Neste projeto pretendo realizar séries de desenhos, gravuras e pinturas tendo o jardim como tema central. Para realizá-lo, buscarei referências em minhas memórias pessoais, particularmente as relacionadas com o pequeno jardim da casa de subúrbio de minha infância, e nos jardins concebidos por poetas e artistas, no que possam ter de pequenos, modestos, delicados e instáveis. Esta impermanência ou efemeridade inerente a este tema será refletida durante a invenção e feitura das obras, através da exploração da instabilidade, dos possíveis limites e fronteiras, passagens e caminhos, afastamentos e aproximações entre a pintura, o desenho e a gravura. / In this project, I intend to perform series of drawings, prints and paintings with the garden as the central theme. To accomplish it, I will look for references in my personal memories, particularly those related to the small garden of the suburban house of my childhood, and in the gardens designed by poets and artists, in what they may have of small, modest, delicate and unstable. This impermanence or ephemerality inherent at this theme will be reflected during the invention and production of the works, through the exploration of the instability and of the possible limits and borders, passages and paths, separations and approximations between painting, drawing and printmaking.

My thesis exhibition entitled The Privilege of Being Solid is an exploration of the tension that is generated by our desire for an ultimate corporeal security and the realization that nothing is permanent. This tension expresses itself in the world in varying degrees through programs of repression oscillating with periods of chaos. <p>We live in a post-modern era of fragmentation and uncertainty, although modernist attitudes concerned with universals, certainties and a manic desire to control largely guide many of our institutions, political and otherwise. I believe that this desire to control creates cultural anxiety due to the virtual unattainability of certainty and control. This denial of our inherent insecurity, vulnerability and ultimate mortality generates a violence that feeds back into our collective anxiety. The loop perpetuates itself in a cycle of fear, denial and arrogance that fuels a raft of industries devoted to security, feeding off of our communal angst. The very human characteristic that has enabled these circumstances is the subject of this exhibition.<p>It is my intention to reflect some of the contradictions found in our current condition by generating a dialogue between fragility and strength; beauty and the abject; certainty and doubt; liquid and solid; as well as humor and emotional gravity. These contradictions extend to my material of choice as well. With the exception of a two channel video installation, all the works in the exhibition employ encaustic (wax) processes. Although wax appears to be solid, it is in fact classified as a liquid. It is always in flux and unless conditions are ideal, wax remains in a precariously unstable condition. It also reflects in its materiality, a sensuality that is of primary importance to me as an artist, both in terms of the processes in which I engage in my studio, as well as the objects I create for a potential viewer.<p>Through sculptural processes of casting, pouring and melting, encaustic mark making and digital manipulations of physical theater, I want to contrast the forces at work within our lives that seek to control our environment with notions of surrender to the natural state of impermanence in which we reside. I want to reflect the oscillation between the collective desire for security and the knowledge of our inherent fragility and vulnerability.

