Estudo, no plano das poéticas visuais (multimeios), sobre um ser em devir quando perde uma de suas potências constitutivas. A partir da apropriação de uma película cinematográfica de 35 mm, de origem desconhecida, comprada pela internet, foram realizados 6 experimentos poéticos em composição contínua. Esta experiência foi operada em diferentes meios expressivos e problematiza o estatuto da imagem na passagem de um meio a outro - imagem cinematográfica, fotograma, fotografia, vídeo, gravura, imagem instalada no espaço e jogo de mesa. / This research in the area of visual poetics (multimedia) studies the becoming of a being losing one of his/its constituent potencies. Starting with the appropriation of a 35 mm strip of cinematographic film, from an unknown source, bought through the Internet, six poetic experiments were realized in a continuous composition. This experiment was carried out through different expressive mediums and questions the status of image during the passage from one medium to another: cinematographic image, frame, photography, video, print, installation art, board game.

Estudo, no plano das poéticas visuais (multimeios), sobre um ser em devir quando perde uma de suas potências constitutivas. A partir da apropriação de uma película cinematográfica de 35 mm, de origem desconhecida, comprada pela internet, foram realizados 6 experimentos poéticos em composição contínua. Esta experiência foi operada em diferentes meios expressivos e problematiza o estatuto da imagem na passagem de um meio a outro - imagem cinematográfica, fotograma, fotografia, vídeo, gravura, imagem instalada no espaço e jogo de mesa. / This research in the area of visual poetics (multimedia) studies the becoming of a being losing one of his/its constituent potencies. Starting with the appropriation of a 35 mm strip of cinematographic film, from an unknown source, bought through the Internet, six poetic experiments were realized in a continuous composition. This experiment was carried out through different expressive mediums and questions the status of image during the passage from one medium to another: cinematographic image, frame, photography, video, print, installation art, board game.

This paper discusses a Fine Art Master thesis exhibition. The show was on the topic of the Latter-day Saint doctrine of a Mother in Heaven. It contains a project statement detailing the theological meanings and reasons, an overview of the visual elements of the exhibition, and a section contextualizing the exhibition within the art world.

A medical evaluation of physical impairment imposes the additional burden of “labeling” the patient with the condition. The binary nature of the normal versus abnormal label emphasizes difference and can lead to trauma. Understanding differences, however, can lead to the generation of new forms and thus, more sensitive differentiation and representation. Tension is created by exploring different bodily forms—a dialectic between form and essence. I am designing a space that visualizes and illuminates difference as a source of trauma and amplifying the tension by comparing figures that represent varying degrees of normalcy. This forms a critique of idealized form and creates a context for people unaffected by this type of trauma to reflect on possible realities outside of their assumptions of normality.

