The aim of the diploma thesis is to introduce the conception of art produced by major Czech art-critic Jindřich Chalupecký in relation to the movement of historical avant-garde and later manifestations of the neo-avant-garde. The thesis discusses Chalupecký within a broader contemporary context, and uses comparative method to illustrate the complexity of Chalupecký's thought together with the concept of new mythology he shared with some of his contemporaries. The thesis consists of three parts which freely correspond to the sequential progression of Chalupecký's thought and his conception of the avant-garde. The thesis stresses the originality of Chalupecký's approach to modern art, and considers its colorful manifestations.

A obra fílmica da artista plástica e cineasta Marie Menken (1909-1970) é contemplada, quase em sua totalidade, no presente trabalho, por meio de análises fílmicas que compreendem alguns aspectos da poética da realizadora norte-americana que consideramos relevantes para os estudos sobre o cinema experimental, de modo geral, e sobre a vanguarda norte-americana. Os aspectos aqui estudados correspondem aos das experimentações com a montagem cinematográfica e com a direção de fotografia, no ato de filmar, seja permeando os elementos físicos diante da câmera, seja contornando um discurso sobre a prática do cinema amador. São também investigados, por meio de aproximações com teorias sobre a arte moderna e a arte contemporânea, os aspectos formais de uma obra fílmica que pretende romper as possíveis fronteiras entre o cinema, as artes plásticas e a performance. / The film work of visual artist and filmmaker Marie Menken (1910-1970) is almost entirely contemplated in the present work, through film analysis which comprise some aspects of her poetics we consider relevant to the studies on experimental cinema, in general, as well on the American Avant-Garde. The aspects studied here correspond to the experiments with cinematographic editing and cinematography, during the act of filming, either bypassing the physical elements in front the camera, or building a discourse on amateur film practice. It\'s also engaged the investigation of the formal aspects of a filmic oeuvre which intends to surpass the possible frontiers between cinema, visual arts and performance dialoging with contemporary and modern art theories.

The poetry, prose, and personality of Walt Whitman have attained a truly global circulation, and scholarship continues to reveal his complex and lasting impact on literature, art, and politics around the world. This dissertation reveals Walt Whitman's extensive appropriation by the Latin American avant-garde, an artistic current that encompassed dozens of regional, national and transnational vanguardia movements across the Americas from roughly 1918 through the late 1930s. My work tells the story of how these pugnacious literary and artistic communities used Whitman as the raw material for a self-consciously "modern" art, as they circulated, adapted, and repurposed the US poet and his texts. The dissertation moves from south to north, beginning in Chile, proceeding to Nicaragua and Mexico, and ending with Latino writers in the United States. "Out of Place: Walt Whitman and the Latin American Avant-Gardes" argues that the literary and political appropriation of Whitman becomes a part of these movements' active participation in the hemispheric and global conversation of their day. What these aggressive avant-garde groups find useful, provocative, or generative in Whitman, then, offers us a unique perspective that cannot be left out of American literary studies. For as they wrestle with Whitman and the concept of "America," as they adapt Whitman into their notions of art, of nation and of language, and as they read him against the backdrop of globalization and modernity, a new Walt Whitman emerges, a vanguardista Whitman who sheds new light on the enduring relevance of his own radical project of making a poetry for the Americas.

This dissertation analyzes the institutionalization of avant-garde artistic practice within an American university, the University of Iowa between the years 1967 and 2000. In order to understand the development of the Intermedia program at Iowa, the institutional context of the "Iowa Idea" as it was developed on campus from the 1930s that emphasized the simultaneous instruction of art history and theory with instruction in the graphic and plastic arts. Following the success of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the University of Iowa received a major grant from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1970 to form the Center for New Performing Arts. Following the development from Happenings to Intermedia, and gradually into specific "disciplines" of performance art and video art, this dissertation demonstrates how the institution was inseparable from these avant-garde practices which required significant resources to develop. The importance of technology is traced through the digital revolution in the arts, and the role of "intermedia" is shown to be part of a process of changing consciousness as opposed to commonly accepted definitions of "multimedia" or Gesamtkunstwerk.

