À partir d’un corpus ouvert de photographes et de cinéastes coloristes qui ont une fascination pour le nocturne, cette thèse explore les différentes gradations et significations de celui-ci, des plus évidentes aux plus abstraites. La thèse s’attache alors à démontrer que le régime nocturne transforme l’obscurité en valeurs chromatiques et qu’il éclaire, avec une subtilité qu’occulte la vision diurne, les aspects les plus complexes de la société et de l’esprit humain. La confrontation des analyses de séquences filmiques et de photographies dans une perspective articulant esthétique, philosophie et histoire de l’art, a permis de construire la thèse autour de trois grandes notions, Distorsion, Sublimation, Transfiguration, qui fondent le nocturne comme catégorie esthétique de l’image.Le corpus principal organisé sur des critères externes (nocturne, couleur post-années 1960-70) et internes (processus esthétiques conjoints) est composé de séquences de films en couleurs de Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999), de David Lynch (1946), de Brian de Palma (1940), de Francis Ford Coppola (1939) et de séries photographiques de Gregory Crewdson (1962), Bill Henson (1955), Rut Blees Luxemburg (1967) et Daniel Boudinet (1945-1990).Le corpus secondaire est constitué de séries photographiques de Darren Almond (1971), Jean-Christian Bourcart (1960), Nicolas Dhervillers (1981), Laurent Hopp (1974), Chrystel Lebas (1966), d’extraits d’un court métrage d’Antoine Barraud (1973) et d’une série TV de Nic Pizzolatto (1975) et Justin Lin (1973), nécessaire pour finaliser la démonstration. / Based on a large corpus of colorist film directors and photographers who share a fascination for the nocturne, this thesis explores the different gradations and meanings of this one, from the more obvious to the more abstracts. The thesis endeavours to demonstrate how the nocturne reasserts the darkness values to turn them into colors, and how it illuminates, with a subtlety absent in diurnal vision, the more complex aspects of society as well as the human mind.The confrontation between picture and film sequences analysis, with a perspective articulating aesthetic, philosophy and art history, leads to three main concepts: Distortion, Sublimation and Transfiguration. Thereby it establishes the nocturne as an image’s aesthetic category in cinema and photography.The main corpus in cinema and photography, organised by externals criteria (nocturne, post-1960-1970 years color) and internals criteria (similar operating processes aesthetic), is established with the movie extracts of Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999), David Lynch (1946), Brian de Palma (1940), Francis Ford Coppola (1939) as well as the photographic series of Gregory Crewdson (1962), Bill Henson (1955), Rut Blees Luxemburg (1967) and Daniel Boudinet (1945-1990).The second is based on the photographic series of Darren Almond (1971), Jean-Christian Bourcart (1960), Nicolas Dhervillers (1981), Laurent Hopp (1974) and Chrystel Lebas (1966), as well as Antoine Barraud’s (1973) movie extracts. Finally, for the requirement of the demonstration, a Nic Pizzolatto (1975) and Justin Lin (1973) TV show.

Mainstream cinema is to an ever-increasing degree deploying digital imaging technologies to work with the human form; expanding on it, morphing its features, or providing new ways of presenting it. This has prompted theories of simulation and virtualisation to explore the cultural and aesthetic implications, anxieties, and possibilities of a loss of the ‘real’ – in turn often defined in terms of the photographic trace. This thesis wants to provide another perspective. Following instead some recent imperatives in art-theory, this study looks to introduce and expand on the notion of the human figure, as pertaining to processes of figuration rather than (only) representation. The notion of the figure and figuration have an extended history in the fields of hermeneutics, aesthetics, and philosophy, through which they have come to stand for particular theories and methodologies with regards to images and their communication of meaning. This objective of this study is to appropriate these for film-theory, culminating in two case-studies to demonstrate how formal parameters present and organise ideas of the body and the human. The aim is to develop a material approach to contemporary digital practices, where bodies have not ceased to matter but are framed in new ways by new technologies.

