Within the context of relational art, the ongoing series, Maturity Playground, incorporates pre-fabricated playground components used as sculptural material. The use of slides, swings, trampolines, and merry-go-rounds has been disrupted. These structures are manipulated through placement and colour to the point where they become socially tense or awkward situations for adults. Playground structures in the art gallery subvert conventional notions of art, the understanding of appropriate behavior in an art environment and the understanding of play as an aesthetic element. Such re-placement creates a disruption to the psychological associations attached to the activity of the object. In this new context, the works allow participation and promote the idea that play can be a model for co-operative behavior.

Within the context of relational art, the ongoing series, Maturity Playground, incorporates pre-fabricated playground components used as sculptural material. The use of slides, swings, trampolines, and merry-go-rounds has been disrupted. These structures are manipulated through placement and colour to the point where they become socially tense or awkward situations for adults. Playground structures in the art gallery subvert conventional notions of art, the understanding of appropriate behavior in an art environment and the understanding of play as an aesthetic element. Such re-placement creates a disruption to the psychological associations attached to the activity of the object. In this new context, the works allow participation and promote the idea that play can be a model for co-operative behavior.

Open mic poetry events are representative examples of a widespread and socially significant performance phenomenon--the relational and dialogic art and activism of the sustained encounter as a demonstration of the possibility for new social relations. Open mic performances center the pleasure of creating and sharing art and relationships in a manner that works against the value systems of capitalistic exchange and enterprise. I conduct an autoethnographic study of the Transpoetic Playground--a reoccurring open mic poetry event in Carbondale, Illinois. This study mixes performative writing, poetry, and personal narrative with the ethnographic methods of participation observation and interviewing in order to tell a story of an amateur performance poetry community and what it can teach about how to resist the constraints of contemporary socio-communicative relations.

RELATIONAL AESTHETICS: CREATIVITY IN THE INTER-HUMAN SPHERE By Carl Patow, MD, MPH, MBA A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, 2019. Major Director: Pamela Taylor Turner, Associate Professor, Kinetic Imaging, VCU Arts Relational Art was first described as an art movement in Nicolas Bourriaud’s catalogue for the exhibition Traffic in 1995, and in an eponymous book in 1998. He observed that contemporary artists were shifting the focus of their work away from creating objects of spectacle to interaction with viewers through dialogue. Examination of a sample of representative artists’ work demonstrates a wide variety of applications that variously include objects. Inclusion of objects in relational artwork raises important theoretic considerations about the definition of the genre and its application to specific artworks. In the thesis artwork, WORKS WHEN, Carl Patow engages individuals in Richmond, Virginia, in conversations, documenting the location of their neighborhood and recording observations they make about their neighborhoods on polychrome tiles. The collected tiles are formed into “communities” on a floor map of the city. The work includes both conversation and objects in its creation, realization and exhibition. In doing so, WORKS WHEN is both an example of Relational Aesthetics and an expansion of its scope as a genre.

PEDESTRIAN is inspired by my daily walking routines and my relationship to the spaces in which I walk. Through additional instruction-guided walks with volunteers, this project examines the seemingly mundane travels of walkers and their relationship to and absorption of the space around them, and encourages a reconsideration of the environmental everyday into a venue for play and discovery.

This dissertation develops a theory for analyzing the role of audiences as aesthetic resources in contemporary site-specific performance and relational art. Collaborating with three Canadian companies as a participant-observer, interviewer, and in some cases, documenter, I develop case studies that track flexible stage-audience relationships in public spaces. By analyzing how companies Radix Theatre Society, Bluemouth, and Mammalian Diving Reflex put spectators to work in sites like IKEA showrooms, disused warehouses, and theatres, I advance a method that attends to the doubled practice of the spectator as worker and witness. This framework, which I term bifold spectatorship, articulates how audiences constitute theatrical worlds through direct physical engagement with the cultural criticism and formal experimentation that artists stage. Folded into the event, spectators literally compose the scene of the action, and enter into what I call critical proximity with the discourses that shape the performance. As participants interact with and directly query the artistic expressions that they patron, they answer a challenge to perform that is typically reserved for professionals. Such novel participation begins with a hail that interpellates audiences into the action as subjects and even sites of performance. Adapting the concept of the casting call, or what I coin site-casting, miscasting, and central casting, I show how spectators are aligned with the exigencies of the site; “mis-placed” or miscast by artists (provoking performance anxiety in participants); or cast to play a role they already perform in their everyday lives. In addition to these critical frameworks, I challenge the established narrative of “liberating the audience” by forwarding a multi-sited genealogy of site-specific performance that confronts the romance of freeing spectators from stage conventions. In examining the ethical problems that arise when audiences are made responsible for representation, The Stagehands of Subversive Spaces extends debates within site-specific performance to wider conversations in performance studies about ethics, subjectivity, and audience reception.