This research considers the performance of situated subjectivity where the state and the individual vie for dominion over the drives that construct the body as what one has (the body as object), as what one is (the body as subject), and as what one becomes (the absent body). To turn power into pain, the State prospects the body of the subject to anchor its power through abjection. In so doing, it compels that body to channel the abject as a power to be wielded as a weapon of the weak, thus forcing into view the true interior of the State. Sections I and II position a discourse of trauma in Singapore using a parenthetical framework that is constructed by and mediated through the criminalized and punishable bodies of two young Asian males. The first discusses the carefully constructed ob-scene (off-stage) nature of the obscene (abhorrent) execution of convicted drug trafficker Van Nguyen in 2005 (the body as object); the second examines its inverse – the public spectacle of creative ‘death’ imposed upon artist Josef Ng (the body as subject) through government condemnation and expulsion for an alleged obscene (immoral) performance at 5th Passage in 1994. To do this, the thesis engages with the enforced interchangeable processes of disembodiment (for the display of symbolic violence) and embodiment (for the exertion of physical violence). Comparisons are also made of the way the State demonstrates its preparedness to turn the display of power into a process of exacting the ultimate pain from the punishable body. This is perpetrated on the one hand via a spectacle of invisibility that keeps the mandatory death penalty a secretive process, and on the other, its inverse, the publicly staged media spectacle of persecuting performance artist/s and 5th Passage. The events that follow led to the defacto banning of performance art and 5th Passage’s demise in 1994, ending my role as its artistic director. By relocating the performance of death from the high courts and offices of Singapore’s Home Affairs Ministry (the site of symbolic violence) and Changi Prison (site of physical violence) into plain sight in the Australian media, the press is discussed as an instrumental force in deploying a penal counter-aesthetic to pierce through Singapore’s veil of secrecy surrounding its executions. The thesis demonstrates how this engendered a ‘seeing through’ that galvanized acts of intersubjectivity and the performance of social witnessing in Australia as an attempt to save Van Nguyen from the gallows. The institutional censorship of an artwork about the execution in 2005 is discussed to show how signifying practices such as visual art continued to agitate the state’s performance to construct itself as a “global city for arts and culture” on one hand while crushing artistic subjectivity when it is perceived as dissent on the other. This glimpse into the fragility of the Singapore nation’s divergent desires, where one performance portrays the disintegration of another, recalled the originary cultural rupture at 5th Passage in 1994 when artists engaged in performance were sensationalized in the Singapore media as social deviants. As an extension of state apparatus, the media is shown to repress artistic subjectivity through its creation of a controversy that led to the illegitimization of scriptless performance art, thus producing a distinctively Singaporean cultural artefact – the absent body. Out of the personal and social trauma framed by this confrontation with the state, Section III presents a body of visual work that I have since produced in the period marked by these two events (between 1994 to 2008) as a reply to the state. From this place of banishment, the thesis traces its evolvement into the body machine (Rich Manoeuvre series) as part of a practice that sees it for what it is within the paternal order, to locate the points where fragility occur. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This exegesis frames my studio thesis, which explores whether visual art can be a site for reconciliation, a tool for healing, an educational experience and a political act. It details how my art work evolved as a series of cycles and stages, as a systematic engagement with people, involving them in a process of investigating 'their' own realities - both the stories of their inner worlds and the community story framework of their outer conditions. It reveals how for my ongoing work as an indigenous artist, I became the learner and the teacher, the subject and the object. Of central importance for my exploration was the concept and methodology of bothways. As a social process, bothways action-learning methodology was found to incorporate the needs, motivations and cultural values of the learner through negotiated learning. Discussion of bothways methodology and disciplinary context demonstrated the relationships, connections and disjunctions shared by both Aboriginal and Western domains and informed the processes and techniques to position visual art as an educational experience and a tool for healing. From this emerged a range of ARTsongs - installations which reveal possible new alternatives sites for reconciliation, spaces and frames of reference to 'open our minds, heart and spirit so we can know beyond the boundaries of what is acceptable, so that we can think and rethink, so that we can create new visions, transgressions - a movement against and beyond boundaries' (hooks, 1994 p.12). Central to studio production was bricolage as an artistic strategy and my commitment to praxis - to weaving together my art practice with hands-on political action and direct involvement with my communities. I refer to this as the trial and feedback process or SIDEtracks. These were documented acts of personal empowerment, which led to a more activist role in the political struggle of reconciliation. I conclude that, as aboriginal people, we can provide a leadership role, and in so doing, we can demonstrate to the wider community how to move beyond a state of apathy.

This exegesis examines the context of my studio work submitted for the degree of Doctor of Visual Art at Griffith University in 2004. My art practice reflects my identity, which is complex and many-stranded, but at its core is my identity as a 21st century woman of Torres Strait Islander descent. I also acknowledge multiple heritages and, like many of my contemporaries, I am a descendant of those two thirds of the Torres Strait population who now live on the Australian mainland. Having been born and brought up on the mainland also means that I am connected to, and have been affected by, wider Australian Indigenous issues, particularly those resulting from the alienation and dislocation which stem from colonialism. Therefore, as I draw from both traditional and contemporary modes and theory to explore the appropriateness of my art practice, this exegesis centres on the question: What constitutes culturally appropriate practice for me as a contemporary Torres Strait Island woman?

Doctor of Philosophy / ‘Out of the Mould: Contemporary Sculptural Ceramics in Vietnam’ is a study of the current practice of sculptural ceramics in Hà Nội, Vietnam and its historical antecedents within Vietnam and in the West. It examines the transition from a craft based practice to an art practice in some areas of ceramic practice in Hà Nội during the twentieth and early twenty first century. The theoretical basis for the thesis centres on Alőis Riegl's writings, especially Stilfragen (Problems of Style), 1893, in which he makes a close chronological examination of stylistic changes in various media, while intentionally disregarding any hierarchy within artistic disciplines. This is considered an appropriate model for the study of Vietnamese ceramics as the thesis proposes that, in recent years, ceramics has once more resumed its place as one of the major art forms in Vietnam. This status is in contrast to its relegation to a 'decorative', as opposed to a 'fine art', form in the discourse of the French colonial era. As background, the thesis examines the history of sculptural ceramics in Vietnam and discusses what is currently known of ceramic practice and the lineages of potters in particular villages famous for their ceramic works in the area around Hà Nội. The transition in ceramics practice is discussed in terms of the effect of changing conditions for the education of ceramicists, as well as the effect of other institutional structures, the economic changes as reflected in the art market and exhibitions structure and sociological changes. The role which ceramics has played in the emergence of installation art in Vietnam is also examined.

