My thesis considers the distinctive characteristics of contemporary artistic production and display in Scotland from the 1960s to the present. The main objective is to make manifest the diversification of global sites of contemporary art away from traditional centres by examining less exposed aspects of art practice in Scotland. My methodology is driven by a set of case studies of artist-run initiatives (ARIs), which provide models of enquiry into alternative methods of production and display of contemporary art and that demonstrate the role of ARIs in producing art scenes, and not merely representing those that already exist. I focus on counter-histories of self-organised ARIs and their legacies, and adopt a genealogical approach to examine how recent praxis and infrastructures came into existence and how their initial impetus intersected with their historical conditions. Anthony Giddens’ structuration theory is employed to examine local forms of power and infrastructure, as well as the wider, global structures of the art world. The emphasis is on how ARIs and established institutions can and do negotiate with each other and in recognising the interpenetration of different scales of art institutions. I apply a bifurcated approach in order to bring Scotland into dialogue with anthropological discussions of cultural globalisation. I ask how locality, nationalism and globalisation are configured in (visual) culture generally and as applied specifically to a Scottish context. This is underpinned by a consideration of Scottish Devolution as a disintegration of hierarchical domination, which correlates to the ideologies of artist-run practice. Finally, I propose the eradication of top-down delivery in favour of horizontal distributions of knowledge and practice via self-organisation.

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2015. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Euripides’s Medea have been staged a number of times in the new South Africa. This study’s purpose is to provide a practical example of a rewritten Medea set in a contemporary Afrikaner community. The political climate and gender views employed in the Euripidean Medea are analysed and compared to that of the new text. The themes in the Euripidean Medea are analysed as well as possible themes in the Afrikaner community to provide the new text with contemporary social trends in the white Afrikaner community. The style of the Euripidean Medea is analysed and adapted in the new play to create a style that can be accommodated in contemporary South African theatre. Appropriating Medea in an Afrikaner community will hopefully provide future theatre-makers with a narrative of the practical process of appropriation from which more universal principles on the practice can be derived as the play has never been fully rewritten in Afrikaans to create an authentic play. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: ’n Aantal produksies van Euripides se Medea is in die nuwe Suid-Afrika gedoen. Die doel van hierdie studie is om ’n praktiese voorbeeld te skep van ’n nuutgeskrewe Medea wat verplaas is na ’n kontemporêre Afrikaner gemeenskap. Die politieke klimaat en geslagsrolle in die Euripidese Medea word ontleed en vergelyk met dié van die nuwe teks. Die temas in die Euripedese Medea word ontleed, asook moontlike temas in die Afrikaner gemeenskap om kontemporêre sosiale tendense vir die nuwe teks te vind. Die styl van die Euripedese Medea is ontleed en in die nuwe teks aangepas tot ’n styl wat in die kontemporêre Suid Afrikaanse teater haalbaar is. Deur Medea te verplaas na ’n Afrikaner gemeenskap, kan ʼn moontlike voorbeeld geskep word wat as narratief vir toekomstige teatermakers kan dien vir die praktiese proses van verplasing waaruit universele beginsels gevorm kan word aangesien die drama nog nie vantevore volkome herskryf is tot ’n outentieke drama in Afrikaans nie.

The principal research question of this study is framed as: Do prevailing, industrially and politically sourced definitions of Digital Exhibition faithfully represent the phenomenon's position within the contemporary media theory framework? Within this work Digital Exhibition is defined as: The practice of presenting moving images, either live or pre-recorded, to paying audiences, in public spaces, by means of digital distribution and projection. The majority of established literatures concerning Digital Exhibition are aimed at producing categorical definitions of the phenomenon. These 'meaning making' discourses commonly stem from potentially ideologically affected sources. To address this issue, the author has investigated the political economy of key commentators, and Digital Exhibition has been impartially researched following a 'case studies' methodology; with an analytical framework based upon a series of 'plausible rival hypotheses'. These hypotheses include that Digital Exhibitionism is: • a form of the cinema • a form of television • a new (new media) medium • multiple media • not a medium. It is presented that each investigated hypothesis can be argued to be legitimate when employing established media theories as the means of rationalisation. Nevertheless, the author concludes that individual industrially/politically charged definitions still do not provide an adequately comprehensive account as to the wealth of interpretations that can be drawn for Digital Exhibition. The author also presents his own perspective as to the subjective nature of contemporary media taxonomies, and ultimately proposes that Digital Exhibition is not a medium, but is a designation offered to a subjectively defined collection of events made possible through the transmission of computational binary pulse signals.

