This study investigates effects on the ephemeral artwork and its ephemeral quality when documented and archived. To define the ephemeral artform a definition presented by Mary O’Neill in her thesis Ephemeral Art: Mourning and Loss (2007) is used, and two ephemeral artworks are studied: Zoe Leonard’s Strange Fruit (for David) (1992-1997) and Felix Gonzalez-Torres' ”Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) (1991). Results from these case studies are compared to each other and to Peggy Phelan’s critical stance on the possibilities of documenting time-based and performative artforms in Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (1993). Results show that the ephemeral artwork becomes ephemeral through slow degradation and the experience this degradation generates in the observer; processes in time that cannot be documented. However, documentation can affect the observer’s experience of ”here and now,” which may alter the artwork’s communicative abilities and its effectiveness in creating a sense of presence within the passing of time. / I denna studie studeras påverkan på det efemära konstverket och dess efemära egenskap när det dokumenteras och arkiveras. För att definiera den efemära konstformen används en definition som presenteras av Mary O’Neill i avhandlingen Ephemeral Art: Mourning and Loss (2007), och två efemära konstverk studeras: Zoe Leonards Strange Fruit (for David) (1992–1997) och Felix Gonzalez-Torres ”Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) (1991). Resultat från verkanalyser av dessa verk jämförs mot varandra samt mot Peggy Phelans uppfattning att performance-baserad konst inte kan dokumenteras i Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (1993). Resultat visar att det efemära konstverket blir efemärt genom sin långsamma nedbrytning och genom betraktarens upplevelse av denna nedbrytning – temporala processer som inte kan dokumenteras med exakthet. Dokumentering kan dock innebära att betraktarens upplevelse av ”här och nu” påverkas och således verkets förmåga att kommunicera effektivt om passerande tid och frambringa närvaro i nuet.

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WEAVING PAST INTO PRESENT revolves around contradictory feelings towards, on the one hand, the lure of a mythic past, and on the other hand its absurdity and potential danger. This is done by stating that craft and weaving is inherently conservative, closely connected to nostalgia and claimed as something more authentic and pristine. In continuation used in the creation of an idealized and romanticized past generating a separation between an “us and them”. These problems are created by the main quest and question of this work, to weave the past into present and then ask; which past is woven into the present presence of the tapestries? The paper then continues to describe the methods and considerations used and made in this time-translation. Looking at the sketch and the collage as ways of materializing and enmeshing the transient flow of time through cacophonies of ephemera and threads. Concluding that I, just as the ones creating mythic pasts, am not weaving a past at all. But merely weaving a sketch trying to highlight the feeling and fear of loss apparent today in encountering the accelerated present, the eerie future, and the desirable progressive changes towards equality / WEAVING PAST INTO PRESENT rör sig kring motsägelsefulla känslor gentemot å ena sidan, lockelsen i ett mytiskt förflutet, och å andra sidan dess absurditet och potentiella fara. Detta görs genom att påstå att konsthantverk och vävning i sig är konservativt, nära kopplat till nostalgi och ansett som något mer autentiskt och ursprungligt. Fortsättningsvis används det i skapandet av ett idealiserat och romantiserat förflutet som skapar en separation mellan ett “vi och dom”. Dessa problem har uppstått tillsammans med arbetets huvudsakliga mål och frågeställning, att väva det förflutna in i nuet och fråga sig; vilket förflutet är det som vävs till den nuvarande närvaron av bildvävarna?  Uppsatsen fortsätter sedan med att beskriva de metoder och överväganden som använts och gjorts i denna tidsöversättning. Genom att betrakta skissen och collaget som sätt att materialisera och sammanfoga tidens förgängliga flöde genom kakofonier av det efemära och trådar. Slutfattningsvis att jag, precis som de som skapar mytiska förflutna, inte alls väver ett förflutet. Utan bara väver en skiss som försöker belysa den känsla och rädsla för förlust som är uppenbar idag i mötet med det accelererande nuet, den kusliga framtiden och de önskvärda progressiva förändringarna mot jämlikhet.

