This thesis investigates the impact of telepathy and psi on conceptual and performance art from 1968. Emerging from the author???s art practice, the thesis argues telepathy is a key leitmotif and creative concern within much post 60s art, and has become central to the practice of a number of contemporary video, performance and new media artists. This thesis is composed of two interrelated parts: an exhibition of the artwork by the author concerning telepathic processes, and a written project which uses the major themes of the exhibition to frame an historical study of a number of key contemporary artists whom, it is argued, work with telepathy. These artists, Jane and Louise Wilson, Suzanne Treister and Susan Hiller are discussed under the themes of ???twinning and doubling,??? ???technological mediums??? and ???telepathy experiments???. These themes also overlap in the authors artwork, are introduced through an overarching analysis of the work of performance artist Marina Abramovi?? and philosopher Jacques Derrida who, it is argued, provide a new model of telepathy as an art practice. In addition, the thesis argues that telepathy is an often suppressed thematic in art which may not appear to directly address it, and uses the work on the Wilsons, Treister and Hiller to re-look at other 20th Century artists and artistic themes in the light of the conclusions it draws on telepathy and art. Walter Benjamin greatly admired the Surrealists, but had virtually no time for their interest in telepathy, hypnosis and psi. Together with positive materialist misappropriations of Adorno???s Thesis Against Occultism, artistic and theoretical work with telepathy and psi has been sidelined from other important themes in art and critical theory, all of which telepathy and psi illuminate, energise and empower. The art of the author and other more recognised and established artists can be seen to work with telepathy in ways that flow into and reinforce the grain of progressive leftist practice and aesthetics. Women???s work with telepathy should be considered as important as women???s work with sexuality. Women, sexuality, Otherness, liminality, spirituality, telepathy, trauma, healing, radical politics, and other taboo areas of patriachal codes, were adandoned by macho participants of fluxus and Conceptual art. The recent conceptual and performance tilt in contemporary art sheds new light on the problem of working within and developing an effective and dynamic lineage of telepathy in post 60s art as well as early modern art movements. Contemporary developments in science, engineering, biology, psychoanalysis, warfare, popular culture and sociology show the wider relevance of discourse on telepathy. There is much at stake for visual art, aesthetics and visuality in representing, celebrating and interrogating the theme of psi and telepathy in current practice and art history. Artists??? work with telepathy and psi, although not always explicitly psychological, political or aesthetic, is often very psychologically, politically and aesthetically effective.

The crux of this investigation is the combination of realist and abstract elements in pictorial space and negotiating the various pictorial problems this sets in motion. The interaction between these elements, especially in a spatial sense, creates both a visual and conceptual ambiguity central to the meaning of the work. Multiple treatments of painted form -- realist, expressive and abstract are interleaved producing divergent visual sensations. The transition from one visual sensation to another, the way the eye traverses believable forms to suddenly collide with the canvas, forced there by raw, painted gesture, is an unpredictable journey invoking visual perplexity, thereby alerting the viewer to potential meanings; the research paintings are not just images of things, they are images of things that would not normally exist together, but do so to create a story. It is intended that the viewer be directed toward the subject of the painting as much as the qualities of the medium itself. Influences as diverse as art historical painting, photography, the motion and lighting effects of film, the qualities of surface reflections and chiaroscuro, have been sourced to facilitate a new body of work. Directing the relationship of the viewer to the paintings through format and scale, (generally life size or very small) promotes a similar kind of interaction (the need to get up close and far away) to that of the application of pictorial space. This is an important aspect of the research; the optical process of focussing in and out is a microcosm of looking at the paintings installed in physical space. The subject of the paintings is female sexuality and its connection to identity, relationships and self-expression. It is also the conceptual object of 'Multiplicity', a principal idea in the work, ambiguous pictorial situations suggesting reality is not one thing but a combination of remembered, existing and subconscious experience. In the research, this concept also pertains to the painter (using memory, experience and imagination) and the audience viewing the work at different times.

