This dissertation analyzes the institutionalization of avant-garde artistic practice within an American university, the University of Iowa between the years 1967 and 2000. In order to understand the development of the Intermedia program at Iowa, the institutional context of the "Iowa Idea" as it was developed on campus from the 1930s that emphasized the simultaneous instruction of art history and theory with instruction in the graphic and plastic arts. Following the success of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the University of Iowa received a major grant from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1970 to form the Center for New Performing Arts. Following the development from Happenings to Intermedia, and gradually into specific "disciplines" of performance art and video art, this dissertation demonstrates how the institution was inseparable from these avant-garde practices which required significant resources to develop. The importance of technology is traced through the digital revolution in the arts, and the role of "intermedia" is shown to be part of a process of changing consciousness as opposed to commonly accepted definitions of "multimedia" or Gesamtkunstwerk.

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 research aims to delineate various modes and means of communication in the field of multimedia theatre and to relate this field of practice to contemporary debates in both theatre and media studies. This thesis defines 'multimedia theatre' in two ways: firstly to include performance where media technologies are brought into the theatrical frame as a feature of the mise en scene, and secondly to refer to the area of new media performance, where a live performer may not be present but a high degree of performativity and liveness are achieved. Discourse in the field of digital aesthetics and new media theory is applied to examples and case studies of contemporary multimedia theatre practice to highlight the formal structures and modes of audience engagement operating within such work. Multimedia theatre may be characterised by the qualities of intermediality, immersion, interactivity, and postnarratvity, and these characteristics are used in this thesis as focal points to structure analysis and investigation. The thesis also argues that recent developments in the field of multimedia theatre and performance may be viewed as related to a larger cultural shift predicated on the dissolution of the separation of the real and the virtual. It is further argued that multimedia theatre is acting as a forum for the exploration of the contemporary human experience, an experience shaped by the ubiquity of digital media and the development of a 'posthuman' perspective.

Thesis (M.A. (History of Arts))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.

Can the female feel at home in nature, myth and on screen, realms where she is so often laid to rest? "Pictures in an Exhibition" is a pastiche that exposes popular culture and art historical tropes in which ambiguous signifiers have become lost in a chain of referents. An installation of videos documents durational performances—filmed, edited and performed by the artist unaccompanied—that are humorous, satirical, aesthetic, historical, philosophical and psychological. Making simultaneous reference to art history, mass media, literature and mythology, "Pictures in an Exhibition" exposes the conflicted condition of a postfeminist 'self' striving to arrive at an exhibition of subjectivity.

<p>While great strides have been made in the study of Trinidad Carnival, there has yet to be a robust inquiry into how women have contributed to its evolution. One major reason for this shortcoming is that the dominant cultural discourse relies on a reductive</p><p>dichotomy that recognizes the costumes created prior to the 1970s as creative and those made after the 1970s as uncreative. This arbitrary division of the costume aesthetic reflects a distinct anti-feminist bias that sees women's spirited emergence in Carnival</p><p>territory in the 1970s as apolitical. </p><p>My dissertation exposes this dilemma, and seeks to undermine this</p><p>interpretation, by its focus on how women's bodies, their presentation, and their acknowledgment of the body's potential for non-verbal articulation impacted the evolution of performance practices and the costume aesthetic in Trinidad Carnival. I</p><p>explore how the predominance of women in Carnival since the 1970s and the bikinibased costume aesthetic that complements this change is suggestive of women's urgent need to manipulate the body as an aesthetic medium and site of subversion. Critical to</p><p>this argument is a close examination of certain female figures who have had a sustainable presence in Trinidad Carnival's history. My project acknowledges the <italic>jamette</italic>, a working class woman who defied Victorian tenets of decorum in preindependence</p><p>Trinidad. This figure has been overlooked in the predominant scholarship of Trinidad Carnival history. Another section of my dissertation explores the influence of the Jaycees Carnival Queen competition. Women of mostly European descent participated in this Carnival-themed beauty pageant that remained popular until the</p><p>1970s. I also examine the legend of <italic>soucouyant</italic> (an old woman who turns into a ball of fire at night and sucks the life blood from unsuspecting victims) and how this figure can be deployed to reinterpret <italic>Jouvay</italic> (the ritual that marks the beginning of Trinidad Carnival).</p> / Dissertation

Die Enzyklopädie der Performancekunst ist keine weitere Geschichte der Performancekunst. Der empirische und strikt materialistische Zugang zielt darauf ab, einen kompletten und systematischen Überblick zu geben über Materialien und ihren Gebrauch in der Performancekunst sowie Handlungen und ihre spezifischen Qualitäten in der Performancekunst.

Thesis (M.A. (Drama)) - Rhodes University, 2009. / A half-thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Drama.

Thesis (M.M.)--University of North Texas, 2002. / A two-week event in four parts: invitation, installation, reception, and thank-you card. Installation for 2 hosts, 2 ushers, photographer, 4 posers, exerciser, sound persons, and blindfolded guests, with a mix of live and recorded sounds. Includes instructions for performance. Includes bibliographical references (p. 66-67).

Thesis (M.A.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 192-200).