This thesis offers a critical reflection of posthumanism as seen through the perspectives of performance art. The first part of the text discusses the onset and development of posthumanism as a philosophical and cultural movement focused on the gradual convergence of the human and technology. The following second part then presents a reflection of thus conceptualized posthumanism in performance art. Posthumanism is conceived as a movement on the border between serious scientific discourse and fiction: Based on the mathematical theory of communication, as well as the legacy of cyberpunk dystopia, posthumanism offers a vision of a transition from human to the so called posthuman. The posthuman is seen as an offspring of technoculture, the synthesis of living and artificial, a loosely evolving entity without fixed ontological boundaries. The existence of the posthuman lies beyond dualistic categorization, has a processual character and refuses any essentialist approach. It is an attractive subject of science-fiction stories and a sexy postmodern slogan, but it is also a symbol of a transgression of actual predestinating categories such as race, gender or social status. More than anything else, posthuman is primarily a metaphor, adopted by a variety of narratives focused on the potential aspects of...

I am an interdisciplinary artist working with a merging of costumes and voice through the performance art medium. In this masters degree project I present costume as the main performer and look at the ability for my performance to create a transcendent experience in a secular art context. The paper will lift some of the historical and contemporary ideas about transcendence in art. I will argue that the singing voice can be used as an enchanting tool to create presence and communicate the inexplicable. By using my own practice as an example I present costume as the initiator and leading star of a performance. Finally, I give insight into the process and making of my master performance, A merging of Costumes, Voice & Transcendence.

This master's thesis aims to investigate disability researcher Tobin Sieber's conceptualization of disability aesthetics. This concept is investigated in relation to performances by Marina Abramović, specifically Rhythm 2 (1974), Rhythm 0 (1974), Lips of Thomas (1975) and Art Must Be Beautiful, Artist Must Be Beautiful (1975). The thesis examines questions about the possibility of applying the concept of disability aesthetics to an able-bodied artist's production. A disability aesthetic is characterized by representations that shape and thematize deficiency, damage and suffering. Also, a transformative process from able-bodied to disabled. The thesis concludes that the concept is more or less applicable to Abramovic’s production, since the transformative process of representing a disability aesthetic is something temporarily linked to the performance. The thesis also discusses that further research may instead examine and formulate the aesthetics of pain.

The social media influencer is becoming a prominent trope in contemporary media culture. In her Instagram performance artwork Excellences & Perfections, Amalia Ulman imitated the content and lifestyle of different types of influencers for five months in 2014, gaining attention and inciting controversy when she finally revealed her hoax. She captured problematic aspects of performativity online, examined how it related to tropes and myths in our culture, and ultimately to our sense of identity. By analysing images from her work and comments from her followers at the time, this thesis aims to understand how her art acts as a commentary on issues of digital labour and self-representation through images.

Abstract Stelarc, the performance artist, has since the middle of the twentieth century, harnessed technology to enable an ongoing challenge to the physical body. Embracing ever evolving technology, Stelarc provokes the art world with a series of works that he claims demonstrate the body as limited and obsolete. The body positioned as limited enables Stelarc to seek the transcendence of the same body through the use of the body/technology symbiosis in the form of medical instruments, prosthetics, robotics, virtual reality systems and the Internet. Acknowledging that this body/technology symbiosis has brought with it changes in embodied and disembodied experiences, this study reclaims the “obsolete” body as the lived experiential body by exploring Stelarc’s contradictions both in his rhetoric and his performance. The established contradictions substantiate the body as corporeal and embodied and as necessary to exist in and make sense of our surrounding world.

Drawing from the ongoing revitalization efforts in the Western Massachusetts post-industrial city of Springfield, Massachusetts, this adaptive reuse project aims to bring the public back to the city center by providing a common space for cultural connections. Sensitivity to preservation of the historic fabric of the existing Court Square Building is blended with the transformative potential of introducing architectural expressions of dance theory to create a school and theater for the performing arts. The study of balance between opposing, yet complimentary forces, as they exist in architecture and dance, creates a conceptual interplay that guides the design of this project. Viewing the existing historic building as a dance partner to the proposed contemporary addition, leads an exploration in the tectonic translation of form, rhythm, weight, movement and breath, as elements of dance theory that are developed to represent the building envelope, structure, materials, circulation and openings. Ultimately, the adapted building creates a dialogue for the past and present city of Springfield, simultaneously honoring its unique cultural heritage and future potential in serving as an icon for successful urban transformation.

They have lost all hope and behind hope they found new spaces is an essay and a collection of short related texts, written in connection with a similarly named dance piece. It is about dancing joyfully in the age of the climate crisis and trusting that by moving one's own body something else can be moved too.

At its heart (or lack thereof) The Machine is Angry is a theater work. The visual components are as equally important as their acoustic counterparts. Sounds are only as valuable as the images they evoke and the intention of The Machine is to outline a picture that simultaneously conveys community and isolation; the idea that one can feel most alone when in a crowded room.

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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