The thesis combines D.N. Rodowick’s concept of the figural, denoting the complex nature of filmic signification; Roland Barthes’ distinctions between the readerly and the writerly, which are different methods of engaging with a text; and Thierry Kuntzel’s concept of semiotic constellations, the reading of recurring yet fragmented motifs that occur throughout the film. Here reintroduced through the concept of eddies—discursive fields within the film which displace the connection between the signifier and signified (the flow of signification), instead distinguished by signifiers engendering new signifiers (the swirl of signification)—to unlock a new method of reading a film. This method focuses on interpreting the latent meanings of the plural of the text; the residual signs in the film which hold little to no bearing on its narrative, but through their deconstruction and later reassembly they may guide to viewer to new meanings. By first delineating the method proposed for this type of reading, the thesis then applies this method to the reading of one such eddy in the art-film Out 1: Noli me tangere from 1970, which is connected to the discursive field of Prometheus Bound, a play rehearsed within the film by a group of six actors who engage in various exercises, which at first glance seem to be entirely unconnected to the play. In this case, the method reveals through the figural activity of the film that the exercises of the group are engaged in dialogue with themes touched upon in the play.

This thesis deals with the problematics of stylization in figural sculpture creation with regard to realizations of chosen sculptors of 20th century. Thesis is devided into a theoretical part and a practical part. The theoretical part discusses some of the formal possibilities of stytization and its application in sculptural creation. Basic artistic means of expression and some determinants of sculptural creation together with nonverbal means are analyzed and used in characterictics of sculptural artworks of some Czech creators of 20th century. The practical part consists of a series of sketches, studies and variants of figural stylization, that applicates findings emerged from the theoretical part.

This thesis demonstrates how the dynamics of hypertext fiction can inform an understanding of spectatorial practices provoked by contemporary performance and installation work. It develops the notion of the ‘hypertextual experience’ to encapsulate the particular qualities of active user engagement instigated by the unstable aesthetic environments common to digital and non-digital artworks. The significance and application of this term will be refined through an examination of different works in each of the study’s six chapters. Those discussed are as follows: Performances: Susurrus, by David Leddy; Love Letters Straight from the Heart and Make Better Please, by Uninvited Guests; The Waves, by Katie Mitchell; House/ Lights and Route 1 & 9, by the Wooster Group; Two Undiscovered Amerindians Discover the West, by Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gómez-Peña. Digital works: Afternoon (1987) by Michael Joyce; Victory Garden (1992) by Stuart Moulthrop; TOC by Steve Tomasula; The Princess Murderer by Deena Larsen. Installations: H.G. and Mozart’s House, by Robert Wilson; Listening Post, by Mark Hanson and Ben Rubin. In developing and discussing the hypertextual experience the thesis uses a number of conceptual frameworks and draws on philosophical perspectives and digital theory. A central part of the study employs an adaptation of possible worlds theory that has been recently developed by digital theorists for examining hypertext fiction. I extend this application to installation and performance and explore the implications of framing a spectator’s experience in terms of a hypertextual structure which foregrounds its performative operations and its engagement with machinic processes.

<p>This thesis examines John Berryman’s poetry of loss together with four different theoretical perspectives. It is the purpose of the study to involve Berryman’s poetry and critical theory in a dialogue which attempts to break down the hierarchy that positions theory as the subject and literature or poetry as the object of study. Instead, by focusing on the otherness of each discourse, that is, what could be called the unconscious of Berryman’s poetry of loss and the language of theory, poetry and theory can be seen to presuppose and mutually imply each other. Those of Berryman’s poems mainly analyzed in the thesis, and which could be called his poetry of loss are “The Ball Poem,” Homage to Mistress Bradstreet, and The Dream Songs. The four theoretical perspectives consist of Martin Heidegger’s thinking concerning the word and concept departure, David S. Reynolds’s notion of the subversive in the American Renaissance, Nicolas Abraham’s psychoanalytical concept anasemia, and Maurice Blanchot’s theory of death and poetry in his book The Space of Literature. The theoretical base of the thesis is developed primarily from Shoshana Felman’s “To open the question,” an editorial introduction to a special issue of Yale French Studies entitled Literature and Psychoanalysis. The Question of Reading: Otherwise and Timothy Clark’s study Derrida, Heidegger, Blanchot.</p>