This thesis is an investigation into the development of glass as an expressive medium in China through direct contact with Western methods of making, decoration and forming glass. The investigation proceeds through an analysis of the parallels between glass objects produced from Kangxi (1662-1722) to Qianlong period (1736-96), and contemporary practitioners’ (2000-2009), which is complemented by my own practice. The investigation mainly looks at three aspects and their inter-relationship within these strands. They are: 1) the history of glassmaking from 1696 to 1795 in the Qing dynasty with Western influences; 2) the analysis of Contemporary Chinese studio/academic glass within the imported UK model; 3) the development of my personal glass practice within this matrix. Practical work is of two components: reproductions of historical examples and personal creative pieces. The inter-relationship/comparison between these three strands seeks to identify themes, such as the influence of the imported models, reactions to them (the nature of hybrid), and the development of Chinese identity within glassmaking. The purpose is to draw similarities and differences from the comparisons in terms of philosophy, attitude, cultural reference and technique, between Qing and contemporary China, to provide general principles in practice and guidance for future development. Basic information has been gathered from a wide range of sources both in China and in the UK using libraries, museums and galleries / literature from books, journals, archives and websites. Some information has been derived from direct contact (emails, interviews, conversations and questionnaires) with practitioners and scholars. The nature of the research has involved the examination of real historical objects and their technical repetitions, visits to Chinese Universities and personal exhibitions. These investigations included the identification of almost all of the extant examples of the Qing dynasty and their examination in terms of the identified aims of the research, especially in terms of physical evidence within the objects themselves. A body of personal work has also been developed and presented as a case study and used as an investigative tool for analysing the contemporary movement and the making of suggestions. The techniques addressed in this research were developed as examples to illustrate the diverse possibilities of practice. The whole study has been complemented by practice, the outcome of the research naturally consisted of a written thesis and a body of personal work. The written part contains the interpretation of contemporary Chinese studio glass and the analysis of its actual influences from Western practice. Furthermore the comparison of historical experiences is given through the viewpoint of a glass practitioner. A series of similarities and differences and the experiences from other practical models (Western Studio Glass Movement) have been illustrated from the comparison, as well as a set of recommendations and a vision for future development in China. The use of visuals, including image comparisons, technical and process illustrations, drawings, videos and actual samples, are designed to give new insights on the research of Chinese glass and provides an added dimension for presenting and encouraging discourse within the research of Art & Design. Additionally, a comprehensive appendix at the end of the thesis records almost all of the existing Qing glass objects while concentrating on the highest quality of the same category both in and out of China. Further information on relative exhibitions, publications and contact lists are useful for those who are willing to pursue a further study.

I conducted a case study to observe three art classes at various campuses throughout Austin, Texas in order to observe how art criticism methods were used to guide classroom discussions about contemporary art. By engaging in art criticism in the classroom, an instructor can ultimately enrich the teaching and learning of art. They can also assist students in learning to subjectively evaluate images from their everyday lives, reinforcing the value placed on thoughtful description through art education. Learning how to turn an evaluation from a judgmental and careless acceptance or dismissal into a thoughtful analysis can suspend indifference and re-invigorate the potential educational aspect of time spent in the art classroom and expand the scope of learning outside the arena of art. The value of using contemporary art for these evaluations, as opposed to more traditionally recognized artists, enables the art lessons to become integrated into a social and cultural context and can integrate social studies, political science, and any number of other concentrations into arts education. / text

Amid contemporary catastrophizing about industry and the practice of photography, American artist LaToya Ruby Frazier began her photographic series Notion of Family (2002 to present) as a means of documenting the effects of economic and environmental decline in Braddock, Pennsylvania. Located nine miles south of Pittsburgh and the site of Andrew Carnegie’s first steel mill, the contemporary landscape of Braddock and the experience of its citizens mark a liminal place between the stark abandonment of completely deindustrialized sites and a continued battle with the environmental and social effects of surviving in industry’s wake. By photographing herself, her mother, her grandmother, and cousins and documenting the vicissitudes of her lived experience, Frazier uses the camera to resist real and insidious attempts at the erasure from the landscape and history of Braddock and from photographic discourse. Her work is a complex form of autobiography generated to be both representative of herself and to speak to a larger narrative about the impact of deindustrialization on marginalized communities. She uses the historical tension between absence and presence to make histories, realities and subjectivities present against the cultural and environmental forces striving to render them absent. / text