My thesis tilled Feminist Poetics: Symbolism in an Emblematic Journey Reflecting Self and Vision, consists of thirty oil paintings on canvas, several preparatory sketches and drawings in different media on paper, and is supported and elucidated by an exegesis. The paintings on unframed canvases reveal mise en scènes and emblems that present to the viewer a drama about links between identities, differences, relationships and vision. Images of my daughter, friends and myself fill single canvases, suites of paintings, diptyches and triptychs. The impetus behind my research derives from my recognition of the cultural means by which women's experience is excluded from a representational norm or ideal. I use time-honoured devices, such as, illusionist imagery, aspects of portraiture, complex fractured atmospheric space, paintings and drawings within paintings, mirrors and reflective surfaces, shadows and architectural devices. They structure my compositions in a way that envelops the viewer in my internal world of ideas. Some of these features function symbolically, as emblems. A small part of the imagery relies on verisimilitude, such as my hands and their shadow and my single observing eye enclosed by my glasses. What remains is a fantasy world, ‘seen’ by the image of my other eye, or ‘faction’, based on memories and texts explaining the significance of ancient Minoan symbols. In my paintings, I base the subjects of this fantasy on my memories of the Knossos Labyrinth and matristic symbols, such as the pillar, snake, blood, eye and horn. They suggest the presence of a ritual where initiates descended into the adyton (holy of holies) or sunken areas in the labyrinth. The paintings attempt a ‘rewriting’ of sacrality and gender by adopting the symbolism of death, transformation and resurrection in the adyton. The significance of my emblematic imagery is that it constructs a foundation narrative about vision and insight. I sought symbolic attributes shared by European oil painting and Minoan antiquity. Both traditions share symbolic attributes with male dying gods in Greek myths and Medusa plays a central part in this linkage. I argue that her attributes seem identical to both those of the dying gods and Minoan goddesses. In the Minoan context these symbols suggest metaphors for the female body and the mother and daughter blood line. When the symbols align with the beheaded Medusa in a patriarchal context, both her image and her attributes represent cautionary tales about female sexuality that have repercussions for aspects of vision. In Renaissance and Baroque oil painting Medusa's image served as a vehicle for an allegory that personified the triumph of reason over the senses. In the twentieth century, the vagina dentata suggests her image, a personified image of irrational emotion that some male Surrealists celebrated as a muse. She is implicated in the male gaze as a site of castration and her representation suggests a symbolic form pertaining to perspective. Medusa's image, its negative sexual and violent connotations, seemed like a keystone linking iconographic codes in European oil painting to Minoan antiquity. I fused aspects of matristic Minoan antiquity with elements of European oil paintings in the form of disguised attribute gestures, objects and architectural environments. I selected three paintings, Dürer's Setf-Portrait, 1500, Gentileschi's Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting, 1630 and Velazquez's Las Meniruis, 1656 as models because 1 detected echoes of Minoan symbolism in the attributes of their subjects and backgrounds. My revision of Medusa's image by connecting it to Minoan antiquity established a feminist means of representation in the largely male-dominated tradition of oil painting. These paintings also suggested painting techniques that were useful to me. Through my representations of my emblematic journey I questioned the narrow focus placed on phallic symbols when I explored how their meanings may have been formed within a matricentric culture. I retained the key symbols of the patriarchal foundation narratives about vision but removed images of violence and their link to desire and replaced it with a ritual form of symbolic death. I challenged the binary oppositional defined Self as opposed to Other by constructing a complex, fluid Self that interacts with others. A multi-directional gaze between subjects, viewers and artist replaces the male gaze. Different qualities of paint, coagulation and random flow form a blood symbolism. Many layers of paint retaining some aspects of the Gaze and Glance, fuse and separate intermittently to construct and define form. The sense of motion and fluidity constructs a form of multi-faceted selves. The supporting document, the exegesis is in two parts. In the first part, I discuss the Minoan sources of my iconography and the symbolic gender specific meanings suggested by particular symbols and their changed meanings in European oil painting, I explain how I integrate Minoan symbols into European oil paintings as a form of disguised symbolism. In the second part I explain how my alternative use of symbolism and paint alludes to a feminist poetic.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2007. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 37-38).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 212-234).

A renewed merging of art and design accompanied by the inflation of design in relation to art has been increasingly noted by writers since the 1990s. Some critics and artists such as Dan Graham have celebrated this phenomenon as a critical opportunity; others such as art historian and critic Hal Foster have criticized the trend as a catastrophic loss of the limits required for liberal subjectivity. In the first chapter, I consider Graham's position as outlined in "Art as Design/Design as Art" (1986) and contrast it with Hal Foster's argument as presented in "Design and Crime" (2002).While the writers share some points of reference, it becomes clear that the two texts are based on different critical models. My second and third chapters present case studies of works often considered to be part of the "design art" trend. At either end of the 1990s, Dia Center for the Arts realized large-scale projects: Dan Graham's Two-Way Mirror Cylinder Inside Cube and a Video Salon: Rooftop Urban Park Project for Dia Arts Center (1981- 1991) and Jorge Pardo's Project (1998-2000). Both works fit the profile of art projects that make use of the modes and methods of the fields of architecture and design. My study considers how each project related to its art institutional site, to the greater art historical and contemporary context and to changes in social, political and cultural conditions that unfolded during the 1990s. My third chapter considers works by Andrea Zittel, an artist also often discussed in terms of design, architecture and lifestyle. While Zittel's "critical optimism" offers promise, there are some critical failings of her project. I analyze some of the problems presented by Zittel's works in relation to comparable projects by Dan Graham and Jorge Pardo. These projects question, but also contribute to, the overvaluation of design that accompanies the contemporary phenomenon of obsession with styling self.

Though an installation, the exhibition Four Corners Gateway, examines how history and memory construct us as individuals and construct our national and personal identities and worldviews. All such constructions are ultimately fragmented and fictional. This body of work points at how ideologically formed, subjective narratives are made into ‘truths’. Connecting the personal with the public is my way of playing with history and its paradoxes. The resulting landscapes that I construct can be read as archives of fragments.

Texte remanié de: Diss.--Philosophische Fakultät--Universität zu Köln, 1992. / Notes bibliogr. Index.

Texte remanié de: Diss.--Philosophische Fakultät--Freiurg--Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, 1992. / Notes bibliogr.

Texte remanié de: Diss.--Heinrich-Heine-Universität--Düsseldorf, 2000. / Bibliogr. p.383-410. Index. Table des ill.