Orientador: Eusébio Lobo da Silva / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Artes / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-25T06:14:09Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Ferreira_AlexandreDonizete_D.pdf: 1235384 bytes, checksum: c87459678cac1c3af6283a9e11e6b0df (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014 / Resumo: Esta pesquisa traz consigo uma reflexão sobre o intérprete-criador através de seu corpoartista que se instaura como produtor e produto de si mesmo, na perspectivação de uma physis poética que é um conjunto de saberes que se dialogam para que este artista se construa em nuances realizantes dentro do espaço de seu corpo como sujeitação deliberada para que possa se realizar em momentos poéticos. Para tanto, o olhar se faz para o profundo daquilo que nos forma, nossa unidade fundante, a célula. Tal organismo traz consigo a propriedade de se modificar internamente pelo transito de experiências que já estão engendradas em seu interior e que produzirão novos comportamentos e estes gerarão novas experiências e novos comportamentos, em um ciclo ad inffinitum. Este ciclo será capaz de manifestar-se em estruturas de memórias que não serão somente em nível mental, mas corporal, produzindo um soma capaz de adentrar-se em si mesmo através dos núcleos de repertório. Isto pode colocar o artista da cena em um processo de desenvolvimento de capacidades e habilidades que serão postas em dialética permanentemente. Esta dialética não se faz por opostos, mas por equilíbrios que transportam tais polos em um complementar de dialogias que colocarão o intérprete-criador em situações por ele mesmo criadas para se compor em perspectivação estabelecendo conexões que serão suporte para a expressão de um complementar entre a Arte e a Vida Cênica, em [re]significações que repercutem no próprio atuar deste artista da cena / Abstract: This research brings a reflection on the artist - creator who through their artistbody is established as producers and products of himself , in perspectives of a physis poetic which is a set of knowledge that dialogue so that this artist is built on realizations nuances within the space of your body as sujeitação deliberate so that it can be held in poetic moments . Thus, the gaze makes for before- start , to deep in what way our founding unit , the cell . This body brings the property to modify internally by traffic experiences already engendered inside and produce new behaviors and these will generate new experiences and new behaviors in a cycle ad inffinitum. This cycle will be able to manifest itself in memory structures that are not only on the mental level , but body , producing a sum capable of entering into himself through the core repertoire of the artist to put the scene in a development process capabilities and skills that will be put in dialectical all the time . However, this does not happen by dialectical opposites , but balances that carry such poles in a complementary dialogs that put the artist -creator in situations created by himself to compose in perspectives establishing connections that will support the expression of a complementary between Art and Life , in [ re] meanings that resonate in the very act of this artist scene / Doutorado / Artes da Cena / Doutor em Artes da Cena

My exhibition draws on Andreas Huyssen's notion of memory sculpture to articulate my own sense of loss and trauma, due to the divorce of my parents. Within my work I explore the effects that divorce had on me and how it has disturbed my normative understanding of home and family. I have created scenarios alluding to the family home that I have manipulated in order to convey a sense of nostalgia and loss. By growing salt crystals over found objects and/or cladding them in salt, I attempt to suggest the dual motifs of preservation (a nostalgic clinging to the past) and destruction (due to the salt’s corrosive properties). In this way, the salt-crusted objects serve as a metaphor for a memory that has become stagnant, and is both destructive and regressive. The objects encapsulate the mind’s coping methods to loss. In my mini thesis, I discuss characteristics of memory sculpture as a response to trauma, drawing on Sigmund Freud's differentiation between mourning and melancholia. I also unpack how objects and traces (such as photographs) may act as nostalgic triggers, inducing a state of melancholic attachment to an idealised past. I address these concerns in relation to selected works by Doris Salcedo and Bridget Baker, and also situate them in relation to my own art practice.

With this dissertation I propose to investigate critical theories dealing with memory and its role in photography. The function of memory is a well discussed and analysed topic within the ambit of historical research. Drawing from theoretical texts by critical theorists, namely, Roland Barthes, Annette Kuhn and Marianne Hirsch, I will critically address the function of memory in the understanding of photography; particularly how photographs have the ability to construct our identity in terms of history and narrative. I will study the content of memory in relation to visual images, focusing on what is remembered, what is suppressed, and finally, what is transformed when viewing an image. By doing so, I will consider whether or not still photographs have the ability to construct the past in a narrative form that is intrinsic to its medium. This consideration will be undertaken with specific reference to the works of contemporary South African artist Lien Botha. Special attention will be directed to her series of work entitled Amendment (2006), a series which permits me in turn, to deal with issues pertaining to memory and “visual narrative” which I have explored in my own professional art practice namely, Memory Boxes, Back Stories, Faces of You and Me, Memories Re-layered and Ghostly Remnants.

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for MA by Coursework and Research Report, Johannesburg, 2017 / This research report explores the influences of memory in selected works by two visual artists: South African Kemang Wa Lehulere’s Remembering the Future of a Hole as a Verb 2.1 and Polish artist Ursula von Rydingsvard’s Droga. The report examines the ways in which personal memory can inform creative practice and the surface difficulties such endeavours may present. These works and writings on memory and creative practice inform my own practice, through which I investigate ways of expressing my memories of my grandparents’ carpentry workshop in Sunnydale Eshowe in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. / XL2018

By researching visual traditions of representing widows in relation to a social role, I explore how these may be related to processes of mourning and memory. My study begins with an historical reading and, along with an analysis of Renaissance widow portraiture, I trace the experiences of widows in the Cape of Good Hope. For the purposes of this thesis, I have selected images of widows to investigate memory-work particularly when speaking of loss. I re-view these memory processes through recent historical and art historical discourse with reference to contemporary South African artworks in order to understand how public memory is formed by way of visual documentation. These narratives around widowhood have informed the subject matter for my Master’s exhibition and shed light on my own experience as a widow. The interaction between objects and memory are of particular interest and manifest in my studio art practice.