Through an exploration of Toronto-based artist Allyson Mitchell’s craft-art, this thesis investigates the complexities surrounding the functions and roles of public and private spaces; particularly the home and the fine art museum within Canadian society. I propose a reading of Mitchell’s art practice, activism, scholarship, and curatorial activities that focuses on a queering of both private domestic space and public social space through a conflation of the two. Mitchell’s textile installations make intimate and cozy the otherwise impersonal space of the public art museum, while Mitchell queers the heteronormative space of the family home by turning it into a public art institution, an archive and a classroom. Mitchell’s bright textile enclosures, "Hungry Purse: The Vagina Dentata in Late Capitalism" and "Menstrual Hut, Sweet Menstrual Hut," for example, visibly disrupt the sanitized and impersonal space of the art museum, disrupting the dominant ideological framework that privileges normative assumptions of sexuality and sexual identity, and exclusionary hierarchies of class, able-bodiedness and access. While Mitchell’s theatrical textile installation, "Ladies Sasquatch," has predominantly been theorized as a queer critique of the myths of femininity, gender, sexuality, and the detrimental treatment of the female body within popular media; I present a reading of "Ladies Sasquatch" as a radical decolonizing spectacle that has the potential to interrupt larger nationalistic and colonial narratives reproduced by museums. Through these powerful interventions in public and private space, I suggest that Mitchell’s crafty installations offer playful acts of resistance that create counter narratives which function to decolonize our physical, psychic and emotional space, while also creating new imaginings that undermine the status quo. / Thesis (Master, Art History) -- Queen's University, 2013-01-14 15:58:08.015

This dissertation examines the notion of the female in performance, the latter term applying to occasions that are outside as well as within theatrical venues. I attempt to address the complex and mutually entailed interrelation between the 'normative' as it has, and continues to, govern female behaviour, and those manifestations deemed transgressive of these in some respect. I seek to postulate a conception of the performing female as a phenomenon which owes its force to the presence of both polarities. My preferred term for such a figure is the female bouffon, and after a preliminary definition of associated terms, I discuss the carnivalesque, socially licenced occasions of 'misrule' in pre-modern societies, where norms were temporarily suspended to permit women to 'make a spectacle of themselves'. Some contemporary parallels are furnished. I then address the larger and more discursive issues of the reflexive and self-applied norms of proper female conduct as offered and justified by industrial, scientifically authorized societies. From the above, I turn to the extraordinary creative ferment of the turn of the twentieth century, which witnessed the rebellious re-institution of older performance genres as well as the invention of new ones. I then discuss the associated theatrical theorizing that accompanied this era. After a detailed examination of the work of two contemporary practitioners, who, I consider, gather together past and present themes of bouffonerie in a compelling way, I give examples of my own performance practice, and some analysis of its reciprocal relation with an audience. I conclude with some speculative thoughts as to the future of the bouffonesque female performer.

This MFA thesis, More Stories About Disappointment and TV, is a collection of short stories. I see them as being interconnected, if only in the loosest possible sense. I have certain ideas and themes that recur throughout my work, which I hope gives the stories a sense of cohesion without making the collection feel too monochromatic. The stories vary in narrative approach and point of view. My stories are character-driven literary fiction, to put it broadly, though they often incorporate characteristics of genre fiction. Some of them are more realistic than others, but they almost always have elements of the weird, the fabulist, and/or the absurd.

This essay is a study of Agnes Martin (1912-2004), a Canadian-born and American-based contemporary artist, and her earlier painting practice including, but not limited, to her work Falling Blue of 1963. The exploration of this piece and others frames Martin’s early work as a process of material exploration analogous to weaving and fiber art. This framing is enhanced by the friendship and professional exchange between Martin and artist Lenore Tawney (1907-2007). The textile lens, as explored in this paper, has been undeveloped compared to other approaches to Martin’s early work and practice.