Sacerludus, a performative (textual) art work in its own right, provides a self-reflexive ground against which to analogically consider art praxis as a tactical ritual process. Drawing on the distinction between Ritual (generatively, subjunctive ‘as-if’ in character), and Ceremony (descriptively, indicative ‘as-is’ in character), Victor Turner’s work on ritual liminality is applied as core theoretical concept: this generates the seeds and models of future society. Alongside the socio-political bias that liminality carries in bricolaged, makeshift and sensory orchestration, de Certeau’s concept of tactics is enlisted to reinforce potentials of counter-cultural resistance and subversivity. ‘What is Ritual?’ is considered before dealing with art praxis in its situated, exhibitional contexts, as they draw on ritual tactics. Art praxis and production is proposed as a subjunctively performative, ritual occasion, in opposition to the traditional conception as indicative, autonomous object. The contemporary form of installation is explored to reveal its incarnate implications for performative participation. The ritual approaches tactics and processes adopted in conceiving and executing the works are articulated, before, in a form of post-scripted lettering, the contexted concerns of the submitted works are addressed. Sacerludus concludes that the framework of Ritual can be productively foregrounded in art praxis, as in its subversive-loading, it engages a participatively inclusive, generatively resistant process for contemporary aesthetic production.

Thesis (MA (VA)(Visual Arts))--University of Stellenbosch, 2009. / The purpose of the thesis is to contextualise my art works in theoretical terms. As counterpart to my art practice and consistent with its subject matter, the thesis deals with the handbag as subject and investigates the formation of an idiomatic, metaphorical or symbolic visual language that emerges in my handbag Collections. The thesis traces how such language pertains to social, cultural and personal history as sources of its conception to also serve as foundation for the conception of my art works. Its central questions are formulated around ‘how’, thus investigating the formative, the developmental and the process. Its thinking is relativist, embracing the belief that no option is absolute, but rather as susceptible to change as it is open to interpretation. As events of change and change inducing events, developmental processes are posed in a framework of generative structuralism that comprises the internalisation of externalities and the externalisation of internalities. As such it structures an attempt to define the genesis of my aesthetic idiolect in and from a cultural context. The thesis therefore posits its secondary aims as investigative rather than determinist of how social and cultural context informs my art-making processes and how generation and development occur in my art-making processes in order to determine how these factors contribute to a personal voice becoming evident in my work. My art practice and art works serve as primary sources of information and the thesis partially serves as a process of textual re-articulation of my own art-making practices to reveal the relationships between habitus as generative structure, enaction of identity and aesthetic idiolect.

Este texto é resultado da pesquisa artística desenvolvida durante os dois anos de mestrado, a qual tem como objeto as experiências de criação e construção da proposição Casa-movente [A1 infinito [. A pesquisa levanta questões relativas ao estatuto de construção do lugar no mundo contemporâneo e às implicações desse construir através da arte. Para investigar e desdobrar possíveis aproximações, recorro à análise de obras de artistas e lanço mão da História da Arte, a fim de pontuar interrogações referentes a objeto e lugar, deambulações urbanas, arte contextual, work in progress, criação, construção de sentido, construção de território e escritos de artista. Faço uso da literatura e de conceitos da filosofia numa tentativa de aproximação do que proponho como dispositivo de construção: o conceito de objeto-lugar. Criado para a pesquisa, este foi a ferramenta e o princípio criador da Casa-movente [A1 infinito [. / This text is the result of artistic research developed during the two-years Master Course, which has as object of study, the experience of creation and construction of the proposed Moving-house [A1 infinity [. The research raises questions concerning the status of place construction in the contemporary world, and the implications of this construction act through art. To investigate and deploy possible approaches, i use the analysis of artist's works and Art History in order to raise questions related to the object and place, urban shifting, contextual art, work in progress, creation, meaning construction, territory construction, and artist's writings. I use the literature and concepts of philosophy in an attempt to approach of what i propose as a construction device: the concept of an object-place, created for research, that was the tool, and the creation principle of the Moving-house [A1 infinity [.

Este texto é resultado da pesquisa artística desenvolvida durante os dois anos de mestrado, a qual tem como objeto as experiências de criação e construção da proposição Casa-movente [A1 infinito [. A pesquisa levanta questões relativas ao estatuto de construção do lugar no mundo contemporâneo e às implicações desse construir através da arte. Para investigar e desdobrar possíveis aproximações, recorro à análise de obras de artistas e lanço mão da História da Arte, a fim de pontuar interrogações referentes a objeto e lugar, deambulações urbanas, arte contextual, work in progress, criação, construção de sentido, construção de território e escritos de artista. Faço uso da literatura e de conceitos da filosofia numa tentativa de aproximação do que proponho como dispositivo de construção: o conceito de objeto-lugar. Criado para a pesquisa, este foi a ferramenta e o princípio criador da Casa-movente [A1 infinito [. / This text is the result of artistic research developed during the two-years Master Course, which has as object of study, the experience of creation and construction of the proposed Moving-house [A1 infinity [. The research raises questions concerning the status of place construction in the contemporary world, and the implications of this construction act through art. To investigate and deploy possible approaches, i use the analysis of artist's works and Art History in order to raise questions related to the object and place, urban shifting, contextual art, work in progress, creation, meaning construction, territory construction, and artist's writings. I use the literature and concepts of philosophy in an attempt to approach of what i propose as a construction device: the concept of an object-place, created for research, that was the tool, and the creation principle of the Moving-house [A1 infinity [.

Este texto é resultado da pesquisa artística desenvolvida durante os dois anos de mestrado, a qual tem como objeto as experiências de criação e construção da proposição Casa-movente [A1 infinito [. A pesquisa levanta questões relativas ao estatuto de construção do lugar no mundo contemporâneo e às implicações desse construir através da arte. Para investigar e desdobrar possíveis aproximações, recorro à análise de obras de artistas e lanço mão da História da Arte, a fim de pontuar interrogações referentes a objeto e lugar, deambulações urbanas, arte contextual, work in progress, criação, construção de sentido, construção de território e escritos de artista. Faço uso da literatura e de conceitos da filosofia numa tentativa de aproximação do que proponho como dispositivo de construção: o conceito de objeto-lugar. Criado para a pesquisa, este foi a ferramenta e o princípio criador da Casa-movente [A1 infinito [. / This text is the result of artistic research developed during the two-years Master Course, which has as object of study, the experience of creation and construction of the proposed Moving-house [A1 infinity [. The research raises questions concerning the status of place construction in the contemporary world, and the implications of this construction act through art. To investigate and deploy possible approaches, i use the analysis of artist's works and Art History in order to raise questions related to the object and place, urban shifting, contextual art, work in progress, creation, meaning construction, territory construction, and artist's writings. I use the literature and concepts of philosophy in an attempt to approach of what i propose as a construction device: the concept of an object-place, created for research, that was the tool, and the creation principle of the Moving-house [A1 infinity [.

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