Principles of design composition are commonly understood to pertain to geometrical systems for arranging parts in assembling a formal whole. Connection to socio-cultural 'meaning' and relevance arguably occurs primarily via the assumed divinity or universality of these systems. In the contemporary architectural world, where explicitly held beliefs in fundamental, geometrically defined principles or values have dissipated, guiding principles of composition appear to be obsolete. This seems particularly true in relation to work that highlights process - or change, responsiveness, interactivity and adaptability - since this implies that the composition remains in flux and unable to be grounded in the composition of form. While processually inflected architecture (referred to here as 'processual architecture'), has been an active field since at least the 1960s, it has been significantly developed since design experiments involving digital computation intensified in t he 1990s. For this field of work, both highly celebrated and criticised as superficial or unethical, any connection to 'meaning' or value that might be offered by principles of composition would appear especially lost. This thesis reviews, counterpoises and reorients these assumptions, arguing a case for the value of processual architectural that has not been previously articulated. After the last 10 to 15 years of digital experimentation, it is clear that digital technology in itself is not the primary issue, but simply part of a complex equation. The thesis articulates this 'equation' through the model of emergence, which has been used in the field with increasing prominence in recent years. Through both practice-based research and theoretical development, a processually inflected theory of composition is proposed. This offers pathways through which the potential of processual architecture might be productively developed, aiming to open this field of work into a deeper engagement with pressing contemporary socio-political issues. The thesis demonstrates how the cultivation of particular modes of attention and engagement, found to hold an implicit but nevertheless amplified significance within processual architecture, make it possible to develop an embodied awareness pertaining to an 'ethico-aesthetic know-how'. This know-how is acquired and matured through attention to the affective dimensions that arise through design activity. The thesis highlight aspects of design process and products that are routinely suppressed in architectural discourse, generating new insights into the importance of affect for design process, design products and the relations between them. The ethical dimensions of such an approach become especially poignant through the explicit connection made between design activity and the practices of everyday life. Relationships between architecture and the social become re-energised, in a radically alternative manner to the social agendas of modernism or the more literary critiques of post-modernism. Through detailed discussions of the specific, local conditions with a series of design projects I have undertaken, I argue how and why close attention to the affective dimensions of design process offers new and productive ways to approach research through design practice. This offers a response to the calls for new 'post-critical' forms of research through empowering both sides of a previously held divide: theory and practice.

This thesis explores the rich and provocative fields of interaction between Australian artists and museums from 1975 to 2002. Artists have investigated and engaged with museums of art, social history and natural science during this period. Despite the museum being a major source of exploration for artists, the subject has rarely been examined in the literature. This thesis redresses this gap. It identifies and examines four prevailing approaches of Australian contemporary art to museums in this period: oppositional critique, figurative representation, intervention and collaboration. / The study asserts that a general progression from oppositional critique in the seventies through to collaboration in the late nineties can be charted. It explores the work of three artists who have epitomised these approaches to the museum. Peter Cripps developed an oppositional critique of the museum and was intimately involved with the art museum politics in Melbourne during the mid-seventies. Fiona Hall figuratively represented the museum. Her approach documented and catalogued museum tropes of a bygone era. Narelle Jubelin’s work intervened with Australian museums. Her work has curatorial capacities and has had real effect within Australian museums. These differing artistic approaches to the museum have the effect of contesting history and expanding narrative within museums. / Curators collaborated with artists and used artistic methods to create exhibits in Australian museums during the 1990s. Artistic approaches are a major methodology of museums seeking to contest traditional modes of history and expand narrative in their exhibits. Contemporary art has played a vital, curatorial, role in the Hyde Park Barracks, Museum of Sydney, Melbourne Museum and Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, amongst other museums. While in earlier years artists were well known for their resistive approach to the art museum, this thesis shows that artists have increasingly participated in new forms of representation within art, social history, and natural history museums. I argue that the role of contemporary art within “new” museums is emblematic of new approaches to history, space, narrative and design within the museum. (For complete abstract open document)