Since classical times, the witch has remained an eerie, powerful and foreboding figure in literature and drama. Often beautiful and alluring, like Circe, and just as often terrifying and aged, like Shakespeare’s Wyrd Sisters, the witch lives ever just outside the margins of polite society. In John Marston’s Sophonisba, or The Wonder of Women the witch’s ability to persuade through the use of language is Marston’s commentary on the power of poetry, theater and women’s speech in early modern Britain. Erichtho is the ultimate example of a terrifying woman who uses linguistic persuasion to change the course of nations. Throughout the play, the use of speech draws reader’s attention to the role of the mouth as an orifice of persuasion and to the power of speech. It is through Erichtho’s mouth that Marston truly highlights the power of subversive speech and the effects it has on its intended audience.

Esta dissertação aborda tentativas e possibilidades, no contexto contemporâneo, da prática arquitetônica se estabelecer como prática crítica e, nesse processo, construir interlocuções com práticas artísticas que respondem a anseios comuns. Tomamos como foco de análise parte da produção teórica e prática desenvolvida pelo arquiteto Bernard Tschumi (1944- ), pensando-a e interpretando-a com o auxílio da reflexão e da produção elaboradas principalmente por dois artistas paradigmáticos, Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-1978) e Hélio Oiticica (1937-1980). Tais criadores se interessaram pela dimensão política e emancipatória das manifestações de arte ou de arquitetura que extrapolam seu campo específico de atuação e incorporam reflexões sobre comportamento, espaço, cidade e esfera pública. Assim podemos distinguir, no interior de trajetórias distintas com desdobramentos e coerências internas particulares, e através de um olhar que possui certa distância histórica, alguns pontos de contato que, apesar de indiretos, certamente não são inexpressivos. Evidenciam um repertório comum de idéias que foram compartilhadas por distintas manifestações estéticas na década de 1970, um momento histórico marcado pela vontade de transformação da realidade. Nessa ocasião, manifestações de arte e de arquitetura estabeleceram interlocuções através do desejo de participar de debates culturais mais amplos, que incluíam reconsiderações sobre o papel social da arte, sobre a noção de \"público\" e sobre o poder que poderia ser atribuído aos acontecimentos efêmeros. / This dissertation discusses attempts and possibilities to establish architectural practice as a critical practice within the contemporary context and, in this process, to build interlocutions with artistic practices that respond to common aspirations. Our analysis focuses on part of the theoretical and practical production developed by architect Bernard Tschumi (1944- ), considering and interpreting it based on the reflections and production created principally by two paradigmatic artists, Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-1978) and Hélio Oiticica (1937-1980). These artists were interested in the political and emancipatory dimensions of artistic or architectural manifestations extending beyond their specific field of expertise to incorporate reflections on behavior, space, the city, and the public sphere. Thus, within different trends with particular developments and internal coherence, viewed from a somewhat historical distance, one can distinguish several points of convergence that, albeit indirect, are far from insignificant. These points reveal a common repertoire of ideas that were shared by different aesthetic manifestations in the 1970s, a historical moment marked by the desire to transform reality. At the time, artists and architects established interlocutions upon demonstrating their desire to participate in broader cultural debates, which included reconsiderations about the social role of art, the notion of \"public\", and the power that could be attributed to ephemeral events.

“The Bedroom and the Barnyard: Zoomorphic Lust Through Territory, Procedure, and Shelter in ‘The Miller’s Tale’” is an academic endeavor that takes Chaucer’s zoomorphic metaphors and similes and analyzes them in a sense that reveals the chaos of what is human and what is animal tendency. The academic work is expressed in the adjunct creative project, Haunchebones, a 10-minute drama that echoes the tale and its zoomorphic influences, while presenting the content in a stylized play influenced by Theatre of the Absurd and artwork from the medieval and early renaissance period.

