Three experiments are reported in which the attentional capture effect of sound disappearance was assessed. In all experiments participants were required to judge the pitch of target sounds that were preceded by one or more context sounds. In Experiments 1 and 2, targets presented in the same location as a context sound that had abruptly terminated 100 ms before its presentation, were identified better than target sounds presented in a different location. This result was obtained both when targets followed a single context sound (Experiment 1) and when targets followed pairs of dichotically-presented context sounds that terminated at different points (Experiment 2). The results of Experiment 3 replicated those obtained in the previous experiments and showed that under some conditions the facilitative effect could persist at intervals longer than 100 ms. The results of these experiments suggest that under some conditions, the disappearance of a sound can capture attention.

This study began with a personal recognition of the importance of space in my creative process. As a theatre director, I need to see and feel the space for a work before I know how to direct or create the performance. Once I know what the space is — everything falls into place. This fascination with space in my creative process has triggered a larger investigation into the operations of place in the making of contemporary performance. The first part of the thesis embarks on a series of theoretical and creative journeys to learn more about place and how it is positioned within contemporary performance. It journeys through contemporary theory on place in the work of Gaston Bachelard, Edward S. Casey, Henri Lefebvre, Michel de Certeau and Marc Auge. These theorists think about place as a product of human dwelling and social production, and its conceived dimensions as psychic structures for a culture that embodies the fantasies, desires and visions of our places. The thesis traces my physical journey from Australia to the Wooster Group in New York City and Forced Entertainment in Sheffield where I observed and worked with two significant contemporary performance companies, each in their own place. The Wooster Group has maintained an ongoing ‘osmotic’ relationship with SoHo, absorbing the underground experimentations of performance makers in the 1960s, to the retail experimentations of Prada today in the now gentrified district. Similarly, Forced Entertainment has lived through a rejuvenation of Sheffield, which is examined in relation to a shift in the company’s aesthetic and style. I also encountered these companies and another, Societas Raffaello Sanzio, at festivals in Australia. Societas Raffaello Sanzio avoid endless repetition on tour with Tragedia Endogonidia — a project that creates a new work for each place it performs in — balancing the desires of the international performing arts market with a portable strategy towards place. The second part of the thesis returns to examine the imaginaries of Australia and Adelaide, the nation and city in which I work. It considers the impact of these imaginaries in a performance laboratory called The Rope Project, which explores Adelaide’s myth of ‘The Family’ and Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope. Lacan’s notion of the imaginary is used to examine the ‘national imaginary’ of Australia as place where people disappear, an imaginary maintained by representations that imbue the Australian landscape with a hostile agency. The thesis argues that the erasure implicit in the colonial concept of terra nullius has informed a national imaginary obsessed with disappearance. A dossier of The Rope Project reveals the myth of ‘The Family’ explored as a representation in the performance laboratory. ‘The Family’ is the result of two competing imaginaries connected to the city of Adelaide: its founding utopian imaginary, the ‘Athens of the South’, and its horror-inverse, ‘The World’s Murder Capital’. This mythology was generated as a conservative backlash to the social reforms of Premier Don Dunstan and maintains a perceived connection between homosexuality and deviance. The thesis offers in conclusion fresh insights into the use of the imaginary and lived aspects of place in the creation of new performance works.

