If everything human is pathetic, being a kind of sorrow packaged in humor, then I am fascinated with making artwork about the human condition that breeches pathos and hilarity. I propose to trace my motivation and research that have coalesced to create this thesis exhibition, shame is an exposure, to contemporary discourse regarding abject art. The motivation behind this exhibition seats itself in narratives excorsizing my own neurosis regarding intimacy, exposure, and shame. Through the exploration of photography and sculpture installation, using found objects, abject narratives spring into surreal life in a magic sort of realism. These works bear witness to uncanny, abstracted, spaces highlighting real human pathos, and vulnerability.

If everything human is pathetic, being a kind of sorrow packaged in humor, then I am fascinated with making artwork about the human condition that breeches pathos and hilarity. I propose to trace my motivation and research that have coalesced to create this thesis exhibition, shame is an exposure, to contemporary discourse regarding abject art. The motivation behind this exhibition seats itself in narratives excorsizing my own neurosis regarding intimacy, exposure, and shame. Through the exploration of photography and sculpture installation, using found objects, abject narratives spring into surreal life in a magic sort of realism. These works bear witness to uncanny, abstracted, spaces highlighting real human pathos, and vulnerability.

M.Tech. / In this research I offer a reading of selected work by South African artists, Joni Brenner, Berni Searle and Minnette Vári in relation to Julia Kristeva‟s conception of the abject. In examining these artists‟ use of the formal elements of tactility in representation of their corporeality, I draw analogies between their work and two Kristevian theories of heterogeneity, namely the abject and the semiotic (see Pollock 1998: 9). The primary aim of this research is to examine how the use of tactility in visual art may disrupt notions of sameness with specific reference to the assertion of a non-gendered form of embodied representation. While I am indebted to feminist investigations of corporeality and identity, and use these as a theoretical framework, I attempt to reach beyond their politically gendered paradigm. In support of this, my research draws on certain arguments put forward by Kristeva as these are situated in, and advocate, a non-gendered form of embodiment. The element of homogeneity or pervasive naturalisation is aligned with the element of „sameness‟, characteristic of the symbolic element within signification (Lechte & Margaroni 2004: 108). Consequently, following Kristevian theory, I examine ways within visual art in which the semiotic element works in a constant, antagonistic dialectic with the symbolic element. Within this context, I argue these artists suggest the borders of selfhood to be fluid in nature. Within Kristeva‟s model of selfhood, the subject in process, the abject threat of dissolution of self may be contextualised. Therefore, the threat towards one‟s identity is not so much nullified, but is rather no longer separated from the understanding of self. Following Kristeva‟s (1991: 1) thought, one may argue that the foreign „other‟ and the self are intimately related. For the purposes of this research, the pertinent facet of the abject evident in these artists‟ work is an ambiguous, dynamic, open-endedness. I align the arguably consequential abject, partial dissolution of the binary logic of self and other suggested in these artists‟ work, through the use of the formal elements of tactility, with Kristeva‟s conceptualisation of intimate revolt. This intimate revolt advocates ii a continual, questioning revision which may lead to the renewal of the interlinked notions of language and identity. Using a Post-Structuralist approach to research I engaged in textual analysis in order to explore critical positions regarding embodiment, tactility and the abject in representation. In addition, in order to generate empirical research pertaining to her artmaking practice, primary research in the form of semi-structured interviews was conducted with Brenner. In this research, having drawn on Kristeva‟s heterogeneous tools of the semiotic-driven abject, the signifiance and poetic language of the speaking subject and practice of intimate revolt I offer a non-gendered reading of tactility as a transgressive means in the disruption of sameness. Through offering non-gendered readings of the chosen artists‟ work, I have attempted to emphasise the necessity of the abject within the continual formation and renewal of the non-gendered speaking subject within processes of signification and thus of identification.

Thesis (M.A. (Drama)) - Rhodes University, 2009. / A half-thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Drama.