This dissertation develops a theory for analyzing the role of audiences as aesthetic resources in contemporary site-specific performance and relational art. Collaborating with three Canadian companies as a participant-observer, interviewer, and in some cases, documenter, I develop case studies that track flexible stage-audience relationships in public spaces. By analyzing how companies Radix Theatre Society, Bluemouth, and Mammalian Diving Reflex put spectators to work in sites like IKEA showrooms, disused warehouses, and theatres, I advance a method that attends to the doubled practice of the spectator as worker and witness. This framework, which I term bifold spectatorship, articulates how audiences constitute theatrical worlds through direct physical engagement with the cultural criticism and formal experimentation that artists stage. Folded into the event, spectators literally compose the scene of the action, and enter into what I call critical proximity with the discourses that shape the performance. As participants interact with and directly query the artistic expressions that they patron, they answer a challenge to perform that is typically reserved for professionals. Such novel participation begins with a hail that interpellates audiences into the action as subjects and even sites of performance. Adapting the concept of the casting call, or what I coin site-casting, miscasting, and central casting, I show how spectators are aligned with the exigencies of the site; “mis-placed” or miscast by artists (provoking performance anxiety in participants); or cast to play a role they already perform in their everyday lives. In addition to these critical frameworks, I challenge the established narrative of “liberating the audience” by forwarding a multi-sited genealogy of site-specific performance that confronts the romance of freeing spectators from stage conventions. In examining the ethical problems that arise when audiences are made responsible for representation, The Stagehands of Subversive Spaces extends debates within site-specific performance to wider conversations in performance studies about ethics, subjectivity, and audience reception.

This paper is a conceptual, theoretical, and methodological exploration of my MFA thesis project (Dis)connections. My work combines time-based media, objects, and performance into a single installation that represents my struggles with anxiety and my desire to connect with people socially. My work is ultimately about the complexity of the structures of language and communication in all their forms and representations. I draw on research into feminist theory and gender studies as well as cultural theory as a way to ground my work in political and social issues that are continually relevant in Western culture, and to propose that by situating my stories within larger structures of power they have the ability to connect to a wider group of people.

Submitted by Cláudia Bueno (claudiamoura18@gmail.com) on 2016-08-12T20:50:55Z No. of bitstreams: 3 Dissertação - Don Gomes Alves - 2016 - Parte 1.pdf: 19865406 bytes, checksum: a4c84fd69265ce5cf489205f1f898847 (MD5) Dissertação - Don Gomes Alves - 2016 - Parte 2.pdf: 2744141 bytes, checksum: 13e48b4ac9a9ad38c6e97e3b04158555 (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Luciana Ferreira (lucgeral@gmail.com) on 2016-08-15T13:43:09Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 3 Dissertação - Don Gomes Alves - 2016 - Parte 1.pdf: 19865406 bytes, checksum: a4c84fd69265ce5cf489205f1f898847 (MD5) Dissertação - Don Gomes Alves - 2016 - Parte 2.pdf: 2744141 bytes, checksum: 13e48b4ac9a9ad38c6e97e3b04158555 (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-15T13:43:09Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 3 Dissertação - Don Gomes Alves - 2016 - Parte 1.pdf: 19865406 bytes, checksum: a4c84fd69265ce5cf489205f1f898847 (MD5) Dissertação - Don Gomes Alves - 2016 - Parte 2.pdf: 2744141 bytes, checksum: 13e48b4ac9a9ad38c6e97e3b04158555 (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-04-06 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / The project "Symbiosis" aims to bring reflections on human beings and their relationship with the means they inhabit, whether for the environment, their habitat and/or other beings of our specie. In developing this search an experience was made in the Recycling Cooperative Healthy Environment (COOPERMAS), with activities and reflections that brought to light the prejudices surrounding that space, culminating in the use of art making how a relational tool among members and neighborhood working collective characteristics in a collaborative proposalIt was being built step by step. Human habits are put to debate this process and raise the power that cultural activities have to intervene in hostile environments, human working towards a connection between beings that circumscribe the cloth of Gaia. / O projeto artístico “Simbiose” se propõe a trazer reflexões sobre os seres humanos e sua relação com o meio em que vive, sejam com o meio ambiente, seu habitat e/ou os demais entes de nossa espécie. No desenvolvimento desta pesquisa foi realizada uma vivência dentro da Cooperativa de Reciclagem Meio Ambiente Saudável (COOPERMAS), com atividades e reflexões que trouxeram à tona os preconceitos que envolvem aquele espaço, culminando no uso do fazer artístico como ferramenta relacional entre cooperados e vizinhança, trabalhando características coletivas em uma proposta colaborativa que foi sendo construída passo a passo. Os hábitos humanos são colocados em discussão neste processo e suscitam o poder que ações culturais têm ao intervir em ambientes hostis, trabalhando o humano em prol de uma conexão entre os seres que circunscrevem o tecido de Gaia.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the Slovene artist Marjetica Potrc works with sustainability and empowerment in her “On-Site” projects. An analysis of various indicators of sustainability in the projects clarifies what the projects have in common. Balance in the relationships between people and nature stand out as a major theme in the projects. The artist works with tools such as “participatory design” where all participants are of equal importance, and “relational objects” with which the participants negotiate and transform the common space. The theory of “relational aesthetics” by Nicolas Bourriaud is applicable to the relational qualities of the projects, and the concept that all parts in the works functions as “forms” could be used here. Nature can be read as “form” together with the rest of the participants, on a “stage” of action in the projects. In all the projects one or more solutions are presented. By creating ideal prototypes of reality, where everyone, including nature, is empowered to participate on equal grounds, a solution is presented for a sustainable lifestyle.