The Wild Beasts springs from my desire to thank my ever-expanding queer chosen family and mentors for their strength. Working through the often violent and othering aspects of the lens and photographic histories I create floral portraits responding to each person’s being and our relationship. Using the 19th century, 8x10 large format view camera—the same used by colonialists and ethnographers to “capture” the divinity of Nature—I erect each as a traditional still life studio setup at the threshold between the natural world and that constructed by humans. These environments speak both to the character of each friend and also to the use of Nature against queer people in most legal systems across the planet. We are deemed unnatural and made criminals through inequitable semantics. The 8x10 negative becomes a portrait, a darkroom contact print that is gifted to each of The Wild Beasts, an intimate artifact of my gratitude. At these borders I lash at the histories of oppression, remaking these lineages and tools into spaces for empathy, tenderness, and love.

My goal in this thesis is to frame, through design, an existing environment in a manner that fosters the witness and embrace of the reality and beauty of decay—which acts as a marker of the passage of time. My intent is to engage in a careful renewal of a neglected, and largely forgotten, urban landscape, which does not ignore its temporal context. My hope is to explore the full potential of the life cycle of buildings and discover the lesson of mortality in modern American ruins.Things fall apart. This is a simple truth about the physical world that humanity inhabits, which surrounds, invades and defines the human condition. Because [or in spite] of this we live in a culture that values progress, newness, and speed, that proselytizes through marketing the belief that comfort can be found in surrounding oneself with new things, pushing reminders of death away. The current world of architecture and design nurtures this mentality, selling projects through the production of sleek renderings of pristine and clean objects, a state that will only last for a short time. I argue that, in spite of this mind-set, the realization of entropic inevitability is necessary to provide a healthy temporal context through which to view daily life. Its acceptance is crucial to an appropriate perspective on life and the human condition, allowing positive forward movement in the midst of the change and deterioration that define life. I hope to show how architecture can foster this acceptance through adaptive re-use which values and interacts with the marks of time and traces of past use. The question that I am positing ultimately is this: How can new architecture breathe life into neglected spaces while also preserving the found beauty of the state of its breakdown, what one might call its ‘character’? Can architecture take cues from and be molded and enlivened by the people, events and nature that it interacts with and is transformed by? Can architecture enact a resurrection that deftly navigates between outright neglect and sterile renovation? And what is the appropriate way to do this?

The study of social memory is not purely a historical or anthropological endeavor. Archaeology can provide a considerable amount of evidence about how and why people remembered. In this case study, the Colosseum will be studied in the broader sense of being a monument of damnatio memoriae and commemorative memory; the very act of building it can be seen as a form of “recutting” the landscape to fit the image Vespasian wanted to convey of his predecessor. The Colosseum will also be studied in an even larger historical context. This will involve analyzing the manner in which it was memorialized during the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and by British visitors during the Victorian era. I will end the case study with an analysis of Benito Mussolini’s use of antiquity and the Colosseum to propagate Fascism. Lastly, the concept of cultural heritage and the institutions that uphold it, particularly UNESCO, will be put into question. In illustrating the fluidity of interpretations of the past, in this case through material culture, I argue that the endeavor to codify them by establishing World Heritage sites is problematic because of their subjectivity to modern agendas. However, in order to understand changing attitudes and memories associated with a single monument, one must first explore the nature of social memory.

This thesis is a narrative case study that examined the studio art practice of Lead Pencil Studio, a Seattle-based artist collaborative that explore our spatial relationships with architecture through site-specific installations. The case study specifically focused on the work of Daniel Mihalyo and Annie Han (Lead Pencil Studio) while they were at the Visual Arts Center in The University of Texas at Austin for a spring 2013 artist-in-residence program. The research focused specifically on the artists’ day-to-day process, examining the thoughts and actions that went into creating their work, Diffuse Reflection Lab, a two-story plywood structure that examined reflection’s effect on architecture through various vignettes. Through concentrated observations of the Lead Pencil Studio’s work and three semi-structured interviews, this thesis examined how traditional research practices are integrated into the studio art process. By examining the art/research relationship the author also situates this work in the field of practice-based research. While this work specifically focused on the research conducted by a pair of professional artists, it also extends to a broader argument about the role of research in art lessons. Since this thesis is based in art education, it connects the themes observed in the artists’ studio practice to interdisciplinary learning and arts integration. The author ultimately argues that Lead Pencil Studio’s art/research practice can be used in the classroom as an example of transdisciplinary learning and that it models a rigorous approach to creativity within other disciplines. / text