Contained herein is a close examination of self-awareness and self-portraiture as it applies to the works of artist Jeffrey Hoffman. Water, frozen into various forms and combined with natural elements of wood, slowly melt over an indeterminable amount of time, each droplet documented as the process transforms the elements. Through this process, we see change. We see time. We see truth. This documentation of change and time through natural elements is where the artwork comes full circle. Working with new media to explore man's interconnectivity to life, energy, and the cosmos, he produces time based installations, photographs, videos, and sculptures that serve as both existential metaphors and Tantric symbols. With the use of digital cameras and video, a record is created by which the disintegration which occurs from the unseen forces of gravity, heat and time upon sculptures made from natural elements and ice is examined. In its sculptural form, his work can be categorized as Installation art and Performance art due to its evolving nature. Each piece is intended to either change over time or to have that change halted by another temporal force like that of flowing electricity. The possibility of allowing varying levels of self-awareness to emerge through self portraiture is also examined. The existential, as well as the metaphysical, can be present in a physical form when the form is imbued with evidence of an evolutionary process. In many ways, the work serves as a self portrait. It is a means for Hoffman to examine his own existentialism as a student of the modern western world and life.

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(Not) Drawing The Line: Technology Re-examined is the culmination of interdisciplinary research exploring the nature of materiality and process in the fields of art, science, and technology. Exploration and experimentation in these diverse disciplines have helped to illuminate many of the ideas and concepts that have guided the overall research process. These explorations have also honed the ability to critically examine how technology is perceived and represented, post-internet.   This document illustrates the processes involved in the conception and creation of a body of work manifested through visual and technological problem solving, investigative research of materials and technologies, and the fundamental concerns of art, technology, form and pattern. These empirical areas of research are punctuated by literary texts on the philosophy of art and technology that have informed many of the visual comparisons represented. This body of evidence is an exploration of the idea that the evolution of technological developments can often be attributed to the creation of art through the heuristic experimentation and visual explorations of the artist. / Master of Fine Arts / (Not) Drawing The Line: Technology Re-examined is the result of exploration and research in the areas of studio art, science, and technology. Many of the ideas and concepts presented in this documentation are a result of curiosity-driven research which uses materials and processes to help form connections across disciplines. In most examples, the materials used are common or familiar items such as the #2 pencil, reflective surfaces such as a mirror, or clay used for ceramics. The intention behind the work documented in this thesis is to help the viewer look at these everyday materials in a different way than their common use suggests through visual comparisons and wordplay. Its goal is to suggest that a new use or discovery may be presented in common materials and that solutions to complicated problems could be found right under our noses, so to speak. at its core, it is a commentary on technology, its uses, and perceptions during our current, post-internet place in history

This thesis is an ethnography of the global belly dance community with particular reference to the transmission of dance paradigms from Cairo to the international dance community. Key words describing my topic include dance, gender, performance, group dynamics, social norms and resistance, public vs. private, tourism, and globalisation. I hypothesize that social dancing is used in many parts of the world as a space outside ordinary life in which to demonstrate compliance with or to challenge prevailing social paradigms. The examination of dance as a globalised unit of cultural capital is an emerging field. With this in mind I investigate the way this dance is employed in professional, semi-professional, and non-professional settings in Egypt and in other parts of the world, notably North America and Europe. Techniques included interviewing members of the international dance community who engage in dance tourism, travelling from their homes to Egypt or other destinations in order to take dance classes, get costumes, or in other ways seek to have an 'authentic' dance experience. I also explored connections dancers fostered with other members of the dance community both locally and in geographically distant locations by using online blogs, websites, listservs and social networking sites. I conducted the first part of my fieldwork in Cairo following this with fieldwork in belly dance communities in the United States and Britain.