Ma pratique de plasticienne a été bouleversée il y a une douzaine d'années. Ce qui fit évènement : un sachet de thé accroché à une fenêtre. J'ai commencé alors mes recherches autour du thé. Ce travail est le fruit d'expériences qui engagent une sorte de périple intérieur nouveau.Dans ce champ d'expériences, comment ne pas s'égarer, quelles procédures convoquer afin de ne pas sombrer dans l'errance absolue? L'avancée se fait dans un entre-deux, entre errance et ritualisation. Le premier concept ouvre le champ des possibles, le second structure, jalonne afin d'éviter de sombrer dans le non·sens. Les deux questionnent l'espace, le temps, ils se renvoient l'un à l'autre: ainsi le rituel par son caractère répétitif peut s'assimiler à l'errance dans un espace temporel commun.Le travail de mémoire s'articule à partir du "Joumal d'errances et d'autres lieux" (en se référant au journal d'Aran et d'autre lieux de Nicolas Bouvier). Afin de répondre au sujet qui nous préoccupe, ce journal s'élabore dans une sorte de vagabondage intellectuel, sans contrainte temporelle. Le rituel de la "proella", rituel funéraire spécifique à l'île d'Ouessant a un retentissement fondamental dans mes recherches et renvoient aux deux notions fondamentales: l'errance à travers le corps du défunt mort en mer et le rituel qui met fin à cette errance. li interroge également sur la disparition, la matière à l'oeuvre, la demeure {antinomique à l'errance). Le champ qui nous intéresse est le champ poiétique tel qu'il se crée au travers de cette pratique. Il s'articule comme un va-et-vient entre l'engagement artistique et la volonté de s'interroger sur ce qui fait oeuvre en l'englobant dans une problématique plus générale dans le champ de l'art contemporain.Si l'art c'est la vie, la seule limite serait-elle la disparition de l'art? On peut se demander alors : où en sommes-nous?Comment donner plus de vie à la vie de l'art ? En tentant d'aller plus loin que la vie, cheminons nous vers une mort annoncée? Ne serait-ce pas clans ces deux extrêmes que se situerait le champ de l'art? Une telle distension peut-elle amener à ce que nous nous perdions définitivement? / My practical experience as a visual artist was completely changed twelve years ago. The event consisted in a tea bag hanging out of a window. l then started a research around Tea. This work is the fruit of several experiences leading to a kind of new inner Quest.In this field of experiences, how not to go astray? What method to apply, so that we do not end up drifting? I move on intoan intervening sphere between Drifting and Ritualizing. The first notion enlarges the scope of possibilities, the secondstructures and prepares the ground for my study, so that we avoid none-sense. Both call space and time into question, both refer us to one another - Due to their repetitive nature, Rituals can appear similar to Drifting through sorne commontemporal Space.The Gesture of Remembrance will be performed from the "journal d'errance et d'autres lieux" (with reference to Nicolas Bouvier's "Joumal d'Aran d d'autres lieux"). To tackle the subject under study, this journal hinges upon some sort intellectuall drifting without temporal constraint. The Ritual of "proella", which is a funeral Ritual specifie to the Isle of Ouessant, impacts on our rescarch fundamentally,and points to two essential notions . drifting along through the Corpse of the deceased Person who died at sea, and the Ritual which puts an end to this Drifting. It also makes think about Disappearance, Matter and Resting Place (the reverse of Drifting'). The field that interests us is the poietical field as created by this usage. It is developed as a to and fro movement between the Artist's Engagement and the Will to Wonder what the work of Art is, including it within a more general problematics in the field of contemporary Art. If Art is Life, would the only limit be the Disappearance of Art? One may then wonder. Where do we stand? How to render Art's Life more animated? \Vhile we strive to go beyond Life, arc we progressing towards an announced Death? Isn't it between the two extremes that the field of Art is to be found ? Can such a Distension make us get lost without remedy ?

No description available.

No description available.