Germaine Dulac's 1928 avant-garde film, La Coquille et le Clergyman, based on a script written by Antonin Artaud, presents the idea of the woman as an object of desire, subjected to the male gaze through the cinematic process. Not only is the lone female character the object of desire of her two male suitors on screen, but she also becomes the object of desire for the presumably male viewer of the film, who has become a silent character in the film. Rather than simply being the spectator, the viewer's own identity becomes entwined with that of the on screen characters. While the idea of the woman as the object of desire subjected to the often male gaze in the cinema has been analyzed by many feminist film theorists, including Laura Mulvey, Kaja Silverman and Mary Ann Doane, the theories presented center on films directed either by male directors or female directors since the 1970's. Very little has been written about films directed by women in the 1920's, including La Coquille et le Clergyman. By examining Coquille et le Clergyman, I hope to fill in a gap in the discourse of the majority of feminist film theory. This thesis will not only attempt to understand how Germaine Dulac, an early feminist film director, approaches the idea of the female body as an object of desire subjected to the male gaze differently than her male film director counterparts, but will examine how the relationships between the female character and the two male characters differ from other male directed avant-garde films from the 1920's and how these relationships affect spectatorship. By examining La Coquille et le Clergyman, I hope to better understand how Dulac's cinematic interpretation of Artaud's script treats the idea of spectatorship, not only in 1928, but also today.

Univerzita Karlova Filozofická Fakulta Ústav Dálného východu Teorie a dějiny literatur zemí Asie a Afriky Disertační Práce Mgr. František Reismüller Vedoucí práce: Prof. PhDr. Olga Lomová, CSc. 2019 Multilayered Subversion and Double-edged Subjectivity: Chinese Avant-garde Literature of the Second Half of the 1980s Abstract This thesis analyzes Chinese avant-garde literature of the second half of the 1980s in order to identify the main literary features that are common for the otherwise very diverse works of this literary current. First part of the thesis describes literary-political conditions, discursive changes and literary-theoretical discussions between 1978 and 1989 related to the rapid development of Chinese literature of that period and relevant for the following analysis. Second part then analyzes works of selected authors of the Chinese avant-garde literature and using Western literary theory in combination with the theoretical background described in the first part of the thesis it identifies the most important characteristics of the given literary current. The thesis then reaches the conclusion that the works of the Chinese avant-garde literature of the second half of the 1980s show a critical amount of common features, such as subversion, metafictional elements or questioning of the...

This thesis explores a series of relationships between music and acoustics in order to develop a basis for discussing and critiquing aesthetics in post-Cagean experimental music. Specifically, it examines the acoustic and aesthetic theories that inform the practice of American composers La Monte Young and Alvin Lucier. One particular theme - the sine wave - emerges, both as a prominent feature in the work of these two composers, and also as a nexus point between music and acoustics. Pursuing this theme, the thesis begins by looking at issues in the science, technology, and ideology of acoustics in relation to the study of musical sound in the late nineteenth century. It then aims to situate the sine wave historically, culturally and technologically within a range of scientific and aesthetic practices in operation in the first half of the twentieth century. Finally, it explores the deployment of concepts from the field of acoustics by artists of the avant-garde, and considers what contribution these factors played in broadening the developing discourse of sound within the arts. These discussions then inform detailed investigations into the work of both Lucier and Young, examining their use of sine waves to explore and produce simple acoustic phenomena. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Doctor of Philosophy / ABSTRACT The notion of theatricality has, in recent years, emerged as a key term in the fields of Theatre and Performance Studies. Unlike most writings dealing with theatricality, this thesis presents theatricality as a rubric for a particular discourse. Beginning with a case-study of a theatre review, I read an anti-theatricalist bias in the writer’s genre distinctions of “theatre” and “performance”. I do not, however, test the truth of these claims; rather, by deploying Foucauldian discourse analysis, I interpret the review as a “statement” and analyse how the reviewer activates notions of “theatricality” and “performance” as objects created by an already existing discourse. Following this introduction, the body of thesis is divided into two parts. The first, “Mapping the Discursive Field”, begins by surveying a body of literature in which a struggle for interpretive dominance between contesting stakeholders in the fields of Theatre and Performance Studies is fought. Using Samuel Weber’s reframing of Derrida’s analysis of interpretation of interpretation, in Chapter 2, I argue that the discourse of the field is marked by the struggle between “nostalgic” and “affirmative” interpretation, and that in the discourse that emerges, certain inconsistencies arise. The disciplines of Theatre, and later, Performance Studies in the twentieth century are characterised, as Alan Woods (1989) notes, by a fetishisation of avant-gardist practices. It is not surprising, therefore, that the values and concerns of the avant-garde emerge in the discourse of Theatre and Performance Studies. In Chapter 3, I analyse how key avant-gardist themes—theatricality as “essence”, loss of faith in language and a valorisation of corporeality, theatricality as personally and politically emancipatory—are themselves imbricated in the wider discourse of modernism. In Chapter 4, I discuss the single English-language book, published to date, which critically engages with theatricality as a concept: Elizabeth Burns’s Theatricality: A Study of Convention in the Theatre and Social Life (1972). As I have demonstrated with my analysis of the discursive field and genealogy of avant-gardist thematics, I argue that implicit theories of theatricality inform contemporary discourses; theories that, in fact, deny this genealogy. Approaching her topic through the two instruments of sociology and theatre history, Burns explores how social and theatrical conventions of behaviour, and the interpretations of that behaviour, interact. Burns’s key insight is that theatricality is a spectator operation: it depends upon a spectator, who is both culturally competent to interpret and who chooses to do so, thereby deciding (or not) that something in the world is like something in the theatre. Part Two, “The Heritage of Theatricality”, delves further, chronologically, into the genealogy of the term. This part explores Burns’s association of theatricality with an idea of theatre by paraphrasing a question asked by Joseph Roach (after Foucault): what did people in the sixteenth century mean by “theatre” if it did not exist as we define today? This question threads through Chapters 5 to 7 which each explore various interpretations of theatricality not necessarily related to the art form understood by us as theatre. I begin by examining the genealogy of the theatrical metaphor, a key trope of the Renaissance, and one that has been consistently invoked in a range of circumstances ever since. In Chapter 5 explore the structural and thematic elements of the theatrical metaphor, including its foundations, primarily, in Stoic and Satiric philosophies, and this provides the ground for the final two chapters. In Chapter 6 I examine certain aspects of Renaissance theories of the self and how these, then, related to public magnificence—the spectacular stagings of royal and civic power that reached new heights during the Renaissance. Finally, in Chapter 7, I show how the paradigm shift from a medieval sense of being to a modern sense of being, captured through the metaphor of a world view, manifested in a theatricalised epistemology that emphasised a relationship between knowing and seeing. The human spectator thus came to occupy the dual positions of being on the stage of the world and, through his or her spectatorship, making the world a stage.