My thesis exhibition entitled The Privilege of Being Solid is an exploration of the tension that is generated by our desire for an ultimate corporeal security and the realization that nothing is permanent. This tension expresses itself in the world in varying degrees through programs of repression oscillating with periods of chaos. <p>We live in a post-modern era of fragmentation and uncertainty, although modernist attitudes concerned with universals, certainties and a manic desire to control largely guide many of our institutions, political and otherwise. I believe that this desire to control creates cultural anxiety due to the virtual unattainability of certainty and control. This denial of our inherent insecurity, vulnerability and ultimate mortality generates a violence that feeds back into our collective anxiety. The loop perpetuates itself in a cycle of fear, denial and arrogance that fuels a raft of industries devoted to security, feeding off of our communal angst. The very human characteristic that has enabled these circumstances is the subject of this exhibition.<p>It is my intention to reflect some of the contradictions found in our current condition by generating a dialogue between fragility and strength; beauty and the abject; certainty and doubt; liquid and solid; as well as humor and emotional gravity. These contradictions extend to my material of choice as well. With the exception of a two channel video installation, all the works in the exhibition employ encaustic (wax) processes. Although wax appears to be solid, it is in fact classified as a liquid. It is always in flux and unless conditions are ideal, wax remains in a precariously unstable condition. It also reflects in its materiality, a sensuality that is of primary importance to me as an artist, both in terms of the processes in which I engage in my studio, as well as the objects I create for a potential viewer.<p>Through sculptural processes of casting, pouring and melting, encaustic mark making and digital manipulations of physical theater, I want to contrast the forces at work within our lives that seek to control our environment with notions of surrender to the natural state of impermanence in which we reside. I want to reflect the oscillation between the collective desire for security and the knowledge of our inherent fragility and vulnerability.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / A proposta do trabalho é analisar como a morte é entendida pela visão da hipermodernidade e pela visão do Budismo. Na contemporaneidade cuja lógica capitalista é embasada na lógica do mercado onde o consumo assume o papel principal, a morte se tornou um tabu, onde ela é evitada, esvaziada de sentido e descaracterizada. A dor e o sofrimento são depreciados e é exigido do homem uma inabalável postura performática e um desempenho cada vez melhor. Há ainda a crença de que o discurso tecnocientífico trará todas as soluções para as mazelas humanas. A felicidade é, portanto, um imperativo da sociedade hipermoderna e sua busca é exteriorizada isentando os indivíduos de um olhar crítico. Assim, a morte e o luto perdem seu lugar para a busca incessante de satisfação e bem-estar. O Budismo tem uma lógica que segue na contramão. Ensina que a existência humana no Samsara é constituída por principalmente quatro sofrimentos básicos: nascimento, envelhecimento, doença e morte. O Budismo ensina que a morte, assim como a vida, é um fenômeno comum a todos os seres vivos e que o exercício budista possibilita compreender o real significado da vida e da morte. A meditação sobre a impermanência, uma das práticas budistas, visa familiarizar o adepto budista a três pensamentos: certamente vou morrer; a hora da minha morte é totalmente incerta e na hora da minha morte e, depois dela, só a prática do Dharma vai me ajudar. Postula que para alcançar a verdadeira felicidade o homem deve provocar uma mudança interior, exercitar a compaixão e se desapegar da crença de que os fenômenos são permanentes e imutáveis. Tais considerações foram possíveis a partir da pesquisa sobre o Budismo da Nova Tradição Kadampa a partir de uma metodologia etnográfica que incluíram visitas ao campo de estudo, a confecção de um diário de campo e a realização de entrevistas com os praticantes budistas da Nova Tradição Kadampa. / This work goal is to analyze how the experience of death is understood at the hypermodernity and Buddhist view. In the contemporary in which prevails the capitalistic logic that is based on the market logic towards which the consumption takes the main role, the experience of death has become a taboo, so it ends being avoided, made empty of any sense and so mischaracterized. The pain and the suffering are depreciated and man sees himself being required to have an indestructible performing posture summed to an even better efficient behavior towards this experience. There is also the belief that technological and scientific arguments will bring to humanity all the needed solutions in respect to mankind wounds. Happiness is so the imperative order at the hypermodern societies and its search is externalized from the individuals making them absents of a so called more critical overview. The experience of death and of mourning has lost room enough to the continuously search for satisfaction and well being sensations. The Buddhism and its logic are heading exactly in the opposite direction. It teaches that the mankind existence experience into the so called Samsara is mainly made of four basic suffering experiences: birth, becoming elder, unhealthy lives and death. The Buddhism teaches that the experience of death, as the experience of living, is a common phenomenon that reaches all living creatures and that the Buddhism practice allows the individual to comprehend the real meaning of life and death. The meditation about the impermanence, one of the Buddhist practices, looks for to help and make three different thoughts familiar to the ones adepts of Buddhism: Certainly I will die; My dying moment is totally uncertain and at my death experience moment and, after it, only the Dharma practice can help me. The Buddhism states that to reach the true happiness the men must look for an inside change, practice the compassion and break free from the belief that phenomenons in life are permanent and unchangeable. These above mentioned statements were possible according to the research done about Buddhism on the New Kadampa Tradition through an ethnographic methodology which included visits to the study field, a field diary as their product and interviews with Buddhism practitioners at the Kadampa New Tradition.

My project is an acknowledgement of the fact that the physical layout of our environments is not directly describing and shaping the way we live or our societies are shaped. Non-spatial structures are playing a bigger role in societal processes than spatial ones. My project is trying to give these invisible processes spatial expression. Non-functional structures that highlight the non-functionality of postsocialist space. The monotony and monumentality of socialist spaces is contrasted with a design that expresses the multiplicity (of possibilities, paths, choices, desires) that exists nowadays. Orthogonal space is sliced up, perforated and at points overlaid without replacing it in it’s totality. ‘Non-functional’ elements are formal expressions of the realm of virtual space which permeates our lives and cities as well. These elements function in a more ‘internet’ fashion (multi layered, multi directional, yet clustered, streamlined etc) and yet they perform in the real world. Yet in the same time they are expressing our high-tech society without being hightech. Simultaneously, the presence of these structures addresses the condition of impermanence and change that play a strong role in the psyche of East Germans today. The multiplicity which is expressed by the project contrasts the rigidity of socialist architecture and society - and creates a link to remembering the past.

This thesis is about the heritage in Vientiane. In an attempt to go beyond a more traditional descriptive approach, the study aims at bringing forward a discussion about the definition, or rather the multiplicity of definitions, of the concept of heritage as such. The unavoidabe tension emanating from a modern western frame of thought being applied to the geographical and cultural setting of the study provides an opportunity to develop a criticism of some of the assumptions underlying our current definitions of heritage. For this particular study, heritage is defined as to include stories, places and things. It is a heritage that is complex and ambiguous, because the stories are parallel, the definitions and perceptions of place are manifold and contested, and the things and their meaning appear altered, depending on what approach to materiality is used. The objective is not to propose how to identify and manage such a complex heritage. Rather, it is about what causes this complexity and ambiguity and what is in between the stories, places and things. In addition, the study aims to critically deconstruct the contemporary heritage discourse, which privileges material authenticity, form and fabric and the idea that heritage values are universal and should be preserved for the future and preferably forever. In Laos, Buddhism dominates as religious practice. In this context, the notion of material impermanence also governs the perception of reality. Approaches to materiality in Buddhism are related to the general ideas that things are important from a contemporary perspective and primarily as containers for spiritual values, that the spiritual values carry the connection to the past, and that heritage is primarily spiritual in nature and has little to do with physical structure and form. By exploring the concepts of restoration, destruction and consumption in such a perspective, we understand that preservation and restoration are active processes of materialisation. We also understand that destruction and consumption are necessary for the appreciation of certain heritage expressions, and that heritage is being constantly created. With this understanding, this book is an argument for challenging contemporary western heritage discourse and question its fundamental ideology of preservationism.