O fio condutor desta tese é o caso de uma vala clandestina, oficialmente descoberta, em 1990, no Cemitério Dom Bosco, no bairro de Perus, em São Paulo, no qual foram encontrados mais de 1500 sacos plásticos contendo remanescentes mortais humanos, alguns deles identificados como sendo de desaparecidos políticos executados pela ditadura brasileira. A partir desse caso, a tese realiza um duplo movimento: primeiramente, trata-se de mostrar os limites das elaborações de Foucault, Esposito e Agamben para a compreensão da vala clandestina de Perus. Mais fecundas para isso se revelam as teorias do sociólogo camaronês Achille Mbembe sobre a especificidade das relações entre poder e morte nas regiões coloniais, imperiais e neocoloniais, nas quais ele identifica a existência da necropolítica, isto é, de um poder que produz morte e cria condições mortíferas para subordinar populações. Simultaneamente, o segundo movimento que realiza a tese consiste em explorar as contribuições que a análise do caso da vala de Perus, em particular, e dos dispositivos desaparecedores, em geral, oferecem para a complementação das teorias de Mbembe. Com efeito, esses dispositivos, dentre os quais os sepultamentos clandestinos ocupam um lugar importante, resultados, no Brasil, da associação entre diversos mecanismos de desaparecimento na ditadura militar, revelam um aspecto da necropolítica pouco explorado por Mbembe e que chamamos de necrogovernamentalidade. Com esse termo, queremos chamar a atenção para o fato de que a necropolítica, como mostram os dispositivos desaparecedores, não apenas utiliza da maximização das condições mortíferas para governar, como se ocupa, também, dos processos post-mortem, isto é, da administração dos corpos, dos rituais fúnebres, das rotinas burocráticas da morte e da gestão do luto. Assim, explicita-se o nexo entre necropolítica e subjetivação, pois, como novamente revelam os dispositivos desaparecedores, a necrogovernamentalidade, ao distribuir de maneira desigual a possibilidade de prantear publicamente as mortes, induz a generalização de formas de subjetividade melancólicas e, por isso, submetidas à dominação. / This thesiss guiding thread is an illegal common grave officially discovered in 1990, in the Dom Bosco Cemitery, in the neighborhood of Perus, São Paulo. In this grave, more than 1,500 plastic bags were found containing mortal remains, some identified as being political victims of enforced disappearance perpetrated by the Brazilian dictatorship. Taking its cue from this case, this thesis argues for two main points: first, we show the inadequacies of Foucaults, Espositos, and Agambens political theories in dealing with this particular case. Here, the Cameroonian sociologist Achille Mbembes theory are much more fruitful, especially his account of the particularity of the relationship between power and death in the colonial, imperial, and neo-colonial regions. Mbembe identifies in those regions the existence of a necropolitics, that is, a kind of power which produces death and that creates deadly situations in order to subjugate local populations. Nevertheless, Mbembes theories also have their own inadequacies, so the second main point of this thesis is to show how an adequate understanding of the phenomenon surrounding Peruss common grave and, more generally, what we call the disappearance dispositif, can help us to overcome these deficiencies. Indeed, this dispositif, which comprises, as an important part, the illegal burial, can be thought as of resulting from, in the Brazilian case, the association between, and unification of, several disappearance mechanisms by the Brazilian dictatorship. This type of association and unification reveals a necropolitical aspect not explored by Mbembe, namely what we call necrogovernmentality. We coined this term, necrogovernmentality, in order to call attention to the fact that necropolitics, as is uncovered by a careful analysis of the disappearance dispositif, not only maximizes deadly conditions in order to better subjugate, but also manages the post-mortem processesthe management of the bodies, of the burial rites, of the bureaucratic routines of death and mourning. This is important, because we are thus able to uncover a deep connection between necropolitics and subjectivation: the disappearance dispositif and its associated necrogovernmentality distributes in an uneven manner the possibility of public mourning, and hence induces a dissemination of melancholic subjects, subjects that are therefore more easily subjugated.