The dissertation deals with ideas about Japanese architecture in the Western, namely European discourse between 1945 and 1970. Architects and critics identified striking similarities between the Modernist architectural principles and the Japanese tradition from the 1920s; after the World War II, these similarities sparked a wide interest among the architectural public, which led to numerous publications on Japan unprecedented in scope and depth when compared with any other non-Western culture. The goal of this work is to map the discourse that occurred this way, identify the main themes connected to Japan, and show their significance. The sources for the study are prevalently printed media: architectural magazines and books. The notion of 'image' of Japan proves useful since we study interpretations of a different culture; history of ideas as well as visual representation in photography. At the same time, work also follows the of general issues of understanding the 'other'. An analysis of these various representations of Japan in the printed architectural media makes up the main part of the research presented here. To examine the origins of these ideas we go back to the 1930 with architects-writers Tetsurō Yoshida and Bruno Taut, and subsequently look into of writings about Japan by architects who...

I will build an argument utilizing the Hôtel de Soubise as a case study for the way in which the division between exteriors and interiors depicts the shifting cultural fabric of 18th-century French society.

Esta dissertação aborda tentativas e possibilidades, no contexto contemporâneo, da prática arquitetônica se estabelecer como prática crítica e, nesse processo, construir interlocuções com práticas artísticas que respondem a anseios comuns. Tomamos como foco de análise parte da produção teórica e prática desenvolvida pelo arquiteto Bernard Tschumi (1944- ), pensando-a e interpretando-a com o auxílio da reflexão e da produção elaboradas principalmente por dois artistas paradigmáticos, Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-1978) e Hélio Oiticica (1937-1980). Tais criadores se interessaram pela dimensão política e emancipatória das manifestações de arte ou de arquitetura que extrapolam seu campo específico de atuação e incorporam reflexões sobre comportamento, espaço, cidade e esfera pública. Assim podemos distinguir, no interior de trajetórias distintas com desdobramentos e coerências internas particulares, e através de um olhar que possui certa distância histórica, alguns pontos de contato que, apesar de indiretos, certamente não são inexpressivos. Evidenciam um repertório comum de idéias que foram compartilhadas por distintas manifestações estéticas na década de 1970, um momento histórico marcado pela vontade de transformação da realidade. Nessa ocasião, manifestações de arte e de arquitetura estabeleceram interlocuções através do desejo de participar de debates culturais mais amplos, que incluíam reconsiderações sobre o papel social da arte, sobre a noção de \"público\" e sobre o poder que poderia ser atribuído aos acontecimentos efêmeros. / This dissertation discusses attempts and possibilities to establish architectural practice as a critical practice within the contemporary context and, in this process, to build interlocutions with artistic practices that respond to common aspirations. Our analysis focuses on part of the theoretical and practical production developed by architect Bernard Tschumi (1944- ), considering and interpreting it based on the reflections and production created principally by two paradigmatic artists, Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-1978) and Hélio Oiticica (1937-1980). These artists were interested in the political and emancipatory dimensions of artistic or architectural manifestations extending beyond their specific field of expertise to incorporate reflections on behavior, space, the city, and the public sphere. Thus, within different trends with particular developments and internal coherence, viewed from a somewhat historical distance, one can distinguish several points of convergence that, albeit indirect, are far from insignificant. These points reveal a common repertoire of ideas that were shared by different aesthetic manifestations in the 1970s, a historical moment marked by the desire to transform reality. At the time, artists and architects established interlocutions upon demonstrating their desire to participate in broader cultural debates, which included reconsiderations about the social role of art, the notion of \"public\", and the power that could be attributed to ephemeral events.