The PhD thesis deals with the role of archives in the contemporary artistic and curatorial practice, with an emphasis on the performance art. It also analyses the creation process, methodology and the contents of selected personal and institutional archives in both Czech and international contexts. The objective of the paper is to answer the following questions: In what way is the documentation and subsequent archiving of process-oriented forms of art performed? How is the history of the contemporary art formed and interpreted through these archives and with the help of the artistic and curatorial practice? To what extent are we able to reconstruct the history from records and performance documents that are only fragmented, thus making a reference to a real action? Do the archives leave some room for misinterpretation, creating a myth or personality cult through its system of classification of knowledge? How indeed is the performance art related to its own history; how is this history perceived by the performer alone; and how is it approached by the professional audience? The paper will also include the analysis of current state and possible solutions to the operation of the archive of the Faculty of Fine Arts, which is related to opening a dialogue among artists, theorists and institutions that might be interested in better accessibility of such an archive.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Western Sydney, 2003. / Includes bibliography.

My interests lie in the intersection of the public and private, the corporate and personal, especially with regard to self-representation within cultural power structures. Utilizing video and web technologies, performance, and painting, I create imagined realms of fantasy, desire, obsession, and anxiety. Operating within, but not bound by, feminist discourse, my work explores the vehicles and effects by which both analog and digital technologies influence the relationship between the self and the object of desire (whether physical or virtual, interior or exterior to the body) and have produced both progressive and regressive offspring. By performing the role of both producer of cultural archetypes and the compulsive consumer of signs, m­y characters embody the representation(s) of their source but, through action and voice, invent a mutant surrogate who dictates its own agency.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1982. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 54). / This thesis is an organization of my thoughts on autobiography as it concerns my own life and my work as an artist. It incorporates the study I have made of traditional elements of autobiography. It includes a discussion of my understanding of the process of self - definition and discusses how my work in the media of performance and video have united my ideas concerning contemporary and conventional forms of auto-biography. / by Peter M. Codella. / M.S.

Orientador: Sérgio Romagnolo / Banca: José Paiani Spaniol / Banca: Taisa Palhares / Resumo: Esta dissertação tem dois resultados distintos: minha produção artística, envolvendo esculturas, objetos, instalações, pinturas, performances, vivência artística e um texto teórico. Em ambos os casos, o assunto da pesquisa é sobre o espaço de exposição e o modo como as obras de arte são exibidas, comparando os locais expositivos atuais e suas especificidades aos chamados Gabinetes de Curiosidades - coleções privadas exibidas a um público seleto, sobretudo entre os séculos XVII e XVIII, que podem ser considerados precursores dos museus modernos / Abstract: The present dissertation has two different purposes: to register the artist's production - including sculptures, objects, installations, paintings, performances, artistic experiences - and to present a theoretical text. For both cases, the research focuses on the exhibition space and how art works are exhibited, comparing the present spaces for exhibition and the Cabinets of Curiosities - private collections presented to a selected public, mostly during the 17th and 18th centuries, which can be regarded as the predecessors of modern museums / Mestre

A Research Report submitted towards a MAAD by Course Work and Research Report / This is an auto ethnographic project in which I explore how my personal and cultural narratives can be used for healing and transformation through a theatre making process. I look at performance as an object of making meaning while placing myself at the centre of the study as the subject of this research. During this process, I was looking at discovering a personal theatre making language with an aim of finding my voice. The outcome of my journey was an experimental creative project titled Eenganga which was performed in an alternative and nontraditional form in terms of space, text and the overall theatre making process. This study is an account of a journey that initially began as a performance ethnography project which collected cultural narratives of black urban traditional healers from Katutura, Windhoek, Namibia. There was an internal and an external data collection process. My body as a site of knowledge was the main research instrument.

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.

This research project participates in the genre of Performance art. It explores performativity in relation to Emmanuel Levinas' formulation of two interlacing modes of language, the ethical saying and the ontological, political said. The saying is of my originary, ethical relation to the other person that constitutes me, whereas the said is the mode of 'content', knowledge, and ontology. The project suggests that at least two registers of performativity pertain to the saying. One is in Simon Critchley's description of the saying as performative, prior to any decision to perform. In regard to another meaning of performativity, I propose that a political signification of art may be what Levinas calls a "reduction" of the said that 'performs' a showing of the saying. To perform a showing of the saying, would, in a Levinasian engagement, be to make apparent the ultimate interruption by ethics of ontology and politics, thus pointing to a constitutive non-closure of the political like that theorized by Jacques Derrida and by Critchley. Such a non-closure of the political is tentatively linked with critiques of Nicolas Bourriaud's Relational Aesthetics such as Claire Bishop's which draw on Jacques Lacan's notion of the subject. Performances explore the notion of the "reduction" of ontology resourced by Derrida's formulation of Levinas' later writing style as involving a sériature; serial and heterogeneous interruptions of the said1. The project has unfolded in a series of performance pieces, and will conclude with a final performance in March 2007. This exegesis articulates the major provocations for the project, contextualises the project with regard to selected art practices, and documents and discusses the major performance pieces.

What tools do performers use to provoke their audiences to change? What is the nature and potential extent of this change? ‘Provocative and Transformative Performance’ looks at the potential of performance to provoke attitudinal and behavioural change. Through a combination of theoretical and practical research, the project attempts to locate specific characteristics of performances that may be both provocative and transformative. Although previous research has interrogated the efficacy of performance, this project attempts to interrogate the nature of attitudinal and behavioural change through performance in a new way. The approach is triangulated, shifting perspective from performance maker to audience member to performance theorist. Bodily, a solo performance investigating body image issues, was created both as a response to this research and as a performative tool for generating research data. The Bodily data arises from a personal response to the performance and from focus groups conducted with audience members of the piece. The performance is integrated as a necessary part of this research, as it illuminates the process of a provocative performance maker. Alchemy permeates this thesis, weaving through the analysis as a metaphor for transformation. An alchemist undertakes the quest for philosophical gold through several complex processes. The alchemical moment of ‘projection’ is particularly significant; this is the climax, the final operation before gold is achieved. The thesis is written in a multi-vocal style, incorporating the analytical voice, the poetic alchemical metaphor, personal responses to performance and a performance development journal. The research project is a methodological and evaluative engagement with provocative and transformative performance, taking into account the intention of the performer, the instrumentation performers employ in order to provoke and transform their audiences, and the potential illumination of an issue for the audience through performance. Through this theoretical framework, the thesis aims to throw light on the ways in which performance can provoke transformation. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Biliana Velkova-The Musical is a personal story about coming of age within two distinct ideologies, communism and capitalism and the impact of immigration and assimilation. It also gives a glimpse of my two worlds and my navigation between them. And lastly, I hope that it adds to our collective memory of communism, no matter what the reality of it was. My project becomes part of the dialogue that is currently surfacing around the relevance of post communist realities and discourse.