This practice-led research investigates the problematic representations of women from ethnic minorities in the context of Turkey. It questions the ways in which Turkish cinema conceals the ‘other’ ethnic and cultural differences and represents female identity. It seeks to address this problem through newly created artworks: a series of animation and video works aiming to evoke traces of ‘other’ female ethnicities in Turkish society. The case study, Istiklal Avenue,is an important location that was formerly inhabited by ethnic minorities and was the birthplace of Turkish cinema (Yeşilçam) in 1914. This location forms a platform for the research to find new forms of representation through spatial mappings in the specially created artworks. The thesis is situated in relation to the existing literature on historical representations, from the late nineteenth-century Ottoman Istanbul to the period that marks the Istanbul Pogrom (1955), and to contemporary representations of women, especially Asuman Suner and Gönül Dönmez-Colin’s analyses of non-Muslim women in New Turkish Cinema. The methodological approach of the thesis is shaped by the investigation of Turkish cinema and site-specific research at Istiklal Avenue. Svetlana Boym’s (2001) idea that cultural references are usually hidden within the details of ‘reflective nostalgia’films is an important concept which is referred to throughout the thesis. The term ‘shock effect’, which Suner (2010) employs for Turkish reflective nostalgia films, is used in the thesis to describe moments of rupture in the collective memory and consciousness of Turkish society regarding the histories of the ethnic and religious minorities of Turkey. Visual and aural dissonances are created in the artworks to evoke traces of these histories. The first artwork uses the voice-over of the female protagonist Madame Lena in the film Whistle If You Come Back (1993)to create an audio-visual and spatial map for these repressed identities, but the female voice in the final artwork generates a more intensified evocative experience, described by adopting Catherine Clément’s term ‘rapture’ (1994). The research also looks at the difference between ethnic identities through the spoken Turkish of ethnic minorities of an older generation, to explore the viewing of the artworks in different cultural contexts. As well as theoretical and historical research into the female voice,architectural and other visual details are used as research material to make artworks. On-site investigations reveal how various film techniques and montages inform cognitive and psychogeographic mapping, which is put into practice to achieve a spatial understanding of Istiklal Avenue. This investigation leads to the discovery of Botter House, a culturally and historically significant building,which enables the thesis to examine female presence in public space by investigating the flâneuse of the nineteenth-century Istiklal Avenue. Through the artworks, this study proposes that spatial representations, reconstructed from visual and vocal details,can contribute to the representation of repressed ethnic identities, and can question the politics of the representation of ethnic minority women in Turkey.

This thesis looks at independent film and video cultures in Britain from the mid 1970s to late 1980s. It examines a period of time in which diverse radical film- and video-makers in Britain contributed towards struggles against capitalism, patriarchy, racism, colonialism and homophobia. New social models of film and video production and exhibition were developed, such as the film collective, and new alliances were built to campaign for changes to social policy and legislature. The study examines this moment in order to clarify the capacity for radical discourse to bring groups together and impact on dominant cultural forms such as television. The thesis explores the interrelation between public debate, institutions and individuals. It uses public sphere theories to examine alternative reading publics, and media such as film, video and television. It argues that independent film and video in Britain at this time, including activist documentary, currents of counter-cinema and avant-garde film, was largely concerned with creating and circulating counterpublic discourses. These counterpublic discourses consolidated and expanded oppositional groups, and set out to change aspects of society as a whole. The thesis gives an account of the diversity of the influences on independent film and video, from socialist and liberation movements, to popular radical histories and psychoanalytic and Marxist film theory. Attention is given to the Independent Filmmakers’ Association as an agent of change between filmmakers and state, notably in terms of national film and broadcasting policy. There is a case study of Marc Karlin’s television film For Memory (1986), which looks at the fate of socialist memory under televisual regimes; and a case study of Stuart Marshall’s Bright Eyes (1984), which looks at issues of sexuality, identity and counter-history during the AIDS crisis. The thesis argues that during this period, independent film- and videomakers helped to transform television into a vital site of counterpublic discourse.

The thesis explores the use of religious themes and the notion of self-design in contemporary art practice. It argues that art today that addresses religion does so primarily for its rhetorical function: for a recognizable pattern of persuasiveness, which is ultimately defined by its established mechanisms of belief. Furthermore, it suggests that it is through an engagement with this secularized rhetoric that the art viewer today can potentially be provoked to re-create oneself in ones own terms; or, in Richard Rorty's terms, to 'revocabularize'.

