Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 298-308). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (M.A.)--Stony Brook University, 2008. / This official electronic copy is part of the DSpace Stony Brook theses & dissertations collection maintained by the University Libraries, Special Collections & University Archives on behalf of the Stony Brook Graduate School. It is stored in the SUNY Digital Institutional Repository and can be accessed through the website. Presented to the Stony Brook University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Art; as recommended and accepted by the candidate's degree sponsor, the Dept. of Art. Includes bibliographical references (p. 61-71).

Denna studie avser att utforska identitetsskapandet inom den komplexa konstformen performance. Genom att fokusera på Marina Abramovićs och Frank Uwe Laysipens (Ulay) liv och kollaborativa performance ur ett performativt och psykoanalytiskt perspektiv angrips handlingarnas tyngdpunkt i skapandet av jaget under diverse omständigheter och sammanhang. / This study aims to investigates the creation of identity within the complex artform performance. By observing the life’s and collaborative performance of Marina Abramović and Frank Uwe Laysiepen (Ulay) though a performative and psychoanalytic perspective focuses the act in the creation of self in different circumstances and contexts.

<p dir="ltr">With a particular focus on her twelve years of partnership with Ulay, the life and work of performance artist Marina Abramović are taken as ekphrastic subjects in a research-based poetics reflecting the author’s understandings of art, love and belonging. In dynamic movements of literary form throughout the manuscript, <i>Nude Imperative</i> makes a restless inquiry into the meaning of embodiment as a person in language, desire, and diaspora, the nature of relation between this individual self and the intimate other, and the limits of these human connections; the limits of love.</p>

En partant de la documentation filmique de deux performances (Da ist eine kriminelle Berührung in der Kunst [Ulay, 1976] et Data [Gagnon, 2010]) qui a comme particularité commune d’avoir été soumise à des manœuvres cinématographiques, ce mémoire élabore une théorisation permettant de les penser autrement qu’en tant que documents, mais en tant que films, et plus précisément en tant qu’œuvres esthétiques complémentaires à la performance d’origine. Tombant dans une béance théorique par le fait de leur hybridité supposément contradictoire (performance, éphémère/cinéma, préservation), les deux films nous invitent à penser une conceptualisation renouvelée de la performance. Depuis cette perspective, nous démontrerons que, si le geste de performance est lui-même enchâssé dans le geste cinématographique, c’est en fonction de cette co-constitution des œuvres qu’il faut les aborder : en plus de référer à un contenu performatif, ces films performent une réalité inachevée, en termes de classification théorique mais aussi en termes de valeur politique. Nous verrons finalement qu’à travers le thème fédérateur du détournement artistique, pensé dans un rapport critique des institutions culturelles, les deux œuvres ont pour visée une transformation qui a pour but l’établissement de nouveaux rapports sociaux et politiques. Ultimement, nous défendrons que cette intervention à même une structure sociale établie ne soit possible que si la performance d’origine est présentée cinématographiquement, par le concept du geste cinématographique de performance. / The present thesis takes as its point of departure the filmed documentary works relating to two performances: Da ist eine kriminelle Berührung in der Kunst (Ulay, 1976) and Data (Gagnon, 2010). These documents have in common the fact that they were both subject to cinematic manipulation. Are we to think of them merely as documents or as films in their own right, i.e., as aesthetic objects complementary to the performances that provided the occasion for their production? Rather than leaving these documents to languish in a theoretical void or to waver between their apparently contradictory tendencies (ephemeral performances or cinematic preservation?), this thesis takes up the theoretical challenge they articulate and proposes a fresh approach to the question of performance. In particular, it will be argued that, to the extent that the performative gesture is framed by the cinematographic gesture, these works can only be made sense of in virtue of their co-constitution. As such, in addition to referring to a performative content (i.e., the original performances), these documentary films also put an incomplete reality on display, first in terms of the question of how to classify them, but also in terms of their political content. Through the common themes of an aesthetic “hijacking” of performance and of a critical perspective on cultural institutions, the thesis shows how these two documentary works suggest a transformative renewal of social and political relations. Ultimately, through the notion of a cinematic-performative gesture, which is parasitical upon established social structures, it will be shown that the success of these works depends inherently upon cinematic form.