The thesis undertakes a Buddhist reading of Mary Oliver’s oeuvre. It seeks to fill a palpable lacuna in extant criticism of her work, which tends to adopt Romantic, Feminist, Ecocritical, and Christian viewpoints. Thus far, no criticism has offered a sustained reading of her work from a specifically Buddhist stance. The thesis is structured in five chapters. The introductory chapter is followed by a literature review. The next three chapters are devoted to the Buddhist themes of Mindfulness, Interconnection, and Impermanence respectively. Each chapter opens with detailed consideration of its respective theme before moving on to the analysis and amplification of poems pertinent to it. In addition, the main Buddhist theme of each chapter is subdivided into its component sub-themes or corollaries. The main methodological approach to Oliver’s poetry comprises explication de texte as this makes provision for detailed readings of the texts themselves. Furthermore, this approach has been adopted because it allows for in-depth exploration of Oliver’s literary devices, three notable examples of which are anaphora, adéquation, and correspondence. In the course of the discussion, reference is also made to the influence of Imagism and, more specifically, the Japanese haiku tradition insofar as they impact on her poetry. This discussion is intended to give some indication of Oliver’s place within the American poetic tradition. The predominant subject-matter of her corpus is an all-encompassing view of the natural world with its birth-life-decay-death cycle. She does not flinch from addressing the harsh and violent aspects of nature as well as its exuberance and beauty. Her unifying topos is being the bride of amazement as witness to the natural world. For her readers, this witnessing translates into an inner, potentially transformative process, ultimately integrating mind and heart. The thesis concludes with a list of references and a glossary of the Buddhist terms. / Thesis (PhD (English))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013.

The thesis undertakes a Buddhist reading of Mary Oliver’s oeuvre. It seeks to fill a palpable lacuna in extant criticism of her work, which tends to adopt Romantic, Feminist, Ecocritical, and Christian viewpoints. Thus far, no criticism has offered a sustained reading of her work from a specifically Buddhist stance. The thesis is structured in five chapters. The introductory chapter is followed by a literature review. The next three chapters are devoted to the Buddhist themes of Mindfulness, Interconnection, and Impermanence respectively. Each chapter opens with detailed consideration of its respective theme before moving on to the analysis and amplification of poems pertinent to it. In addition, the main Buddhist theme of each chapter is subdivided into its component sub-themes or corollaries. The main methodological approach to Oliver’s poetry comprises explication de texte as this makes provision for detailed readings of the texts themselves. Furthermore, this approach has been adopted because it allows for in-depth exploration of Oliver’s literary devices, three notable examples of which are anaphora, adéquation, and correspondence. In the course of the discussion, reference is also made to the influence of Imagism and, more specifically, the Japanese haiku tradition insofar as they impact on her poetry. This discussion is intended to give some indication of Oliver’s place within the American poetic tradition. The predominant subject-matter of her corpus is an all-encompassing view of the natural world with its birth-life-decay-death cycle. She does not flinch from addressing the harsh and violent aspects of nature as well as its exuberance and beauty. Her unifying topos is being the bride of amazement as witness to the natural world. For her readers, this witnessing translates into an inner, potentially transformative process, ultimately integrating mind and heart. The thesis concludes with a list of references and a glossary of the Buddhist terms. / Thesis (PhD (English))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013.

The English-language translations of Jorge Luis Borges’s Spanish-language works undertaken by the author and Norman Di Giovanni went above and beyond what is generally perceived as acceptable in traditional Western practices. Their work, together with Borges’s thoughts on translation itself, garnered criticism from within Western Translation Studies for its rejection of the status of the original text and the blurring of the distinction between author and translator. Yet the pair’s actions and Borges’s views on translation cease to appear scandalous under the light of Buddhist philosophy, particularly through the use of the Buddhist principles that all phenomena are impermanent and interdependent. This thesis will seek to use these ideas to legitimize the actions of Borges and Di Giovanni. To do so, it will trace the history of opposing and convergent theories from Western philosophy and describe our Buddhist concepts in detail. In order to better understand Borges, it will examine the array of philosophies that influenced the writer and how they both align themselves and differ from Buddhist ideas. This thesis will end by directly applying impermanence and interdependence to the translation practices of Borges and Di Giovanni and considering what potential effect legitimacy for such practices would have on translation overall.

Thesis (MChor)--University of Melbourne, Faculty of the Victorian College of the Arts and Music, 2010. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 65-69)