Dissertation: "Beyond Familiar Territory" researches various visual and conceptual strategies that facilitate connection between urban-based audiences and peripheral areas of ground where the extraction of mineral resources occurs. The Dissertation is a comparative analysis of selected works by Robert Smithson, Alfredo Jaar, and the Bark Petitions of the Yirrkala people in North East Arnhem Land. The focus is on how these artists have endeavoured to challenge urban audiences, disrupt the perceived hierarchy between centre and periphery, and bridge gaps between urban sites of mineral consumption and overlooked sites of mineral extraction. ¶"Beyond Familiar Territory" takes the form of this Dissertation (33%), and an exhibition of works at the Canberra Museum and Gallery (CMAG) from 6 February to 21 March, 1999, which, together with the Studio report, documents the outcome of the Studio Practice Component (67%). ¶ Report: "Beyond Familiar Territory" researches various visual and conceptual strategies that facilitate connection between urban-based audiences and peripheral areas of ground where the extraction of mineral resources occurs. To decentre the self-importance and perceived inclusiveness of urban centres by bridging gaps or facilitating insight between a centre of mineral extraction and production and a centre of mineral consumption. The Dissertation entails a comparative analysis of strategies used by Robert Smithson, Alfredo Jaar, and the Yirrkala Bark Petition painters, and analyses how these artists have perceived their relationships as mediators or facilitators between mining sites (and associated activities) and urban centres of consumption. ¶ "Beyond Familiar Territory" takes the form of an exhibition of works at the Canberra Museum and Gallery (CMAG) from 6 February to 21 March, 1999, which comprises the outcome of the Studio Practice Component (67%), together with a Dissertation (33%), and the Report which documents the nature of the course of study.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2004. / Document formatted into pages; contains 218 p. Includes bibliographical references. Abstract available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center; full text release delayed at author's request until 209 March 29.

[pt] Robert Smithson, artista americano da Land Art, procura ampliar seu campo de atuação cultural, para isso, o artista atua no limite entre os meios artísticos. Suas ações - nas quais o indissolúvel vínculo entre matéria e mente seria o vórtice engendrador - promovem fraturas, seja no universo da arte, seja no correspondente mundo, que permitem a eclosão das suas obras poéticas e seus jogos artísticos. O artista não privilegia meio algum de atuação, contudo, fabula o panorama zero - território fictício das possibilidades plásticas – a partir do qual reformula imaginativamente tempo e natureza. Em seus textos, Robert Smithson evidencia outros nexos para o fazer artístico – evidentemente gerando ainda o desvio na circulação da produção - e parte para assimilação irrestrita de seus dispositivos operatórios e sua transitividade: site e non-site, dialética entrópica, atopia, escala, cristais inorgânicos, espelhos, mapas, labirintos, deslocamento, materialidade, paisagem, deriva e, finalmente, a escrita. Todavia, tais elementos não são fortuitos; eles transitam, grosso modo, entre a qualidade da atualidade em arte – por constante tensão produtora - do circuito artístico e as correntes revivenciadas, paradoxalmente pelo artista, dos romantismos, o Alemão, poético e filosófico de élan verbal; e o sublime, a experiência da formação da cultura americana. / [fr] Robert Smithson, artiste américain du Land Art, cherche élargir son champs d’actuation cuturelle, ainsi, l’artiste joue sur le limite entre les moyens artistiques. Ses actions – dans lequelles il y avait l’indissoluble lien entre la matière et l’esprit comme tourbillion générateur – font avancer des fractures, soit dans l’universe de l’art, soit dans le monde correspondant, qui permetent d’éclosion de ses ouevres poétiques et ses jeus artistiques. L’artiste ne valorise aucun moyen d’actuation, pourtant, il imagine le panorame zero – un territoire fictif de les possibilités plastiques – apartir duquel reformule imaginement du temps et de la nature. Dans ses articles, Robert Smithson manifeste des autres sens pour le faire artistique – évidement il y gère un genre de detourne sur la circulation de la production – et il pars encore à l’illimitée assimilation de ses dispositives opératoires au-délà de sa transitivité : site et nonsite, dialetique entropique, atopie, échelle, cristaux inorganiques, miroirs, chartes, dédales, deplacement, materialité, paysage, dérive et, à la fin, l’écriture. Toutefois, ceux éléments ne sont pas aléatoires ; ils y traversent, en gross, la qualité de l’actualité dans l’art – à travers d’une tension productrice – du circuit artistique et les mouvements révécus, paradoxalment par Smithson, du romantismes, l’allemand, poétique et philosophique d’élan verbale ; et le sublime, comme experience de la formation de la culture américaine.