This thesis examines John Berryman’s poetry of loss together with four different theoretical perspectives. It is the purpose of the study to involve Berryman’s poetry and critical theory in a dialogue which attempts to break down the hierarchy that positions theory as the subject and literature or poetry as the object of study. Instead, by focusing on the otherness of each discourse, that is, what could be called the unconscious of Berryman’s poetry of loss and the language of theory, poetry and theory can be seen to presuppose and mutually imply each other. Those of Berryman’s poems mainly analyzed in the thesis, and which could be called his poetry of loss are “The Ball Poem,” Homage to Mistress Bradstreet, and The Dream Songs. The four theoretical perspectives consist of Martin Heidegger’s thinking concerning the word and concept departure, David S. Reynolds’s notion of the subversive in the American Renaissance, Nicolas Abraham’s psychoanalytical concept anasemia, and Maurice Blanchot’s theory of death and poetry in his book The Space of Literature. The theoretical base of the thesis is developed primarily from Shoshana Felman’s “To open the question,” an editorial introduction to a special issue of Yale French Studies entitled Literature and Psychoanalysis. The Question of Reading: Otherwise and Timothy Clark’s study Derrida, Heidegger, Blanchot.

Este trabajo de investigación se propone realizar un particular recorrido por la historia del cine a través del fuera de campo, es decir, una historia de las imágenes no vistas, aunque presenciadas, del cine; y para emprender este recorrido se ha designado a la obra del cineasta Jacques Tourneur como prisma particular. Se trata, entonces, de una historia del fuera de campo cinematográfico, desde el fuera de campo tourneuriano. Por esta razón, este trabajo no será un estudio sobre Tourneur, sino desde Tourneur. Aquello que todo fuera de campo revela en sus despliegues figurativos, son las tensiones entre lo visible e invisible, entre aparición y desaparición: en esas tensiones se bate la Historia en la que todo fuera de campo fue obrado. A partir de esta historia del fuera de campo desde el fuera de campo tourneuriano, que ocupará los cuatro primeros capítulos de esta tesis, se abordará la Historia de una figuración más huidiza y esencial: la figuración de algo que aparece entre lo que desaparece. A esta particular figuración se consagrará la segunda mitad de esta investigación. / This thesis traces a singular route through the history of cinema through the out of frame, that is, a history of images witnessed but never seen; as a beginning of this route we have chosen the special prism of the work of the filmmaker Jacques Tourneur. It is thus a history of the out of frame in cinema, beginning with Tourneur’s out of frame. For this reason, it will not be a study of Tourneur but rather from Tourneur. What the out of frame always reveals in its figurative unraveling are the tensions between the visible and the invisible, the appearance and the disappearance: to those tensions the whole History of out of frame can be traced. After this history of the out of frame from Tourner’s out of frame, which will cover the four initial chapters of this thesis, we will pass on to the History of an even more elusive and essential figuration: the figuration of something that appears within that which disappears. To this particular figuration we will devote the second half of this study.

Avec l’émergence des nouveaux médias, une nouvelle façon de raconter les histoires s’impose. Les structures connues de l’esthétisme classique semblent désuètes par rapport aux dispositions des nouvelles plateformes de diffusion. Mieux encore, ces plateformes propulsent le récit, lui permettent de sortir de la rigidité de la ligne narrative : elles intègrent la technique au logos. L’intermédialité devient omniprésente; la diversité des types médiatiques employés dans une œuvre sont rendus visibles et sont articulés par la mise en récit. Méchoulan dira que dans l’« être-entre », dans l’espace reliant chacune des unités sémantiques, que l’événement de la pensée advient; pour Rodowick c’est le « figural ». Une figure particulière s’impose : le labyrinthe. Multipliant les possibilités narratives spécifiques aux nouveaux médias, le labyrinthe fait converger les composantes intermédiales. Bleeding Through : Layers of Los Angeles 1920-1986, une œuvre dirigée par Norman Klein, pose le labyrinthe comme élément structurel en y tissant un réseau où s’inscrit une pratique intermédiale. On y adresse le temps comme une opération fragmentaire, qui se sectionne, se réorganise en rompant avec la linéarité classique. Il nous faudra alors voir comment le labyrinthe réfléchit dans l’étude du temps certains éléments de la mythologie grecque. Les réflexions de Gervais sur le labyrinthe permettront d’étayer pareille hypothèse. Nous analyserons Bleeding Through à la lumière de ces théories pour ainsi dégager l’essence de cette figure qui a infiltrée la narration contemporaine. En somme, le labyrinthe se présente dans l’écologie médiatique actuelle comme une figure inhérente à la mise en récit. / With the emergence of new media, a new way of storytelling becomes necessary. The known structures of classic estheticism become obsolete when confronted with the dispositions of the new broadcasted platforms. These so called platforms propel the plot structure, allowing an expansion of the rigid narrative line : they integrate technology into the logos. Intermediality becomes omnipresent ; the diverse media summoned in the different projects are made visible and articulated through narrative work. Méchoulan would talk about the « être-entre », the virtual space linking semantic units, that the occurrence of thoughts convene ; Rodowick would refer to this same spatial concept as « figural ». A particular figure then appears and seems to illustrate the workings of intermediality: the labyrinth. In multiplying the narrative possibilities specific to new media, the labyrinth interrelates the intermedial components. Bleeding Through : Layers of Los Angeles 1920-1986, directed by Norman Klein, establishes the labyrinth as a narrative backdrop to the intermedial practice. Herein, time is addressed as a fragmented function that can be segmented, reorganized, thus breaking with classic linearity. Subsequently, elements of Greek mythology tied to the labyrinth’s imaginary are highlighted, particularly through Gervais’s reflexions on memory and forgetting. To question the essence of the labyrinth’s figure, which infiltrates contemporary narration, Bleeding Through is analyzed under the scope of these theories. In short, the labyrinth is presented as an inherent figure to storytelling within the current media ecology.