This thesis is an exploration of some of the defining characteristics of performance art, and an investigation of how such characteristics relate to ritual. It highlights some key notions, such as that of the “Real” and the live, which are introduced in the first chapter. This chapter explores the theories of Peggy Phelan, Julia Kristeva and Jacques Lacan in its attempts to conceptualize the Real. It assesses how performance art as ritual attempts to revise traditional apparatuses of representation. It argues that, through a transgression of representation, performance art has the potential to challenge and revise established discourses on identity, culture and violence. The second chapter of this study is an attempt to provide a history and subsequent conceptualization of performance art, based on its exposition of the live. I have taken into consideration certain strategies that performance artists employ to evoke the live, referring specifically to the manipulation of the body. It is through abject encounters with the unsymbolizable “Real” that the performance artist reaches the borders of his/her subjective constitution, and performs a transformation of his/her identity that transcends the mechanisms of representation. The third chapter of this study attempts to find the connections that exist between performance art and sacrificial ritual. I will refer specifically to the theories of Rene Girard. Girard‟s notion of the “violent sacred” and its significance within sacrifice as an antidote to community crises will be explored in relation to collective transformation within the performance event. I choose to focus specifically on the role of the performer as surrogate victim/pharmakon, and the spectators/witnesses as part of the community. The fourth chapter explores how two South African performance artists, Steven Cohen (1961) and Peter van Heerden (1973), perform the abject body as the monster. Kristeva‟s notion of the abject will be examined in terms of the transformation of the individual performer as subject within performance art, and how, through the assumption of an “othered,” monstrous identity, the performer becomes the surrogate victim. The fifth chapter will entail an examination of Peter van Heerden‟s 6 Minutes. I will attempt to draw parallels between performance art and ritual through using this performance piece as a case study. I will focus on the strategies that Van Heerden implements to resist theatrical representation. 6 Minutes will be observed in terms of its link to sacrificial ritual, and it presentation of the live, and the Real. In light of these discoveries, I aim to locate performance art within politically-driven modes of art-making, and how such an endeavour relates to South African modes of theatre and performance.

No description available.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität Tübingen. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 251-272) and index.

L’art abject est entré comme terme et comme concept dans le dictionnaire du monde de l’art dans les années 1990. Son utilisation a été consacrée par l’exposition Abject Art : Repulsion and Desire in American Art du Whitney Museum en 1993 qui a, de surcroît, influencé les critères établis pour déterminer si une œuvre est considérée, dans l’imaginaire collectif, comme étant abjecte. Cette exposition a ainsi véhiculé une compréhension de l’art abject comme étant, d’un point de vue matériel, à la fois dégoûtant et fascinant. Lors de la recherche menée pour ce mémoire, il a notamment été question d’élargir le concept d’art abject pour qu’il recouvre dorénavant des œuvres représentant des identités appartenant à des communautés marginalisées par un pouvoir ou une identité dominante. Plus précisément, nous nous sommes penchés.es sur des œuvres exposant des identités abjectes par rapport à une identité dominante allégoriquement hétéro-homo-normative masculine et occidentale s’exprimant par l’entremise du tableau de 1814 peint par Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres, La grande odalisque. Ce tableau est devenu le dénominateur commun d’analyse pour nos trois études de cas, soit les œuvres Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum? des Guerrilla Girls, Tapestry de J J Levine et La Grande Intendante de 2Fik. Ces œuvres – toutes trois ayant été exposées au Canada depuis l’an 2000 – ont permis de questionner la définition dominante de l’art abject. Elles font conjointement parties d’un grand dialogue, à la fois contemporain et transhistorique, visant à explorer le potentiel didactique de l’abjection, afin de comprendre le pouvoir subversif et transformateur contenu dans ce type de création. En effet, en utilisant les techniques d’autoreprésentation et de réappropriation de motif, les artistes issus.es de communautés abjectées neutralisent ultimement leur abjection, leur déshumanisation et leur aliénation politique contemporaine et produisent une culture dont les représentations sont plus inclusives. / Abject art is a term and concept introduced in the art dictionary in the 1990s. Its use was enshrined in the Whitney Museum's 1993 exhibition Abject Art: Repulsion and Desire in American Art, which further established the criteria for work to be considered in the collective imagination as abject. This exhibition thus conveyed an understanding of abject art as being, from a material perspective, both disgusting and fascinating. Part of the research for this study is focussed on expanding the concept of abject art to include works that represent identities that have been marginalized by a dominant identity. Specifically, we examine works that expose abject identities in relation to an allegorical dominant hetero-homo-normative Western male identity expressed in Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres' 1814 painting La grande odalisque. This painting became the common denominator of analysis for our three case studies: the Guerrilla Girls' Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?, J J Levine's Tapestry and 2Fik's La Grande Intendante. These works - all of which have been exhibited in Canada since the year 2000 - have allowed us to question the dominant definition of abject art. Their analysis also sparks a larger contemporary and transhistorical dialogue that explores the didactic potential of abjection in which these types of creation contain a subversive and transformative power. By using techniques of self-representation and motif reappropriation, artists from abjected communities ultimately neutralize their abjection, dehumanization and contemporary political alienation to produce a culture that is more inclusive in its representations.