Considering that during the Baroque there was arguably nothing more enigmatic than the emblematic tradition, this thesis discusses how emblems played a role in the configuration of subjectivities in New Spain and, more precisely, in their production of symbolic imagery. Through the analysis of the poetic, political, and philosophical functions of the 1680 Neptuno alegórico (Allegorical Neptune), this this study discusses the concepts of "emblem,"ekphrasis"," "syncretism," and "neoplatonic tradition" in one of the most rethorical and multifaceted texts of the humanist writer and Hieronymite nun sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695). / Graduate / mplundin@gmail.com

Depuis quelques années, les « collectifs d’architectes » occupent une part non négligeable de l’espace médiatique. Savons-nous même qui sont-ils et ce qu’ils font ? Telles sont les deux principales questions aux quelles nous avons ici tenté de répondre. Une recherche se fondant sur des opportunités, la mienne a été d’être co-fondateur en 2009 de l’un de ces groupes, le Collectif Etc. J’en suis depuis l’un de ses principaux animateurs, et toute cette recherche a alors pris appui sur ce groupe. Une première partie nous a permis de mettre en évidence un réseau de praticiens français que nous qualifions de « collectifs d’architectes », groupes formés majoritairement d’architectes, dont l’objectif est de favoriser l’implication citoyenne dans les processus de transformation de la ville dans le but de créer des situations autogérées. Leurs modalités d’intervention correspondent à la réunion de la pratique de la résidence, de l’usage de l’auto-construction et de la production d’architectures éphémères.Dans une seconde partie, nous avons pu formuler l’hypothèse que ces groupes développeraient un modèle original de pratique du projet, reposant sur la construction de trois matrices, que nous avons appelées mythogénique, constructive, et politique. Pour chacune d’elles, une recherche historico-théorique nous a permis d’en former des définitions caractérisant une pratique matricielle du projet favorisant l’implication citoyenne. Et si ce modèle a été construit sur la base de la pratique de ces groupes particuliers, nous pensons qu’il pourrait se révéler pertinent à l’ensemble des praticiens souhaitant impliquer divers acteurs dans les processus de fabrique de la ville. / In recent years, "architects’ collectives" have occupied a significant part of the media space. Do we even know who they are and what they do? These are the two main questions to which we have tried to answer. A research is based on opportunities, mine was to be the co-founder in 2009 of one of these groups, Collectif Etc. I have been one of his main fanimators, and all this research has been based on this group. The first part enabled us to highlight a network of practitioners that we call "architects’ collective ", groups formed mainly by architects, whose goal is to promote citizen involvement in the processes of transformation of the cities, in order to create self-managed situations. Their methods of intervention correspond to the combination of the practice of residence, the use of self-construction and the production of ephemeral architectures. In a second part, we were able to formulate the hypothesis that these groups developed an original model of project practice, based on the construction of three matrices, which we called mythogenic, constructive, and political. For each of them, a historico-theoretical research has enabled us to form more complete definitions, characterizing a matrix practice of the project, favoring the involvement of the citizen. And if this model was built from the practice of these particular groups, we believe that it might be relevant to all practitioners wishing to involve various actors in the city's making processes.

Aesthetic criticism very often has been overlooked and considered a lesser form. However, many interpretations, applications and discernments can be obtained from this kind of art writing. Using Osvaldo Sánchez's work as a case study, this thesis examines how writerly art criticism offers an active reading framework of the work of art by using philosophical, literary and poetic constructions. In this regard, I will see how the "writerly" condition has contributed compelling insights to the History of Aesthetics, highlighting the connections and disconnections between Sánchez and other writerly critics, which demonstrates the significance of developing a flexible, available and aesthetic learning model of art appreciation. I will analyze as well various models of experience, subjective and objective, that release certain "openness" as a premise for their existences. Here are included the Kantian sublime, Heidegger's ontological Being, the surrealist cultivation of chance, Kaprow's happenings, and the attitude of disinterest developed by the vanishing poets as defended by the scholar Rafael Hernández Rodríguez. I will show that, by choosing an accommodating approach to discover forms of knowledge, an assortment of valuable empirical content can be found. Finally, I investigate the writerly work of Cuban critic Osvaldo Sánchez that does not adopt a fixed critical pattern. Instead, Sánchez's art writing passes through fields, providing us with a heuristic methodology in which the aesthetic emerges not as a preconditioned set of principles/procedures, but as a true lived experience.