The human subject is profoundly interdependent, in relation to other people and to the surrounding environment, both “natural” and technological. Western dualistic thinking creates bounded and oppositional categories and generates a conception of human subjects as autonomous, self-sufficient beings that are transparent to themselves and in control of self, other, and world. This contributes to the ongoing inequalities in society and supports normative hegemony. This dissertation argues that it is imperative to insist on the intersubjective, permeable, and contingent qualities of existence. While this project is preceded by a great deal of theoretical criticism of Western metaphysical dualism, we must still continually work to break down the binaries of mind and body, self and other, rational and emotional, culture and nature. We need not just to critique the binaries but to generate new ways of thinking. I propose that art can act as a catalyst for thinking the new. Art can queer the boundaries. It is impossible to separate out the mind from the sensual body in the production or reception of art. Art demonstrates how the sensual and affected/affecting body is integral to the thinking subject, not an impurity or distraction that needs to be controlled.

L’enjeu du comment montrer et du comment voir n’a jamais été plus fascinant ni plus insolvable qu’à l’ère du totalitarisme visuel. L’image vidéo, issue de cette veine vorace et versatile, est devenue un vecteur privilégié pour réfléchir au sort du visible dans les arts actuels. La réhabilitation de cette image passe par la blessure de sa surface lissante qui en restaure la profondeur. Dans l’art vidéo, ce rôle peut être accordé au dispositif technique assurant la transmission des images. Nous verrons comment cet agencement matériel peut devenir un nouveau cadre pour l’image vidéo : un dispositif réflexif et critique pour accompagner l’expérience esthétique de l’œuvre. Il s’agit, au fil d’une incursion parmi les images multiples de l’installation vidéo contemporaine, de chercher à saisir les modalités et les enjeux qui forgent ce lien déterminant entre le regard et l’image : une exploration de la part d’ombre de l’œuvre qui rend effectif le voyage des images lumineuses. / At the age of visual totalitarianism, how to show and how to see are more than ever fascinating and insolvent questions. Voracious and unpredictable video image is a very special vehicle to analyse the condition of visibity in actual arts. The restoration of visibility always requires hurting the smooth surface of the image. In video art, this function may be attribuated to its technical system as new frame for video artworks : this material agencement becomes a reflexive and critical system for aesthetics experience. In the middle of contemporary video installation’s images, we’ll try to understand the terms and issues which invent this decisive link between the eye and the image : an exploration of the darkness which sets going the luminous images’ travel.

Cette recherche repose sur l’interrogation suivante : qu’est-ce qui fait être amateur d’art contemporain ? Les amateurs d’art contemporain constituent un public envers lequel les études, même si elles sont porteuses d’indications utiles, sont peu nombreuses. On constate que la plupart des études présentent un profil qui rend compte du caractère solitaire, assidu, souvent diplômé du visiteur amateur d’art contemporain et de son comportement peu interactif. Nous savons ainsi très peu de choses sur ce rapport qui pourtant est souvent à la source de débat important sur l’art contemporain et notamment sur la question de l’accessibilité. Partant de la définition pragmatique, selon laquelle l’amateur est celui qui entretient un rapport suivi quels qu’en soient les médiums ou les modalités, notre recherche consiste à se démarquer d’une méthode quantitative qui se délimiterait à une pratique, à un type de public et à un seul lieu. Cette recherche repose sur une méthode qualitative dont l’objectif est de reconsidérer l’amateurisme en art à travers l’analyse d’entretiens. La position communicationnelle permet d’analyser ce rapport sous un rapport pluriel à l’objet. L’amateurisme est ainsi étudié, en dépassant d’une part le rapport sujet/objet, décrit et analysé par la philosophie esthétique, mais aussi la relation objet /système sur laquelle reposent de nombreuses études sociologiques, centrées sur le système des mondes de l’art. Dans cette optique nous avons cherché à observer cette pratique en mettant en lumière son caractère construit. En témoigne notamment les activités formelles, mais aussi celles issues des expériences anecdotiques et circonstancielles, liées à des processus d’appréhension qui révèlent la spécificité de cet attachement pour l’objet d’art et d’un goût toujours en exercice / This research rests on the principal interrogation: what makes contemporary art lover ? There is not a lot of studies on the practices of the art contemporary lovers. The art contemporary lovers constitute a public towards which the studies are very few but carrying useful indications. Most of the studies present a profile which presents the art contemporary lovers as a solitary character, assiduous, often graduate and not having a very interactive behaviour. On the basis of the pragmatic definition, according to which the amateur is someone who maintains, whatever are the mediums, a followed relation, our research consists in being dissociated from a quantitative method which would delimited too much a practice, a type of public and a place. In this purpose practices and specific posture in contemporary art are considerate differently. The discipline of communication makes able to analyse this practice by according a plural relation. The object of this research is too analyse different practices through a passion for contemporary art and to reconsider an experiment, not only according to a relation as subject/object, study by the aesthetic, but not also to a relation place/object, like in the sociologies research which analyse the worlds of art Accordingly, the purpose is to revaluate the taste like a construct movement. The lover’s formal and non formal practices demonstrate the presence of procedures revealing the specificity of this attachment and of a taste which is always in exercise

