Thesis (M.A. (Journalism and Media Studies))--Rhodes University, 2004. / Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts.

This thesis is a process of writing characters using a cyclical methodology to turn the writer into a reader of their own work, then back into a writer again. The components of this thesis both practice and propose writing as research and develop a concept of character that is ‘relational’. Taking Donald Barthelme’s assertion, ‘Writing is a process of dealing with not-knowing, a forcing of what and how,’ this thesis is attentive to the uncertainty of process: a process that has accreted knowledge in the form of characters and methods. Making People Up is chronologically structured in order to make visible how its form was discovered through practice. The first component is a book of character studies You are of vital importance written in the first year of the PhD. This is followed by a reflective manuscript of essays which use a method of redescription to render a generative moment between the completion of one book and the beginning of the next. The third component is a second book Social Script which is a character study and a conclusion to the thesis. Building on Adam Phillips’ assertion, ‘Being misrepresented is simply being presented with a version of ourselves – an invention – that we cannot agree with. But we are daunted by other people making us up, by the number of people we seem to be,’ this thesis starts from the premise that in the everyday we make each other up and then goes on to use the form of the character study to explore unresolvable tensions around this process. Building four parallel propositions: that character is fiction; that a relational concept of character is a critique of the extent to which we can know each other; that constituting the writer as a reader of their own characters renders a generative moment and critical reflection; that oscillating the proximity to and distance from a character provokes you, the reader, to imagine character as a relationally contingent concept. The thesis will draw on key concepts by Christopher Bollas and Adam Phillips, literary discourse on character, reader-response criticism and a selection of literary and artistic works that have informed this process of writing characters. Research Questions: 1. Does a relational concept of character critique claims to ‘know’ each other? 2. Does replacing interpretation with redescription make a reflective methodology critical and generative? 3. What kind of narrative structure will constitute a ‘relational’ character study?

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In today’s lexicon a ‘Daily Constitutional’ usually refers to a daily walk. But in actuality, a ‘Daily Constitutional’ is something that one does on a daily basis that is beneficial to one’s constitution or healthful(1); and one’s constitution being the aggregate of a person’s physical and psychological characteristics(2). With this definition, the daily constitutional refers to any daily activity that improves a person’s physical or mental health. At various stages in my life I may have understood my constitutional to be any number of things and it was not until I came into my own did I truly discover my Daily Constitutional, the creative process. In the following thesis I will be covering my thoughts and opinions on the creative process as well as my role of Artist in a larger art community. The thesis consists of six chapters, each being a letter I wrote for Daily Constitutional, A Publication for the Artist’s Voice as the Editor-in-Chief. I created the Daily Constitutional in 2005 in order to provide my contemporary colleagues with an opportunity to once again have a voice in the art world. The publication is entirely submission based with an international open call. Each semi-annual issue is created out of the submissions received and composed by a rotating panel of six artists and has been ongoing throughout my tenure at Virginia Commonwealth University. The mission of the publication is to provide an outlet and forum for the individual Artist’s voice, rather than the cacophony that is the art world at large (galleries, critics, curators, museums, patrons and finally the artists themselves). To provide a place to express, exchange and discuss, without interpretation, the artist’s opinions, ideas and discoveries within one’s practice. This publication can only be made possible, through a collaboration of individual Artists.(3) This document was created with Adobe InDesign CS2. 1. “constitutional.” Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 03 May. 2009. . 2. “constitution.” Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 03 May. 2009. . 3. “Mission Statement,” Daily Constitutional, A Publication for the Artist’s Voice, 2005-09, http://www.dailyconstitutional.org/mission_statement.html

This thesis identifies and analyzes gendering in the art writing devoted to Lee Bontecou's metal and canvas sculptures made from the 1959 - 1964. Through a careful reading of reviews and articles written about Bontecou's constructions, this thesis reconstructs the context of the art world in the United States at mid-century and investigates how cultural expectations regarding gender directed the reception of Bontecou's art, beginning in 1959 and continuing through mid-1960s. Incorporating a description of the contemporaneous cultural context with description of the constructions and an analysis of examples of primary writing, the thesis chronologically follows the evolution of a tendency in art writing to associate gender-specific motivation and interpretation to one recurring feature of Bontecou's works.

My doctoral thesis is comprised of two bodies of research: two artworks taking the form of installations (videos, audio recordings, textiles, texts), which will be exhibited for viva. Femme Fabrications, 2016, is made from research into the American artist Joseph Cornell's (1903-1972) source materials held in the Smithsonian American Art Museum alongside research on Jean Wilkinson's 1977 book Flower Fabrications. A series of textile works encased in silk lined boxes trace my step-by-step construction of a rose from organdie. The floral emblem of the white rose (dried), 'death is preferable to a loss of innocence' , becomes an editing device, which I use to consider a number of possible recipients for the rose, such as Cornell himself. Spoken word audio recordings, which ruminate on how his sexuality pertain to the criteria of the rose are edited together with home-camcorder video footage of the house that Cornell lived in for most of his life - the house he made the entirety of his artworks within. Central to The Cesspool of Rapture, 2017, are moving-image studies of zippers, stains, rips, abrasions, openings, and closings in a series of dresses made by the American couturier Charles James (1906-1978). These videos register and move through the material research, the garments, at alternating speeds. The changing speed is registered in sound by clicks synced to each individual frame. It is at times violent and at other times tentative and gentle as the uncovering of the damage to the dresses unfolds. Audio recordings of James explicating his interests in eroticism and sexuality persistently interject the footage. This work includes the installation of a series of reconstructions of James's 1932 Taxi dress. Its black linen body is reconfigured and abstracted as the splayed design makes unfinished seams and unzipped zippers visible. In each artwork I configure viewing and consuming as a mode of authorship. I show how these diverse processes of identification become authored acts. When drawn into intimate relation with the leftover material of these historical authors, my contamination proves deviant: I gain possession of the capacity to speak for them, to expose, idolise, misrepresent, and fictionalise them. My thesis is composed of this group of methodologies, which were found and developed within the production of the artworks.

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