This thesis emerges from and responds to certain recent philosophical writings on conceptual art, in particular from the British analytic tradition. Having identified a recent tendency implicit within this tradition towards an increasingly phenomenological reading of the ontology of the conceptual artwork, I aim to develop such ideas through an analysis of Heidegger's theory of art, and through a subsequent enquiry into its applicability to conceptual art. This will involve a lengthy analysis of several conceptual artworks on the basis of this theory. The thesis consists of three substantive chapters. The first is a critical examination of certain recent philosophical texts on conceptual art. This chapter takes a series of philosophical texts representing a range of positions with regards to both the specific role and, by virtue, the significance accorded to the material in the constitution of the conceptual artwork. The second chapter looks at Heidegger's phenomenological enquiry into the ontology of the artwork, and specifically at the role of the concepts of Earth and World in this ontology. On the basis of this study of Heidegger, the third chapter engages with a range of conceptual artworks. Each artwork is shown to exemplify a general tendency of conceptual artworks to explore of the bounds of the artwork as such and its relation to its context.

This thesis provides an inter-disciplinary study of selected works by Ingmar Bergman. I explore how key concepts from Melanie Klein and Jean-Paul Sartre apply to the focus on characters in a state of heightened imagination; and the value placed on imagination in the construction of these films. This involves recognition of the way an active response from the viewer is encouraged. Klein, Sartre and Bergman also attend to contextual factors that challenge any notion of subjectivity as sovereign and the power of imagination is frequently placed in a social context. All three figures develop their ideas within specialised fields drawing on the influence of others. Chapter 2 shows how Klein’s ideas relate to the influence of Freud before exploring how her work can be applied to Bergman’s films through the example of Wild Strawberries. Chapter 3 concentrates on Sartre’s early work, The Imaginary and considers how this is significant in relation to some of Sartre’s better-known philosophical ideas developed during and after the Second World War. These ideas will lead to an exploration of The Seventh Seal. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 focus on three films from distinct parts of Bergman’s career: Summer with Monika, The Virgin Spring and Hour of the Wolf. In Chapter 4 this will be preceded by a brief over-view of three more films from the early part of Bergman’s career. These chapters explore how Kleinian and Sartrean ideas can be incorporated in close analysis, and alongside selected critical responses to the films. The analysis integrates key points from Klein and Sartre in a methodology specific to film studies. This will include analysis of cinematic elements such as camera work and lighting, and recognition of narrative structure and character development

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Georgetown University, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 555-560)

I present and defend a two-category ontology of art. The basic idea of it is that singular artworks are physical objects, whereas multiple artworks are types of which there can be tokens in the form of performances, copies, or other kinds of realisations. I argue that multiple artworks, despite being abstract objects, have a temporal extension, thus they are created at a certain point of time and can also drop out of existence again under certain conditions. They can, however, not be perceived by the senses and cannot enter into causal relations. The identity of an artwork is determined by its structural properties, but also by the context in which it was made. The essential contextual properties of an artwork are those that are relevant to the meaning of the work. A realisation of a multiple artwork has to comply with the structure of the work and has to stand in the correct intentional and/or causal-historical relation to the work. Realisations that diverge too much from the structure of the work, like translations of literary works, are what I call “derivative artworks”. I argue against the thesis that all artworks are multiple. I claim that there are singular artworks, and some of them are even necessarily singular. I show why certain standard arguments against the idea that all artworks can be realised multiple times are flawed, and present my own theory about what decides whether a work is singular or multiple, namely that successful intentions of the artist determine which category an artwork belongs to. Concerning singular artworks, I also investigate what the relation between the work and the matter it is made of is, and how a work can survive a change in its parts and still remain the same work.

This project builds on the existing evidence that suggests that art-based interventions can be beneficial for the wellbeing of people with dementia and their carers, and explores whether such interventions can be delivered via a touchscreen tablet device using an application that allows them to view art images. Twelve pairs of volunteers with dementia and their informal carers were recruited through Alzheimer’s Society Dementia Cafés. A quasi-experimental mixed-methods within-subjects study evaluated the impact of art-viewing on wellbeing using visual analogue scales as well as exploring the experiences of participants qualitatively with thematic analysis. Quantitative results showed a significant effect for change in composite wellbeing from viewing session one to session five. Wellbeing subdomain scores showed an impact on wellbeing which tended to increase with the number of sessions. Qualitative findings were reported in relation to shifts in cognition, changes in behaviour, mood and relationships between people with dementia and their carers. These changes tended to be viewed as positive by interviewees. The results suggest that touchscreen based art interventions have the potential to provide an activity people with dementia can engage in with their carers which can benefit their wellbeing. A larger-scale controlled study would help to further determine whether wider dementia care practice implications can be drawn for clinical psychologists and other healthcare providers.

