Where and how can the live experience 'being there' be positioned in Scottish live art culture? Such transformatively liminal corporeity is situated in three examples of performative objects intrinsically linked to readings of Scottish identity. By collating a 'blood culture imprint' of 1970s performance art with Scottish live artist Alastair McLennan's positioning of the artist body as art, the thesis presents a revised understanding of how and where the live can be placed within Highland Gaelic culture. The specificity of this frame is intrinsically linked to the 'blood culture imprint' of Culloden and as such presents a liminal outworking in the three examples chosen which collectively portray an object body in the form of a textual anatomy of 'Scotland' or 'Alba'. Using contemporary live art discourse, the ontological origins of performance art in Scotland are situated as potentially live within the transfixed frame of the thesis itself, thereby positioning the authorship and readership of its contents as a revivifying act per se, reflecting the theoretical argument. I will argue that despite a seeming lack of performance art tradition in Scotland, this 'blood culture imprint' of the 1970s can be used to define Culloden and post- Culloden culture as necessarily animated by instances of live art. The examples chosen are James Clerk Maxwell's first colour photograph of a tartan ribbon, scalping survivor Scotsman Robert McGee's cabinet card and James MacPherson's Ossian repositioned as a post-genocide numinous wish text. Each performative object betrays its ontological origins, displaying a textual anatomy which argues that collating a performer body of 'Alba' can demonstrate a fundamental and historical performance culture.

A partir da fundamentação da documentação e dos recursos de história oral esta pesquisa apresenta uma proposta de método documentário para artes performáticas de rua. Cinco artistas atuantes na cidade de São Paulo foram selecionados para documentarem suas memórias sobre o tema de artes de rua, e tiveram sua execução artística gravada no formato audiovisual. O método consiste em três etapas qualitativas de captação e tratamento documentário utilizando-se das tecnologias digitais, a saber, a pré-entrevista gravada em áudio, o registro da atuação in loco dos artistas na rua e finalmente uma entrevista roteirizada pelas etapas anteriores gravada em vídeo em um estúdio. O referencial teórico baseia-se nos estudos de memória de Ecléa Bosi e no conceito de Hibridização Cultural de Nestor Garcia Canclini. Concluímos a importância da memória dos artistas para a história das cidades, como também constatamos os desafios conceituais e práticos enfrentados ao se pensar a documentação de artistas de rua na contemporaneidade. / From the basis of documentation and oral history resources this research proposes a documentary method for performing arts street. Five artists working in the city of São Paulo were selected to document their memories about street art theme, and had their artistic performance recorded in audiovisual format. The method consists of three qualitative steps capture and documentary treatment using digital technology, namely the recorded pre-audio interview, the record of action in place of artists in the street and finally an interview scripted by the previous steps recorded in video in a studio. The theoretical framework is based on Ecléa Bosi memory studies and the concept of Cultural Hybridization Néstor García Canclini. We conclude the importance of memory of artists to the history of cities, but also found the conceptual challenges and faced practical when considering the documentation of street performers in contemporary times.

A partir da fundamentação da documentação e dos recursos de história oral esta pesquisa apresenta uma proposta de método documentário para artes performáticas de rua. Cinco artistas atuantes na cidade de São Paulo foram selecionados para documentarem suas memórias sobre o tema de artes de rua, e tiveram sua execução artística gravada no formato audiovisual. O método consiste em três etapas qualitativas de captação e tratamento documentário utilizando-se das tecnologias digitais, a saber, a pré-entrevista gravada em áudio, o registro da atuação in loco dos artistas na rua e finalmente uma entrevista roteirizada pelas etapas anteriores gravada em vídeo em um estúdio. O referencial teórico baseia-se nos estudos de memória de Ecléa Bosi e no conceito de Hibridização Cultural de Nestor Garcia Canclini. Concluímos a importância da memória dos artistas para a história das cidades, como também constatamos os desafios conceituais e práticos enfrentados ao se pensar a documentação de artistas de rua na contemporaneidade. / From the basis of documentation and oral history resources this research proposes a documentary method for performing arts street. Five artists working in the city of São Paulo were selected to document their memories about street art theme, and had their artistic performance recorded in audiovisual format. The method consists of three qualitative steps capture and documentary treatment using digital technology, namely the recorded pre-audio interview, the record of action in place of artists in the street and finally an interview scripted by the previous steps recorded in video in a studio. The theoretical framework is based on Ecléa Bosi memory studies and the concept of Cultural Hybridization Néstor García Canclini. We conclude the importance of memory of artists to the history of cities, but also found the conceptual challenges and faced practical when considering the documentation of street performers in contemporary times.