This thesis is a description and critical analysis of the processes, concepts and imagery of my artwork. I am interested in creating visual narratives, often figurative, in the form of sculpture, collage, and installation. In my work I attempt to call attention to the human condition, specifically addressing sexuality, mortality, psychological issues and power struggles. I incorporate both cultural and personal references and use traditional and non traditional materials and processes that are intended to conceptually inform the viewer further. My intention is to create distinct embodiments that provoke contemplative emotion and in which the object and the aesthetic experience allow us to consider and reconsider who we are and how we progress as a culture.

The work that I have produced during my graduate studies at the University of New Orleans addresses the impact that humans have on the environment in our contemporary world. A primary focus, but not exclusive, includes industrial materials or objects, their overwhelming presence that informs the juxtaposition of economic progress, and the reality of environmental disruption. Humor and metaphor are central themes of my work and reference my personal observations and experiences of living in the midst of these environments. Sources from Contemporary underground art have been filtered through my exposure to studio practice and art history, mainly the autonomous processes of Surrealism, resulting in a variety of influences that inform my work. I present imaginary images of architectural, biological, and mechanical transformations with the hopes of nudging the viewers' expectations and to create a better understanding of my opinion pertaining to the world and reality we all live in.

A tese DA IMENSIDÃO AO POEMA apresenta obras de arte e experimentos poéticos realizados entre os anos de 2014 e 2018, os quais exprimem uma busca intrinsecamente relacionada à imensidão. Incorporada a esta busca estão as produções de livros de artista, de poemas, instaurações, registro de caminhadas e relatos poéticos. Reunidos a este volume estão outros sete volumes compostos por livros de artista. Na busca pela imensidão foram abordadas as hipóteses de percepção da imensidão como elemento constitutivo de lugares e formador de não lugares, cuja análise desenvolveu conceitos tais como: heterotopia e atopia e sua relação com o tempo que pode coexistir permanentemente e de forma efêmera (heterocronia). Foram analisadas outras obras produzidas por outros artistas cuja composição e contextos se relacionam com os experimentos produzidos neste relato poético. / The dissertation FROM IMMENSITY TO POEM presents artworks and poetic experiments carried out between the years 2014 and 2018, which express a search intrinsically related to the immensity. Incorporated in this search are the productions of artist\'s books, poems, instaurations, documentation of walks and poetic narratives. Added to this volume are seven other volumes composed of artist\'s books. In the quest for immensity, the hypotheses of perception of immensity as a constituent of places and non-places were discussed, whose analysis developed concepts such as: heterotopy and atopy and their relationship withs time that can coexist permanently and in an ephemeral way (heterochrony). Artworks produced by other artists whose composition and contexts are related to the experiments produced in this poetic research were analyzed too.