Thesis (M.A.-Res.)--University of Wollongong, 2009. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references: leaf 107-115.

Thesis (D.C.A.)--University of Wollongong, 2005. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references: leaf 173-188.

Over three decades of research has shown that memories have significant effect on the behaviour, attitudes, beliefs, and identities of individuals and collectives, revealing also how experiences of trauma and acts of narrativisation have pertinence to the ways in which memories are stored and reconstructed. In this thesis a link is developed between memory, trauma, narrativisation processes and the interpretation of works by Jane Alexander, a contemporary artist whose work is informed by observations about South African life. Alexander’s sculptures are revealed to be not only important vessels of collective memories and experiences, but also evocations of individuals’ countermemories and traumas that remain unarticulated and invisible. Through an exploration of the workings of memory and its relation to her art, it is revealed how the past continues to exert its influence on many of South Africa’s present sociopolitical concerns and interpersonal dynamics. Indeed constantly changing memories have a significant effect on future generations’ perceptions of, and connectedness to, the past. While theories about memory have been deployed in Art History as well as the Humanities in general, Alexander’s work has not previously been considered in light of the influence of these ideas. This thesis thus contributes a new dimension to literature on the artist.

Thesis (MA (VA)(Visual Arts))--University of Stellenbosch, 2006. / This thesis investigates the concept of conversion which arose out of the process of making soap as medium for my body of sculptural works and signifying its material transformation with ‘cleaning’ and ‘conversion’ – terms encountered in research into chemical transformation (in alchemy) and further endorsed by my linking my sculptural forms, resembling fonts, to religious conversion. A line of theoretical research was thus traced into ritual as an embodied experience of recalling memory in the desire for redemption or healing. Contemporary South Africa art, it seemed, was also going through a conversion process. The movement, from the domination of apartheid to the profound change of the ‘new South Africa’, necessitated a sense of tolerance in response to the reawakening of the diversity of cultures, rituals and memories. Thus present debate surrounding the concerns of reconciliation and restitution requires a re-evaluation of the importance of memory – to forget, to renew or to uphold – in the desire for healing. This has re-awakened an appreciation of multi-cultural rituals and invoked new self-consciousness and a reformulation of identity. I was thus inspired to investigate transformation in terms of art theory, psychology and philosophy. By identifying Freud’s psychoanalytic concept of transference and of ‘working-through’ as a part of his ‘Theory of Conversion’, I arrived at this proposition: art initiates an awakening of self-consciousness. In arguing for the vitality of the mythopoetic imagination, as held within the unconscious, however, I claim that art, as an embodied process, draws from memory, and resonates within the context of a ritualised empathic interrelatedness of ourselves as humans in the environment. In attempting to understand the South African transformation, which resembles the spirit of Renaissance Humanism, I examined how historical shifts influence both inter-human and environment/human relationships. Operating largely in terms of the transference of power and belief, these moved, in an ever-recurring cycle, through sixteenth century Renaissance Humanism, which tolerated diverse religious convictions, to Cartesian reason and the quest for certainty, manifesting in religious and politically motivated wars. This revolution, I believe, has occurred again from the modern to the postmodern era. I believe, therefore, that art has a healing capacity. This flows from a metanoia – a turning around – effected in both artist and audience. Through this creative and aesthetic view of art, experienced in my practical making and substantiated in my theoretical research, art, I conclude, initiates inner conversion and thus healing.

Rather than being located in a field of art that addresses genocide through assumptions connected with identity issues or activism, this thesis of an artist’s exploration of artistic response to genocide in post World War II art practice, is informed by the emerging field of genocide scholarship. Seeing a parallelism between the concerns of genocide scholars and artists who respond to genocide, this thesis is an interdisciplinary study of art positioned alongside the field of genocide scholarship, as theorised by scholars such as Donald Bloxham and A. Dirk Moses. In addressing genocide through broader historical trends, periods and structures, it assumes that artists who respond to genocide share with genocide scholars a concern about genocide at a secondary level and share the potential to create illumination in the field. This thesis explores art practices that address genocide conceptually through structure and material. The central claim of this thesis is that recent and contemporary art practices, here discussed, show a concern to respond to genocide as an ethical response, and that they do so by engaging with the complexity of abstract issues such as complicity and agency. The initial analysis of Adorno’s discourse on ethics, as it relates to response in art, sets up a level of complexity for two further investigations that interrogate the discourses of victim representation and lens-based documents of genocide through ethics and agency. Together these provide an analytical framework for the project. Close readings informed by genocide scholarship, of art practices including those of Jimmie Durham and Francis Alÿs, take forward notions in the existing critical field. These readings yield not only the evidence that demonstrates a commitment to creating ethically based art through conceptually informed practice, in artists responding to genocide, but also the value of a cultural critique that is informed by genocide scholarship.