O fio condutor desta tese é o caso de uma vala clandestina, oficialmente descoberta, em 1990, no Cemitério Dom Bosco, no bairro de Perus, em São Paulo, no qual foram encontrados mais de 1500 sacos plásticos contendo remanescentes mortais humanos, alguns deles identificados como sendo de desaparecidos políticos executados pela ditadura brasileira. A partir desse caso, a tese realiza um duplo movimento: primeiramente, trata-se de mostrar os limites das elaborações de Foucault, Esposito e Agamben para a compreensão da vala clandestina de Perus. Mais fecundas para isso se revelam as teorias do sociólogo camaronês Achille Mbembe sobre a especificidade das relações entre poder e morte nas regiões coloniais, imperiais e neocoloniais, nas quais ele identifica a existência da necropolítica, isto é, de um poder que produz morte e cria condições mortíferas para subordinar populações. Simultaneamente, o segundo movimento que realiza a tese consiste em explorar as contribuições que a análise do caso da vala de Perus, em particular, e dos dispositivos desaparecedores, em geral, oferecem para a complementação das teorias de Mbembe. Com efeito, esses dispositivos, dentre os quais os sepultamentos clandestinos ocupam um lugar importante, resultados, no Brasil, da associação entre diversos mecanismos de desaparecimento na ditadura militar, revelam um aspecto da necropolítica pouco explorado por Mbembe e que chamamos de necrogovernamentalidade. Com esse termo, queremos chamar a atenção para o fato de que a necropolítica, como mostram os dispositivos desaparecedores, não apenas utiliza da maximização das condições mortíferas para governar, como se ocupa, também, dos processos post-mortem, isto é, da administração dos corpos, dos rituais fúnebres, das rotinas burocráticas da morte e da gestão do luto. Assim, explicita-se o nexo entre necropolítica e subjetivação, pois, como novamente revelam os dispositivos desaparecedores, a necrogovernamentalidade, ao distribuir de maneira desigual a possibilidade de prantear publicamente as mortes, induz a generalização de formas de subjetividade melancólicas e, por isso, submetidas à dominação. / This thesiss guiding thread is an illegal common grave officially discovered in 1990, in the Dom Bosco Cemitery, in the neighborhood of Perus, São Paulo. In this grave, more than 1,500 plastic bags were found containing mortal remains, some identified as being political victims of enforced disappearance perpetrated by the Brazilian dictatorship. Taking its cue from this case, this thesis argues for two main points: first, we show the inadequacies of Foucaults, Espositos, and Agambens political theories in dealing with this particular case. Here, the Cameroonian sociologist Achille Mbembes theory are much more fruitful, especially his account of the particularity of the relationship between power and death in the colonial, imperial, and neo-colonial regions. Mbembe identifies in those regions the existence of a necropolitics, that is, a kind of power which produces death and that creates deadly situations in order to subjugate local populations. Nevertheless, Mbembes theories also have their own inadequacies, so the second main point of this thesis is to show how an adequate understanding of the phenomenon surrounding Peruss common grave and, more generally, what we call the disappearance dispositif, can help us to overcome these deficiencies. Indeed, this dispositif, which comprises, as an important part, the illegal burial, can be thought as of resulting from, in the Brazilian case, the association between, and unification of, several disappearance mechanisms by the Brazilian dictatorship. This type of association and unification reveals a necropolitical aspect not explored by Mbembe, namely what we call necrogovernmentality. We coined this term, necrogovernmentality, in order to call attention to the fact that necropolitics, as is uncovered by a careful analysis of the disappearance dispositif, not only maximizes deadly conditions in order to better subjugate, but also manages the post-mortem processesthe management of the bodies, of the burial rites, of the bureaucratic routines of death and mourning. This is important, because we are thus able to uncover a deep connection between necropolitics and subjectivation: the disappearance dispositif and its associated necrogovernmentality distributes in an uneven manner the possibility of public mourning, and hence induces a dissemination of melancholic subjects, subjects that are therefore more easily subjugated.