Esta dissertação, de caráter ensaístico e cartográfico, acompanha dimensões da arte contemporânea africana a partir de estudo de cinco criadores do continente africano participantes do Festival de Arte Contemporânea Sesc_Videobrasil, realizado na cidade de São Paulo, entre 2011 e 2018. O repertório composto evidencia desafios e possibilidades para a constituição de poéticas e sensibilidades extraocidentais, reunindo criações que expressam diversas formas de deslocamento e destacam a intensa circulação entre mundos como parte importante da assinatura africana. De modo polifônico, as produções de Dan Halter, Bouchra Khalili, Bianca Baldi, Michael MacGarry e Karo Akpokiere sublinham a complexidade dos universos estéticos de criações africanas, ao mesmo tempo que questionam prescrições sobre diferenças culturais, regimes de fronteiras e narrativas hegemônicas que impulsionam a captura das imaginações. Sinalizam um campo multifacetado, em plena ebulição e construção, que se desdobra na necessidade de pluralização de referenciais, a fim de desconstruir assimetrias de poder, gerando novas experiências políticas e estéticas. / This dissertation, of an essayistic and cartographic character, describes the characteristics of contemporary African art, based on the study of five creators from the African continent who took part in the Sesc_Videobrasil Festival of Contemporary Art, in the city of São Paulo, between 2011 and 2018. The program shows the challenges and possibilities for the formation of non-Western poetics and sensibilities, bringing together creations that express diverse forms of displacement and highlight the intense circulation among worlds as an important African characteristic. The productions of Dan Halter, Bouchra Khalili, Bianca Baldi, Michael MacGarry and Karo Akpokiere polyphonically underline the complexity of Africa\'s aesthetic universes and question prescriptions on cultural differences, boundary regimes, and hegemonic narratives that drive the capture of the imagination. They signal a multifaceted field which is in full construction and unfold in the need to change references so that the asymmetries of power can be deconstructed into new political and aesthetic experiences.

O presente estudo volta-se para a trajetória artística de Willie Bester, artista sul-africano cujo trabalho se constrói com sucatas e materiais diversos que encontra em townships, mesclando-os a pintura à óleo, aquarela e fotografias de personagens habitantes desses assentamentos. Partindo de sua trajetória individual, o presente estudo percorre os temas mais marcantes em suas obras, as principais exposições das quais participou e o cenário contemporâneo nacional, tendo por metodologia um estudo de campo realizado na Cidade do Cabo em novembro de 2016 e leitura de literatura especializada. A produção de Bester tem foco em cotidianos de townships, o exercício do poder, além de situações de segregação e desqualificação social na África do Sul, sobretudo durante o apartheid e seus resquícios nos dias atuais. Cada obra cria narrativas e cenários de homens, mulheres, crianças, heróis, mártires ou de pessoas comuns, bem como de situações e dilemas históricos e socioculturais que identifica em sua sociedade. Cada uma dessas pessoas dialoga com a própria vida do artista, marcada por desafios sociais de criança pobre que cresceu durante o apartheid na condição instituída de other coloured em meio a exclusões, racismo e preconceito. Com o fim do regime de segregação institucional no início dos anos 1990, após um longo boicote das grandes exposições mundiais às artes da África do Sul pela violação aos direitos humanos empregada no país, houve a reabertura internacional para os artistas. Bester teve, então, a possibilidade de se formar e viu sua produção ser alavancada, sendo reconhecida gradativamente dentro do país e internacionalmente. Ele participou de grandes exposições como a Bienal de Veneza de 1993. Neste contexto, Bester, como diversos artistas, inscreve-se na criação artística contemporânea sul-africana e africana, cada vez mais apreciada e discutida, reivindicando seu espaço. Na África do Sul, a partir de Bester, é possível destacar preocupações políticas e sociais que ecoam nas obras de artistas de sua geração e mais jovens. / This dissertation examines the artistic trajectory of Willie Bester, a South-African artist, whose work is based on junk and miscellanea of materials found in townships, melding it with oil painting, watercolor and pictures of inhabitants of these settlements. From his individual trajectory, the study is based on a fieldwork carried out in Capetown in November 2016 and a bibliographic review and follows the most highlighted themes of his/her work, the main exhibitions he took part and the contemporary national scenery. Bester\'s work focus on townships daily life, power exercises, segregation and social stigma situations in South Africa, especially during the apartheid and its contemporary traces. Each work creates narratives and scenerys presenting men, women, children, heroes, martyrs or regular people, as well as historical and sociocultural situations and dillemas he identifies in his society. Each person dialogues with the artist\'s personal life, framed by the social challenges of a poor kid growing during the apartheid in the instituted conditions of \"other coloured\" along exclusion, racism and prejudice. As the institution segregation regimen has ended in early 1990s, after a long boycote to South African arts ate great world exhibition due to the ongoing violation of human rights in the country, there was an international reacceptance to South African artists. Bester had, then, the possibility of enskillsment and his work was enhanced, being progressively recognized both in South Africa and worldwide. He took part in great exhibitions as the Venice Biennal of 1993. In such context, Bester among other artists inscribes himself in contemporary South African and African contemporary artistic creation, increasingly appraised and debated, caliming his space. In South Africa, starting with Bester, it is possible to highlight political and social concerns echoing in artistic works from his generation on.