The exhibition Is There No One in the World Who Can Fly? consists of three connected bodies of works. Life On Earth is a series of photo-performances exhibited on digital screens. Some of the images are still others are animated; they all propose that the body is a transmitter that breaths in content and breaths it out as a visual shape in the form of extensions, armatures or expulsions. Mammal is a large-scale video projection of a multi-breasted female figure projected on a free-standing wall. The breasts are animated and stretch out to explore and search the surrounding space. Worknest is a series of videos about the act of working which are projected onto the floor and appear as a community of guarded openings into tunnels beneath the ground.

The exhibition Is There No One in the World Who Can Fly? consists of three connected bodies of works. Life On Earth is a series of photo-performances exhibited on digital screens. Some of the images are still others are animated; they all propose that the body is a transmitter that breaths in content and breaths it out as a visual shape in the form of extensions, armatures or expulsions. Mammal is a large-scale video projection of a multi-breasted female figure projected on a free-standing wall. The breasts are animated and stretch out to explore and search the surrounding space. Worknest is a series of videos about the act of working which are projected onto the floor and appear as a community of guarded openings into tunnels beneath the ground.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, Los Angeles, 2002. / Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. 238-256).

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2009. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 46-47).

Thesis (M.A. (Fine Art)) - Rhodes University, 2009.

Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2006. / Title from title screen. Susan Richmond, committee chair; Nancy Floyd, Maria P. Gindhart, committee members. Electronic text (127 p. : iil. (mostly col.)) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed June 20, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 121-127).

In recent years, there has been a noticeable rise in the use of walking in artistic practice. Artists explore, map, narrate, draw, follow and procrastinate through the use of pedestrianism. This rise in an artistic output that uses the walking body has coincided with a burgeoning literature in this field; a literature that, I argue, has yet to find its feet, frequently repeating, and so depoliticising, the dominant narrative that casts walking as a strategy of resistance to the high-speed technological demands of late capitalism. Beyond its role as emancipatory gesture, I show, walking is enmeshed in histories of gender, labour, punishment, power and protest; something that a focus on the art of the 1960s and ‘70s can help to uncover. Accordingly, this thesis seeks to place the recent rise of ‘walking art’ in a specific historical context, positing that the uses of walking by artists today find the key to their legitimation in moving image and performance work of the 1960s and ‘70s. Through chapters on the work of the Judson Dance Theater (1962-7) and Trisha Brown (early 1970s), Bruce Nauman’s studio films and videos (1967-9) and Agnes Martin’s only film Gabriel (1976), I argue that these artists used walking not only to deconstruct the mediums out of which they worked (dance, sculpture, painting), but also to negotiate the wider socio-political issues of the era, from protest marching and the moon landings to much more clandestine concerns such as surveillance and controlled viewership. These chapters reveal a walking body as supported by technology, subject to self-discipline, and negotiating a new relationship with the natural world. A final chapter on Janet Cardiff’s audio walks, which she first developed in the late 1990s, makes explicit a feminist problematic, as I ask where the female body resides in a long history of male walkers, and explore the broader question of how we write the history of ‘walking art’. Via Cardiff, I reflect on the place of the 1960s and ‘70s in our historical imagination today, arguing for a more uneasy reading of the art of these decades than we have previously been used to.