Cette thèse s’origine dans un étonnement. Il s’agit de comprendre pourquoi, au milieu des années 1960, plusieurs artistes de la nouvelle avant-garde américaine s’emparent d’un objet que la modernité de l’art semblait avoir à jamais abandonné : la perspective linéaire. Pourquoi cette construction, intimement liée à l’héritage artistique de la Renaissance, cristallisa-t-elle les préoccupations d’artistes qui entendaient liquider cet héritage s’inscrire dans une histoire strictement américaine de l’art ? Comment put-elle se concilier avec l’élaboration d’un projet d’avant-garde ? Le but du travail est de passer du constat d’un paradoxe au diagnostic d’un symptôme. Pour cela, il convient de dépasser le sentiment d’un retour incongru et rétrograde du passé de l’art, pour considérer la manière dont la perspective est suscitée à nouveau par un champ contemporain qui la déplace en l’exploitant. Notre étude se concentre sur les cas de Robert Smithson (1938-1973) et de Mel Bochner (1940-), d’abord, parce que leurs usages de la perspective furent les plus concertés et les plus conséquents ; ensuite parce qu’ils occupent deux positions à la fois proches (liés d’amitié, ils réfléchirent et travaillèrent ensemble) et distinctes : là où Smithson, d’abord lié au mouvement minimal, s’orienta vers le Land Art, Bochner se rapprocha du courant conceptuel. Cette diversité de pratiques permet de saisir la manière dont la perspective résonne avec une pluralité de problématiques propres à la période. Trois axes principaux animent notre étude : éclairer ce qui, dans le contexte artistique contemporain, favorisa et accompagna le retour de la perspective ; préciser la spécificité des usages et des pensées de la perspective que développèrent Smithson et Bochner et la manière dont ceux-ci fut souvent la pierre de touche de leurs particularismes ; comprendre comment l’un et l’autre transformèrent l’objet qu’il convoquaient, et réinventèrent la perspective plutôt que de la réhabiliter. / This dissertation is born out of astonishment. It aims at understanding how, in the middle of the 1960s, several artists of the American avant-garde seized an object that artistic modernity seemed to have discarded for good: linear perspective.Why did this device, so tightly linked to the legacy of Renaissance art, crystallize the interest of artists whose project was to put an end to this legacy and to write a strictly American history of art? How could it fit into an avant-garde agenda? This work aims at turning what seems to be a paradox into the understanding of a symptom. This means overriding the feeling of an incongruous and reactionary comeback and understanding how perspective is called forth by a specific context that recodes it and transforms it.To do so, we focus on the works of Robert Smithson (1938-1973) and Mel Bochner (b.1940). First of all, because they are the two artists, among the avant-garde, who most engaged with perspective. Secondly, because they were both close (as friends they thought and worked together) and apart in the artistic field: Smithson drifted from Minimalism to Land Art, while Bochner moved toward Conceptual Art. This diversity helps us observe how perspective reflects several questions at stake in the artistic landscape. Three main lines of questioning structure this dissertation: highlighting what features of the artistic context trigger this return of perspective; specifying how Bochner’s and Smithson’s use of and thinking about perspective differ from this general context and reflect their particular positions; and finally, showing how they both transformed the object they conveyed, reinventing perspective rather than simply recalling it, and eluding its usual definitions to produce new ones and reveal others.

This thesis aims to reveal paradigms associated with the operation of Western architectural oligarchies. The research is an examination into "how" dominant architectural institutions and their figureheads are undermined through the subversive collaboration of younger, unrecognised architects. By appropriating theories found in Jacques Derrida's writings in philosophy, the thesis interprets the evolution of post World War II polemical architectural thinking as a series of political friendships. In order to provide evidence, the thesis involves the rewriting of a portion of modern architectural history, 1949-1987. Modern architectural history is rewritten as a series of three friendship partnerships which have been selected because of their subversive reaction to their respective establishments. They are English architects, Alison Smithson and Peter Smithson; South African born architect and planner, Denise Scott Brown and North American architect, Robert Venturi; and Greek architect, Elia Zenghelis and Dutch architect, Rem Koolhaas. Crucial to the undermining of their respective enemies is the friends' collaboration on subversive projects. These projects are built, unbuilt and literary. Warring publicly through the writing of seminal texts is a significant step towards undermining the dominance of their ideological opponents. It also appears that through the making of these projects, the unrecognised architects are able to convert themselves to being recognised as new figureheads. This thesis contends that as a consequence of the power within each of the three friendship partnerships, the architects are enabled to collaborate against the dominant ideology of their respective enemies and gain status. It also contends that a cycle of friendship and warring is the political system by which the institution of modern architecture has historically reengineered itself to suit the times.