[pt] A dissertação discute a Arte Povera, tendência artística italiana do final da década de 1960 e início dos anos 1970. A partir da análise dos trabalhos de seus artistas mais significativos e dos textos críticos produzidos na época, o trabalho pretende discutir o conceito de Arte Povera, mostrando suas especificidades e os pontos de contato entre as diferentes propostas dos artistas: Michelangelo Pistoletto, Giovanni Anselmo, Gilberto Zorio, Giuseppe Penone, Jannis Kounellis, Luciano Fabro, Alighiero Boetti, Giulio Paolini, Marisa Merz e Mario Merz.Através desse recorte, aborda algumas questões da arte contemporânea, como o estatuto do objeto de arte, a inserção da dimensão temporal no espaço da obra, a problematização do lugar e dos materiais tradicionais da arte, a crítica à estrutura na qual se insere. / [en] This dissertation discusses Arte Povera, an italian artistic tendency that took place at the end of the 1960's and the beginning of 1970's. Through the analysis of the works from its most significant artists and the critical texts produced at that time, the work intends to discuss the concept of Arte Povera, showing its specific aspects and the similarities that the diferent artist's proposals have in common. The artists are Michelangelo Pistoletto, Giovanni Anselmo, Gilberto Zorio, Giuseppe Penone, Jannis Kounellis, Luciano Fabro, Alighiero Boetti, Giulio Paolini, Marisa Merz e Mario Merz. Using this point of view, the work includes some questioning about contemporary art, like the discussion about the art object status, the insertion of the temporal dimension in the work space, the questioning of place and traditional art materials, the criticism of the institutional structure in which art belongs.

[pt] O problema da morte da arte atravessa praticamente toda a história artística moderna. As preleções sobre estética de Hegel, realizadas não muito tempo depois da fundamentação kantiana de um juízo de gosto autônomo, já apresentam a idéia da dissolução da arte- a qual teria, nas palavras do filósofo, se tornado coisa do passado. Este trabalho pretende investigar a estreita e intrigante conexão entre uma arte que finalmente obteve sua autonomia na época moderna e a sombra constante de sua própria morte. Seja nos discursos estéticos que, desde os primórdios da modernidade, assinalam uma obsolescência da arte, seja no ímpeto crítico-revolucionário das vanguardas, que ensaiaram uma autodestruição da esfera artística, seja numa contemporaneidade em que parecem se apagar quaisquer distinções palpáveis entre a obra de arte e os demais produtos, entre valor estético e valor de troca, a questão da morte da arte, de um modo ou de outro, confirma sua presença. Indagar o sentido dessa longa vigência, assim como averiguar sua persistência no horizonte artístico contemporâneo, é, em resumo, a proposta da tese. / [en] The problem of the death of the art crosses practically all modern artistic history. The Hegel’s lectures Aesthetics, delivered not much later of the Kantian validation of an autonomous judgment of taste, already present the idea of the dissolution of the art- that would have, in the words of the philosopher, become thing of the past. This work intends to investigate the narrow and intriguing connection between an art that finally reached autonomy at the modern times and the constant shade of its proper death. Either in the aesthetic discourses that, since the beginning of modernity, indicate an obsolescence of the art, either in the critical-revolutionary impulse of the avant-gardes, that had fomented a selfdestruction of the artistic sphere, either in our present time, where any concrete distinctions between the work of art and other things, that is, between aesthetic value and exchange value, seems to disappear, the question of the death of the art, in one way or another, confirms its presence. To inquire the meaning of this long validity, as well as verifying its persistence in the contemporary time, is, in short, the proposal of this work.