Perverted in Neon is collection of short fictions engaged with various facets of modern popular culture. In its stories, a washed-up rocker enlists the aid of pigeons to deliver messages to his estranged wife; a writer obsessed with finding out what “really” happened to Andy Kaufman is pushed into the fringes of his own life; a kid on restriction discovers a secret level to a video game that threatens to change the nature of his reality; a woman on Airbnb advertises her home—and her life—to potential house renters. The characters throughout this collection tread among the desperate and downtrodden, often seeing some faint impression of hope in the distance, something worth continuing to fight for. Perverted in Neon challenges traditional distinctions of literary genres, often incorporating elements of non-fictional pop culture into fictional worlds, and vice-versa. The stories throughout aim to interrogate some notion of emotional maturity, or lack thereof—characters who think they understand the world, but quickly realize that they understand only their most immediate desires. / MFA

From 1945 onward, post-war artists in Japan encountered two interrelated challenges: to both adjust to the war’s aftermath, and also to create a new visual language which expressed new ideas and emotions. For women artists in Japan, this time of distinct culture change allowed for a re-defining of their role in the art community as well as society. However, there were strict boundaries surrounding the institutional and academic realm of art, one that was not inviting to women, or one that allowed opportunity or growth. Nevertheless, many women artists sought to explore gender roles, the idea of womanhood, sexuality, and expression of the self. These topics were not met willingly by male counterparts or art critics, which forced women artists to constantly engage with a society that did not openly support their work. It was a tumultuous environment; however, women artists of this era truly showcased some of the most influential, explorative, experimental, and exciting avant-garde pieces that deeply affected the history of art. In the artistic community, new conversations and ideas were challenging the rigidity of a traditional Japanese society. Women artists saw this as an opportunity to insert these challenges into their art. There was an ongoing exploration of ideas that critiqued the rigid structure that the establishment enforced upon artists. In the early ‘50s, many women produced artworks that explored ideas such as self-expression, gender norms and responsibilities of womanhood.

Das Dissertationsprojekt untersucht die Workshops von fünf internationalen Performancekünstler*innen qualitativ empirisch. Wie lehren diese ihre Kunstform? Welche Performancebegriffe leiten die Lehre? Welche didaktischen Ansätze und Methoden kommen zur Anwendung? Feldnotizen aus der teilnehmenden Beobachtung bilden das Basismaterial der Forschung, aus dem die individuellen Lehrkonzepte der Performancelehrenden rekonstruiert werden.

This thesis explores how textile contributes to meaning-making and spatial design in scenography. Through the theoretical lens of performativity theory, it studies three scenes from Cirkus Cirkör’s popular show Knitting Peace. Using semiotic analysis as formulated by Jan-Gunnar Sjölin, the thesis focuses on movement, spatiality and socio-cultural meaning through the three questions; How can textile enhance movement and rhythm? How is it used together with lighting to create changes in spatiality? And What connotations does textile induce, and how do they affect the overall meaning-making in scenography? The results suggest that textile is a valuable material in performance art and scenography. For example, textile behaves in ways that resemble both fluid and solid form. This allows for change of depth and shifting between open and closed spaces on stage with little effort. It also gives means to enhance and enlarge human movement in scale, intensity and time. In Knitting Peace this is used together with lighting design to create off sync layers of reality to symbolise a distorted dreamworld. The thesis shows how we can better understand the way textile affect us by applying perspectives that focus on its different characteristics. Moreover, it demonstrates that an interdisciplinary approach that builds on knowledge from different fields, such as fashion design and performance studies, can greatly benefit our understanding of the potential use of textile in arts.

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Suzanne Lacy, Leslie Labowitz-Starus and Sharon Hayes have created public performances that respond to the socio-political conditions of their time and place, and extend the boundaries of the traditional public sphere to include feminist concerns. In their collaborative performance In Mourning and In Rage (1977), Lacy and Labowitz-Starus utilized the private, feminist practice of consciousness-raising to bring widespread visibility to the politics of the female body. Hayes' works In the Near Future (2007-09) and Everything Else Has Failed! Don't You Think It's Time for Love? (2007), draw attention to issues concerning counterpublics through obliquely referential personal and political narratives. These works all mobilize a performing, protesting body whose corporeality mediates the audience's political realizations, past memories and current subjecthood. / Art History

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