The title of this research is constructed from: `via' - route and töp(os) -a place. Viatopias are urban spaces of continual travel or flux that incorporate multiple forms of perception and inscriptions of meaning. My aim has been to define and describe the increasingly important fluid perceptual spaces that have developed between static nineteenth century destinations. Viatopias such as passageways, underground tunnels, train tracks, and the North Circular escape a sense of destination, operating as ever-changing experiences or events. The practice has sought to produce digital representations of these urban travel spaces that exist in constant flux, to communicate the experience of Viatopias. The research explores themes such as: The North Circular as a Deleuzian Route exploring driving as performance; Plica, Replica, Explica an unfolding of experience through digital media; The Making of Baroque Videos, using Baroque architectures of viewing; Mobilizing Perception treating human vision as an artifact; Mirrors For Un-Recognition disassembling nineteenth century controlled vision; Sound as an Urban Compass considering urban audio experience; Narrative Practice in New Media Space analysing contemporary approaches in digital media; and Convergent Languages, Digital Poiesis investigating the dislocation of representation in different digital languages. These conceptual frameworks developed in symbiosis with the practice. The visual practice presents a collection of digital videos that extend and complicate these concepts through experimental visual and audio techniques such as layering, repetition, anamorphic distortion, and mirroring to produce visual immersion and the fracturing of space. The concluding digital works incorporate video with audio and text resulting in integrated visual statements that attempt to stretch the viewer's perception, in the process offering a glimpse of a new experience within urban space.

This thesis addresses temporal experience in moving image from the perspective of artists’ film and video and asks: "if material qualities are implicated in memory as pastness, how can this be made apperceptible using art practice?” The study contributes to the understanding of temporal and material experience in contemporary art practice, finding that materiality is entwined with pastness dynamically. In disrupting anticipated temporal and material flow, conflicting temporalities are exposed as present and apperception made possible. The moving image is a growing part of visual culture and with increasing access to both current and historical material there is a vast reserve to draw from. Early film and its reception, in particular the Rough Sea film, is a pivotal component in this research both as a means to consider how experiences of moving image materiality were shaped but also as reference points for later experimental approaches to making and viewing. Reflexive spectatorial and archival research is interwoven with critical, theoretical and philosophical review. The active viewer of structural/materialist discourse is recuperated as a basis for a contemporary critical position on materiality and moving image spectatorship. Selected works by artist-filmmakers are analysed as forms of practice research that inform the investigation. Material qualities such as interval and colour are examined as familiar and habitual aspects of moving image with involvement in senses of past. The limitations of isolating them are addressed through the two works. One, a video work created from appropriated archival film footage of sea questions temporality sequentially within the spatial mnemonics of the cinema. The other, a multi-screen film and video installation, explores temporality in a non- cinematic space through the concurrent and disruptive. Both works show that experience of the material conditions of moving image has significance in memory and are therefore crucial to an examination of pastness.

This practice-based enquiry into United Kingdom based collecting rooms reveals five participants’ motivations, frustrations and satisfactions manifested in the creation of their spaces. Through the examination of theorists and commentators in the distinct but related fields of cultural theory, sociology and art, the thesis proposes that a collector’s past can be witnessed through memories generated by and within the space. The thesis also advances the idea that part of the experience of the space takes place in the present but simultaneously imagines the future. I have constructed spatial portraits using semi-structured interviews, photography and video, which explore the environment of each collector thus gaining insights into individual circumstances and personal situations. Narrative within this enquiry takes three intersecting forms: firstly the account of the construction of each collecting room, which divests objects of their historical origins, replacing these with personal associations or meanings devised by each collector. Secondly, each participants’ re-telling of their narratives and thirdly through the re-presentation of the collectors’ narratives to an audience. The latter brings my agency as an artist into focus. Uniting all three narrative forms, the creative practice intends to produce a metanarrative of each collecting room that further investigates the temporality of the space through the combined use of still photography, video and sound. Constructed from a symbiotic relationship between theory and practice, the research uses a methodology that combines Sensory Ethnography with Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis. This methodology explores the idiosyncrasies of each collector, engendering an extensive investigation of the individual collecting spaces. This detailed approach formed and eventually determined the number of participants, resulting in the production of a developmental case study and four original re-presentations that respond to ideas and debates on collecting, material culture and domestic space. These artworks that have been informed by combining existing research methods and constitute my contribution to new knowledge, disclosing ideas and observations which combine narrative and experience not necessarily discernable from theoretical arguments alone.

