How can artistic practice become a valid method of observing counter-histories; the histories which are not included in the institutionally supported historical narrative? How can the counter-monument movement be re-adapted and re-visited through its original ideologies, in the context of post-conflict spaces in former Yugoslavia? This practice-led project positions the state of the monument today, and more specifically in societies existing in a state of unresolved conflict. In doing so, it examines the artwork as a counter-monumental form and as an approach to unravelling issues of a resistance which exist in sites where monument-building is not possible. Departing from a body of research that looks at how destruction or alienation of sites of memory enables the denial of history and creates formats for further manipulation of historical events, this project considers whether artistic practice can provide a method of confronting the state of memorialization of conflict through an auto-ethnographic critique of historical events. Furthermore, whether artistic practice can provide insight into a space where state facilitated symbolic repair is unstable. This project takes on an appropriated structure of a play. Presented in six Acts, and a Prologue and Epilogue, it delves into an observation, through a visual and non-visual critique, of three selected, different states of conflict that have appeared in the region of former Yugoslavia and their memorialization. The first examines the WWII conflict between the Partisans and Domobranci (Homeguard) in Slovenia, the second observes the historical narrative surrounding the WWII concentration camp Jasenovac, and the third looks at the problematic state of denial of 1990s atrocities, in Republika Srpska, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Each Act unveils a methodological approach, which is considered an integral part of the artwork, and through which a different understanding of the counter-monument is appropriated. The Acts consist of reflections intertwining three different modes of presenting knowledge; through theoretical concepts surrounding conflict, memory, monuments, representations of violence in the arts and politics (considered as stage notes, giving context), interrupted by a series of narrative recollections (imitating diary descriptions, of events that are either encounters with places or people and treated as a scenography which creates the atmosphere), and the artworks (which are regarded as the script). Through a series of artworks, this project, appears almost as a gesamtkunstwerk, or complete body of the Acts, weaving through theoretical and historical constructs in order to challenge the premise of social and artistic representations of trauma, history, political power, and social injustice. In doing so, it positions the action of making research as the sculptural-visible and non-visible-form which attempts to redefine political sculpture as the re/de-construction of the counter-monument.

Staging the Encounter: the Work of Art as a Stage is a practice-led PhD project that consists of a thesis and a studio component in sculpture. Through a research question on the dimension of staging in the practice of sculpture, understood as the spatial staging that is intrinsic to placing objects in space, I speculate on the effect of this agency on the encounter of the viewer with the work of art. In this respect staging is linked to the modality of aesthetic presentation and the emergence of affect in the viewer. The thesis investigates different trajectories of thought that reveal a shift in art from an aesthetic experience keyed on objects to activated scenes of encounter. The aesthetic event becomes an in-between zone where objecthood, medium and autonomy are redefined. The first chapter explores a subject produced by an encounter with a work of art. Two stories of aesthetic embodiment in ancient Greek drama and Sanskrit performance describe a dynamic co-creation between the viewer and the work of art; here the aesthetic model dictates its events to theory. The affective becomings latent in the art encounter restore a connection between the viewing subject and its faculty of entering the world through the senses. In the second chapter I explore the implications of staging for contemporary sculpture and installation. A sculptural performativity across situated objects and emerging affects maps as lines of force in the space that art stages. The expanded space of sculpture reverberates social and political frictions through a subversive materiality, casting objects as agents of an insubordinate order. The third chapter presents my studio practice, which develops through a series of sculptures, video works and performances. In these works I set up spaces that act as rehearsals, scenes that act as platforms for encounters. I also describe case studies of encounters with works of art that manifest the elements that I discuss throughout the thesis: a staged encounter that produces an oscillation in the viewer between states of affect and becoming and critical reflection.

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This thesis and related artwork examines the layers of meaning around the Tower of Babel and how the myth can be visually represented today. This thesis attempts to give new readings to the myth drawing on history, literature, philosophy and architectural writings while using multi-media visual experimentation to highlight the contemporary experience. The Tower of Babel acts as a generator of the creative process and provides a structural framework for the motivation of my creative practice. Throughout the written thesis the relationship between the myth and a possible contemporary reality is explored and can be seen as crucial to understanding the depth to which the myth has influenced and shaped contemporary art practice in terms of both the theory and the actual making and presenting of artwork in the late 20" and early 21" century. In the artwork this reality manifested itself in the three- part multi site exhibition of installations of my work, Reconstructing Babel. This acted as a test case in which the ideas about how and why the myth exists are explored and confronted within a given environment, the museum. Overall, the thesis and artwork show in combination how the modern Babel manifests itself as an excess of communication in which we are no longer able to select or decode. It is a city in the throes of continuous transformation which is searching for order, a centre, a name and a universal language.