Although relativistic physics tend to omit nondynamical "absolute objects" such as a flat metric tensor or a preferred time foliation, there exist interesting questions related to such entities, such as worries about the "flow" of time in special relativity, and the apparent disappearance of time altogether in canonical general relativity. This latter problem is related to the lack of a fixed causal structure with repect to which one might posit "equal-time" commutation relations, for example. In view of these issues, we consider whether including a flat background metric, and perhaps a preferred foliation, is physically worthwhile. We show how a derivation of Einstein's equations from flat spacetime can be generalized to include a preferred foliation, the possible significance of which we discuss, though ultimately we suggest why such a foliation might be present in metaphysics and yet absent from physics. We also derive a new "slightly bimetric" class of theories using the flat spacetime approach. However, such derivations are only formally special relativistic, because they give no heed to the flat metric's causal structure, which the curved effective metric might well violate. After reviewing the history of this problem, we introduce new variables to give a kinematic description of the relation between the two null cones. Then we propose a method to enforce special relativistic causality by using the guage freedom to restrict the configuration space suitably. Consequences for exact solutions, such as the Schwarzschild solution and its 'singularity,' are discussed. Advantages and difficulties regarding adding a mass term to the theory are discussed briefly. / text

Esta tese trata do fenômeno do desaparecimento, considerando as suas diversas características, motivações e contextos históricos. As trajetórias das mulheres familiares de desaparecidos são privilegiadas, como aquelas que sofrem diretamente a falta, a dor e as incertezas que perpassam o desaparecimento. O trabalho também analisa a forma como o estado registra os casos de desaparecimento oficialmente encaminhados e como atua em relação a eles, usando como fontes os dados existentes na Polícia Civil e entrevistas com agentes encarregados das investigações. No processo de (sobre)vivência após o desaparecimento, analisam-se os caminhos percorridos pelas mulheres, as dificuldades e as decisões de tornar público o seu caso ou, alternativamente, optar por uma perspectiva mais individual. Realiza-se também uma breve discussão sobre o processo de construção da memória e a sua relação com os caminhos percorridos após o desaparecimento. / This thesis addresses the phenomenon of disappearance, considering different characteristics, motivations and historical contexts. The trajectories of female relatives of the missing person are privileged, as those who directly suffer the loss, the pain and the uncertainty that characterise the disappearance. In the process of survival after the disappearance, we analyze the paths taken by those women, their difficulties and decisions to publicize their case, or, alternatively, opt for a more individual perspective. This study also monitors the way the state records the cases of disappearances that are officially registered and the actions it takes in relation to them, through the use of official data and interviews with police officers who carry out the investigations. Last but not least, this text covers the process of memory construction and its relation with the dynamics that occur after the disappearance.

Esta tese trata do fenômeno do desaparecimento, considerando as suas diversas características, motivações e contextos históricos. As trajetórias das mulheres familiares de desaparecidos são privilegiadas, como aquelas que sofrem diretamente a falta, a dor e as incertezas que perpassam o desaparecimento. O trabalho também analisa a forma como o estado registra os casos de desaparecimento oficialmente encaminhados e como atua em relação a eles, usando como fontes os dados existentes na Polícia Civil e entrevistas com agentes encarregados das investigações. No processo de (sobre)vivência após o desaparecimento, analisam-se os caminhos percorridos pelas mulheres, as dificuldades e as decisões de tornar público o seu caso ou, alternativamente, optar por uma perspectiva mais individual. Realiza-se também uma breve discussão sobre o processo de construção da memória e a sua relação com os caminhos percorridos após o desaparecimento. / This thesis addresses the phenomenon of disappearance, considering different characteristics, motivations and historical contexts. The trajectories of female relatives of the missing person are privileged, as those who directly suffer the loss, the pain and the uncertainty that characterise the disappearance. In the process of survival after the disappearance, we analyze the paths taken by those women, their difficulties and decisions to publicize their case, or, alternatively, opt for a more individual perspective. This study also monitors the way the state records the cases of disappearances that are officially registered and the actions it takes in relation to them, through the use of official data and interviews with police officers who carry out the investigations. Last but not least, this text covers the process of memory construction and its relation with the dynamics that occur after the disappearance.