This thesis reconsiders the work of art filmmakers in the People’s Republic of China between 1989 and 2001. These dates bookend the decade of the 1990s, comprising two defining moments in the reform era: the Tiananmen Square political crisis in 1989, and the entry of China into the WTO and the global market economy in 2001. The 1990s is therefore approached in this research as a transitional decade, in which the future direction of China was being decided. The term ‘art film’ is used to identify a distinct mode of film practice, characterised by a peripheral position, a clear directorial voice, and an emphasis on aesthetics. This rubric therefore incorporates films made by a range of auteur directors, rather than solely the ‘independent’ or ‘underground’ works commonly assessed in studies of the decade. By examining the representational modes used by art filmmakers in the 1990s, filmic innovations can be seen to constitute an artistic response to the restrictions placed on representation by the State. This thesis argues that historical reassessment was a key factor in the innovation of cinematic representation in the 1990s. Utilising a cultural history approach, the thesis engages in close textual analysis of seventeen films, identifying and contextualising the representational conventions drawn on by filmmakers. The thesis is structured around five thematic chapters, each dealing with a cluster of films focused on similar content. The first chapter examines filmic reassessments of China’s socialist history, and concludes that the limitations of the official narrative provided opportunities for the assertion of alternative histories. The subsequent chapters develop on the concept of historical reassessment by looking at changing modes of cinematic representation in relation to rural populations, women and gender, urban regeneration, and youth culture. By engaging in a wide-ranging survey of how key themes were represented in art films in the 1990s, the thesis reveals the critical role which historical reassessment played in pushing directors to new levels of artistry and experimentation in their filmmaking. This thesis concludes that by questioning the cinematic forms used historically to represent these issues and social groups, Chinese art filmmakers achieved a new level of artistic independence in their work by the end of the decade.

In China, Weibo is a social software that almost everyone uses. Weibo does not only provide an arena for users to share their experiences with friends but also offers a platform for companies to promote their products. From 2014, the distributors of the films began to use Weibo as one of their main marketing tools. Nevertheless, from the same time, Chinese art films have begun to decline, and the most direct manifestation is the downturn in the box office. At the coincidence of the two time points, the decline of art films and the Weibo seems to be linked. However, there are still a handful of art films which achieved great success on Weibo in this 3-year period. In these cases, Weibo seems to be a fortune for these art films. The first part of this study is devoted to exploring what has changed in the ways to Weibo users’ get information and communicate about films, especially art films from 2014 to 2017 by social media logic. The second part analyzes a successful case and tries to find out how the distributors of the art films could use Weibo as an online marketing tool to conduct online marketing activities by combing the social media logic with the marketing strategy for non-mainstream culture products. This study used a combination of qualitative research and quantitative research. After analyzing the collected data, it is indicated that during the three years, Weibo users have changed a lot in obtaining movie information and communicating art movies which might have an impact on Weibo users discussing art films and purchasing tickets. Weibo can also be utilized by art films distributors using idiosyncratic marketing approach than ordinary method to attract audience's attention.

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“Prestige and Prurience: The Decline of the American Art House and the Emergence of Sexploitation, 1957-1972” presents a historical narrative of the art house theatre during the 1960s and its surrounding years, examining the ways in which art theatres transformed into adult theatres during the 1960s and 1970s. Beginning in earnest in the immediate post-war period, art houses in America experienced a short period of growth before stagnating in the middle 1950s. With the release in 1957 of the erotically charged Brigitte Bardot film …And God Created Woman, a new era of art houses followed, one that is characterized by the emergence of sexualized advertising, content and stars. As the 1960s came, sex films like The Immoral Mr. Teas played on art film marketing strategies and even screened in many art houses. Gradually, sexploitation films began to dominate art house programs and replace European art films and Hollywood revivals. In this transitional period, however, sexploitation films used key strategies to emulate many art film characteristics, and likewise art films used sexploitation techniques in order to maintain marketability for American distribution and exhibition. By studying the promotion and programming used by art house theatres during this period, this thesis identifies and announces a number of key trends within the dynamic period for art houses. The period is distinguished by its convergence of practices related to prestigious and prurient signs, merging art and sex in ways unique to the era and to the circumstances by which sex films infiltrated art houses and art films pandered to salacious interests. It presents a new perspective on the history of art houses, art cinema, American exhibition, sexploitation films, hardcore pornography and censorship. / text