Bachelard’s concept of the fusion of physical and psychological space and Lippard’s understanding of place. By exploring memory through site Triple Point Dunnage generated a sense of place that was a fusion of the participants’ responses to the external physical environment and their associative memories stimulated by the affective fragmented properties of the work.

La pluridisciplinarité artistique contemporaine, qui remonte à l’humanisme et au romantisme, est-elle encore liée à un désir de connaissance et de totalité, ou s’inscrit-elle dans un spectre de fragmentation ? Les défaillances reconnues du savoir, du sujet et de l’œuvre forment une résistance à la puissance des technostructures. La sphère de l’art, détachée de la division du travail artistique, s’inscrit dans une négativité non dialectique. Par la sape méthodique des référents et des maîtrises, l’œuvre s’ouvre au désordre et au manque. Poursuivant simultanément plusieurs démarches distinctes dans les arts visuels, la musique et l’écriture, passant de l’art populaire à l’art intellectualisé, étant autant témoin qu’acteur de mon travail, je propose une approche de l’art qui se définit plus par l’errance et la pluralité que par un projet unitaire. La position mineure et dispersée se ressource dans une poïétique prolifique : simultanéité divergente, transposition négative, hétérogénéité, confusion des temps, présence du vide et du fantomatique… / Is artistic pluridisciplinarity, which goes back to Humanism and Romanticism, still connected to a desire for knowledge and for holistic apprehension, or does it reveal the prospect of fragmentation? The known shortcomings of knowledge, of the subject, and of the work of art resist the power of techno-structures. Once the artistic sphere gets disconnected from the division of artistic labor, it is amenable to a non-dialectical negativity. As the work of art methodically subverts referents, mastery and know-hows, it becomes accessible to loss and disorder. Being as much the witness as the agent of the work I produce, I propose an approach to art conceived as wandering and plural—an approach based on various forms of practice in visual arts, music, and writing, which shift from popular to intellectual art. This artistic stance, minor and scattered, draws its strength from a prolific poietics: divergent simultaneity, negative transposition, heterogeneity, confusion of temporalities, void, and haunting presences…

Le début du XXIe siècle se caractérise par l'explosion des échanges via Internet et par la multiplication des objets connectés, au premier rang desquels le Smartphone (apparu en 2007). Autant d'appareils qui permettent de recevoir et d'envoyer des informations sous des formes diverses (messages vocaux, images, vidéos, textes, etc.). Les modes de communication et les usages qui en découlent se sont multipliés et propagés. C'est désormais en milliards que se comptent les utilisateurs de Smartphones. Celte adoption en masse du Smartphone a radicalement transformé les habitudes de tout un chacun, sans distinction de génération, de sexe, de catégorie socioprofessionnelle, de culture, d'appartenance géographique, etc. Envahissant la planète et pénétrant, dans le même élan, la sphère artistique, l'appareil a su se faire adopter par les créateurs, auprès desquels il joue désormais un rôle particulier, voire plusieurs: d'abord sujet de réflexion, Je Smartphone, à la technologie complexe et aux nombreuses fonctionnalités, est devenu à la fois outil de création, lieu d'expérimentation et d'exposition, moyen de transmission et de diffusion ... Connecté et tactile, il a créé une proximité et une relation nouvelles entre les artistes et le public. Bien qu'extrêmement diverses, les pratiques artistiques et les œuvres qu'il engendre n'en forment pas moins un corpus cohérent dont les ressorts communs diffèrent de ce qui caractérise habituellement une œuvre d'art. La force du Mobile An réside dans sa capacité d'adaptation et de métamorphose. Avec lui, l'imagination déborde sans cesse la technologie pour se mettre à la portée de tous. Il est un art démocratique, désacralisé et populaire. / The outburst of exchanges via Internet and the multiplication of connected devices -number one being the Smartphone which arrived in 2007 -characterize the beginning of the XXIst century. Ali these devices enable us to receive or send different forms of information (voice messages, images, videos, texts, and so on). These new ways of communicating and their new uses have been greatly developed and diversified ever since. There are now billions of Smartphone users around the world. This massive use of the Smartphone utterly transformed everyone's habits, whatever the generation, the gender, the socio-professional category, the cultural background, the geographical area ... After flooding the plane! and then ente1ing the artistic sphere, this device has been adopted by artists and is now playing a very special part in their creative process: first mere food for thought, the Smartphone characterised by a complex technology and a lot of functions has become a tool as well as a space for experimenting and exhibiting, a means to transmit and to spread any idea, information or creative work ... It is connected, tactile and responsible for a new kind of proximity and relationship between artists and their public. The artistic practices and artworks in which the Smartphone is used, though highly diverse, nevertheless belong to a consistent corpus, the underlying motivations of which being different from what generally characterises an artwork. The power of Mobile Art lays in its ability to adapt and to transform itself. Imagination is able to continuously extend beyond technology to bring itself within everyone's reach. It is a democratic, desacralized and popular art.

A quelle(s) logique(s) répondent les dispositifs de création réalisés par Antonin Artaud et David Nebreda ? Quel statut attribuer à leurs « œuvres », si tant est que l’on puisse accoler cette appellation à leurs travaux ? Pour répondre à ces questions, nous mènerons une réflexion d’ordre esthétique et nous nous interrogerons parallèlement sur la spécificité du processus de création dans la psychose. Nous étudierons les productions d’Artaud et de Nebreda sous l’angle de la mise en scène et de la performativité. Nous mettrons également en lumière l’abolition de la représentation, l’effondrement de la scène et les limites du jeu / je. Nous montrerons ainsi la prédominance des registres Réel et Imaginaire conçus par Jacques Lacan. Chez ces « artistes » transgressant les frontières des genres et de l’art, les manifestations incontrôlées du corps et les conflits intrapsychiques donnent lieu à des recréations simultanées du monde et du langage, qui, en même temps qu’elles s’apparentent au déroulement d’une cérémonie de mise à mort, tracent des signes inédits, forment d’étranges parcours et s’orientent vers l’horizon d’une nouvelle naissance. / Which logic is guiding the multimodal creations proposed by Antonin Artaud and David Nebreda ? What kind of status can be applied to their “(art)works” ? In order to answer these questions, we will lead an esthetical research and study concurrently the specificities of the creative process in psychosis. We will examine Artaud’s and Nebreda’s productions through the notions of setting and performativity. We will underline the abolition of representation and the crumbling of the stage as well as the limits of play / subjectivity. We will show the predominance of the Real and Imaginary registers as they have been conceived by JacquesLacan. By Artaud and Nebreda, the uncontrolled corporal manifestations and the intra-psychicconflicts generate simultaneous recreations of the body and language as, in the same time, they achieve a sort of sort killing ceremony, tracing unseen signs, outlining strange trails and pointing toward the horizon of a new birth.