En prenant comme point de départ les débats célèbres des années 1970 et 1980 portés autour de l’universalité de l’herméneutique, des débats entraînant les grands acteurs de la pensée du XXe siècle comme Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jürgen Habermas et Jacques Derrida, cette thèse s’efforce d’identifier, derrière la revendication à l’universalité de l’herméneutique, la véritable problématique philosophique qui est, à nos yeux, celle de l’intelligibilité herméneutique du temps. Nous tâchons de saisir cette intelligibilité, qui traduit l’articulation paradoxale de l’être et du temps comme différence, par une lecture des configurations que « l’oubli du sens de l’être » et « la distance temporelle » connaissent dans la pensée de Martin Heidegger et de Hans-Georg Gadamer. En effet, cette lecture figurale de l’oubli et de la distance temporelle, qui forme les deux grandes sections de notre travail, se veut une modalité de comprendre la manière paradoxale du temps de susciter la différence herméneutique, notamment sa capacité simultanée à générer l’occultation et le dévoilement du sens, d’accorder d’un seul geste le surcroît de sens et la finitude de la compréhension. Suite à cette lecture, nous concluons que l’herméneutique ontologique a le grand mérite d’avoir interrogé le phénomène de la différence entre compréhension et mécompréhension et d’y avoir décelé, à la fois comme préalable et comme condition de son effectivité, l’intelligibilité herméneutique du temps. Finalement, l’universalité herméneutique même révèle sa nature essentiellement temporelle : comme « aspect productif de la temporalité », elle se confond en dernier ressort avec la dynamique du ce qui est à comprendre. / By taking as starting point the famous debates from the 70s and the 80s around the universality of hermeneutics, which had inflamed some of the 20th century greatest thinkers, such as Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jürgen Habermas et Jacques Derrida, this PhD thesis attempts to identify the actual philosophical question behind the hermeneutics’ claim of universality: the time’s hermeneutical intelligibility. I strive to express this intelligibility, which translates the paradoxical articulation of time and being as difference, by proposing an interpretation of two essential “figures” for the thinking of Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer: “the forgetting of being” and “the temporal distance”. More precisely, this interpretation or, as I call it, “figural reading” intends to understand the time’s paradoxical way of engendering the hermeneutical difference, that is: its capacity to generate simultaneously the occultation and the revealing of meaning, its potential to give the surplus of meaning and, at the same time, the finitude of comprehension. As a result of this figural reading, I conclude that the hermeneutics has its worth in interrogating the phenomenon of the difference between understanding and misunderstanding, and more precisely in identifying, as a foregoing condition of this difference’s effectivity, the time’s hermeneutical intelligibility. Finally, the hermeneutical universality reveals its genuine temporal nature: taken as a “productive aspect of the temporality”, it merges into the dynamics “of what is to be understood”.