<p>This study examinates technology's traumatic impact on the male subject in The Atrocity Exhibition by J.G. Ballard. In my analysis I show how the protagonist uses a fetischistic strategy in order to make sense of the trauma that technology embeds. Paradoxically it proves to be the agent of his trauma, but also functions as his shield. The machine is thus in a position of the hinge, the point in a structural system that both enables and deconstruct the system. In the same position we find the woman. She is the very epicentre of the novel and the violence directed towards her is part of a complex problem that I adress. The woman is divided into pieces and fetischized by the male gaze to serve as a solution for his trauma.</p><p>Hal Foster's notion ”the double logic of prosthesis” constitutes a theoretical base. The model shows how a fetischistic strategy is applied by avant-garde artists to solve the technological trauma that they experience. Both content and composition of The Atrocity Exhibition are inspired by avant-garde practices, I have therefore compared the text with Foster's theory on how the avant-garde problematized the interaction between man and machine. Marshall McLuhan's belief that the human body and technology are inseparable in the era of electronics further helps me to study technology's effect on perception.</p>

Les fictions de Claude Simon et de Yu Hua s'affranchissent de la repr��sentation mim��tique de la r��alit��, traditionnellement consid��r��e comme dogme du roman. Leurs ��uvres, qui ressassent la m��moire des ��v��nements historiques dans l'Histoire du XX�� si��cle, ne visent pas une restauration du pass�� au moyen de la chronologie et de l'encha��nement de causes et d'effets. Le v��cu personnel de Claude Simon et de Yu Hua les incite �� r��fl��chir sur la valeur de l'��criture face �� la violence des d��sastres, et �� remettre en cause toutes les modalit��s de repr��sentation pr��tendant r��tablir l'ordre du monde qui est en r��alit�� radicalement chaotique. L'aspect insaisissable, obs��dant de l'Histoire les obligent �� partir �� la recherche de formes nouvelles, et �� ��laborer une transfiguration de leur objet d'��criture. Ainsi, une exp��rience du temps chaotique voire fantastique, la hantise des a��eux et du p��re, les manifestations d'un ��rotisme intense, d'une violence aveugle, ainsi que tous les proc��d��s de d��sorganisation de la narration, toutes les ��tranget��s du langage, t��moignent d'un constat : l'��vocation du pass�� ne peut advenir qu'obliquement. L'importance de l'Histoire dans la di��g��se et dans la gen��se de leurs ��uvres r��fute un type de critique qui identifie ces ��uvres au formalisme. Ce lien organique entre l'Histoire et la fiction montre aussi qu'une certaine litt��rature contemporaine, caract��ris��e par une volont�� de rupture avec les codes classiques de la repr��sentation romanesque, surmonte une tentation nihiliste pour sugg��rer une ��thique.