The dissertation re-examines the philosophy of Georges Bataille within the context of post-Kantian aesthetics and argues for a re-evaluation of Bataille’s notion of expenditure [depenser] within this context. The dissertation argues further that the artistic practice of Robert Smithson is an exemplary case of an ‘aesthetics of expenditure.’ It is our contention that Bataille’s cosmic-energetic philosophy finds a complementary material expression in Smithson’s abstract geology and its confrontation with post-Kantian aesthetics. We will argue that this occurs through Smithson’s varying strategies, which are grouped conceptually according to the broader logic of their expression:seriality, sedimentality, monumentality, and meandering. While Smithson’s own references to Bataille in the early 1970s are discussed in detail, it is not our position that Smithson was enacting Bataille’s philosophy ‘aesthetically’; rather, by reading Bataille’s evaluation of Kant’s aesthetics and teleology in relation to Smithson’s artistic practice, we emphasize instead that the politics of disgust shared by both figures advance a radical decentring and repositioning of the human in relation to planetary and geological forces. If, as geologists now agree, our present age is that of the Anthropocene1, our argument is that Bataille and Smithson anticipate this precarious condition analytically, and, perhaps more importantly, that their analysis suggests further important diagnostic considerations at the level of social organization and political composition that might help defer, if not entirely prevent, the catastrophic end of this all-too-human period.

The dissertation re-examines the philosophy of Georges Bataille within the context of post-Kantian aesthetics and argues for a re-evaluation of Bataille’s notion of expenditure [depenser] within this context. The dissertation argues further that the artistic practice of Robert Smithson is an exemplary case of an ‘aesthetics of expenditure.’ It is our contention that Bataille’s cosmic-energetic philosophy finds a complementary material expression in Smithson’s abstract geology and its confrontation with post-Kantian aesthetics. We will argue that this occurs through Smithson’s varying strategies, which are grouped conceptually according to the broader logic of their expression:seriality, sedimentality, monumentality, and meandering. While Smithson’s own references to Bataille in the early 1970s are discussed in detail, it is not our position that Smithson was enacting Bataille’s philosophy ‘aesthetically’; rather, by reading Bataille’s evaluation of Kant’s aesthetics and teleology in relation to Smithson’s artistic practice, we emphasize instead that the politics of disgust shared by both figures advance a radical decentring and repositioning of the human in relation to planetary and geological forces. If, as geologists now agree, our present age is that of the Anthropocene1, our argument is that Bataille and Smithson anticipate this precarious condition analytically, and, perhaps more importantly, that their analysis suggests further important diagnostic considerations at the level of social organization and political composition that might help defer, if not entirely prevent, the catastrophic end of this all-too-human period.

This dissertation is a study of the early career of the American architect-turned-artist Gordon Matta-Clark (1943–1978) that spans the years 1968 to 1972. Immersing himself in SoHo’s vibrant artistic community, of which he was both a catalyst and a nexus, Matta-Clark worked through the essential ideas and concerns that would inform his practice during this condensed but incredibly generative four-year period. The works that resulted are heterogeneous, united less by specific media than by a shared constellation of concepts. Foremost among these concepts is energy: a key trope in the cultural, theoretical, and artistic discourses of Matta-Clark’s late-1960s and early-1970s moment. In histories of this period (spurred, in part, by the attention paid to Matta-Clark’s peer, Robert Smithson), energy has often been aligned with entropy: a negative movement that leads to an ultimate stasis. In contrast, Matta-Clark marshaled energy as a creative force: a motor of the "metamorphic" processes that his works both enacted and pursued. By focusing on these four years, my study opens new perspectives on both Matta-Clark’s project and the artistic and discursive formation, Postminimalism, from which it is inextricable. In doing so, I defamiliarize art history’s current conception of Postminimalism, “requestioning” (to adopt Matta-Clark’s neologism) its central term, process, through his creative energetics.

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