My thesis examines work by Antonin Artaud, Henry Darger, Marcel Duchamp, and Pablo Picasso, with the intention of subjecting specific works by these artists to critical tests employing the idea proposed by Antonin Artaud's subjectile, that is a paradoxical fusion of both subject and object. As a critical device the subjectile is useful both for discussing art and making it, enabling me to explore my own practice, which seeks to articulate problematic aspects of subjective status and the end limits of the subject. Artaud describes in his writing and depicts in his drawing how his body is in a state of fusion with objects. Or, he adopts a creative process that presents subjective integrity as if it overlaps and is contiguous with objects. The first, rational and empirical direction determines there is no sensation and no animation in objects, so they do not retain in their material mass any attributes of subjectivity. The second direction proposes that objects are hybrid and metamorphic: sensation, and attributes of the subject are contiguous with the material properties of objects. The poetics of corporeality Artaud develops in his works maintains a consistent attitude to extension, proposing that sensation and substantial material qualities of the human body are discovered in objects, especially in art. I argue that the subjectile deploys paranoid devices to understand subjective difficulties. I discuss paranoia and the subjectile in relation to Deleuze and Guattari's understanding of Artaud's 'Body without Organs', and Derrida's essay 'Maddening the Subjectile'. I also draw upon Melanie Klein's object relations theory, which discusses split up parts of the subject that are ambivalent, projected and expelled, enabling discussion of subjectiles as partial attributes of the subject that form part of a broader culture, through the engagement of aesthetic, formal, and historical registers in art.

This thesis investigates rationales behind Live Art documentation, by examining the work of British artists working under the banner of ‘Live Art' since the 1990s. My aim has been to write an account of Live Art's history and major themes that incorporates primary research, analysis and criticism of recent research on documentation. Works by Live Artists are not discussed chronologically, but so that they might function as points of departure for discussions about Live Art's relationship to documentation and its relevance as a contemporary cultural form. The thesis starts with an introduction setting out definitions of Live Art and documentation and contextualising Live Art's relationship to Performance Art. The rationales for documenting Live Art are grouped into three categories: documentation as pragmatic, documentation as memorial and documentation as holistic. The main text is divided into three parts, each part discusses issues relating to one of the above categories. Part 1 addresses practical reasons why artists working under the banner of Live Art document their work. The section includes an exploration of the infrastructure for the development of Live Art in the UK as well as an analysis of the market for Live Art and its documentation. Part 2 interrogates perspectives from the discipline of performance studies on the relationship between live action and documentation, exploring how these issues have been interpreted in Live Art's history. In particular, this section will assess how writers and artists have approached discussion of Live Art in oral and written form. Part 3 proposes models of rethinking documentation based on works by British Live Artists that develop documentation in tandem to live action and enjoy a privileged relationship to technology.

Harm minimisation approaches to illicit drug use have proven extremely successful in reducing drug-related harm and improving health outcomes for those using drugs, their families and the broader community. Despite these successes, however, many harm minimisation programmes face strong community opposition, and many others are limited in their effectiveness by their reluctance to acknowledge the complex ways in which drug using contexts, social relationships, desire, pleasure and aesthetics are involved in the production and reduction of drug-related harm.[NP] Deleuze and Guattari’s ethico-aesthetic philosophy offers a conceptual framework through which to begin to grapple with the sensory and affective elements of illicit drug use and their implications for an embodied ethics. Following an introduction to their key concepts, this thesis explores the implications of their ontology for understandings of injecting drug use across four inter-related dimensions: the drug using body; urban spaces of injecting; public overdose memorials; and drug referenced, ‘heroin chic’ advertising imagery. It argues that aesthetics and ethics are complexly intertwined, and that ethically positive responses to drug use require an active appreciation of the ways in which aesthetics affect bodies and their capacities to form relations with others

Harm minimisation approaches to illicit drug use have proven extremely successful in reducing drug-related harm and improving health outcomes for those using drugs, their families and the broader community. Despite these successes, however, many harm minimisation programmes face strong community opposition, and many others are limited in their effectiveness by their reluctance to acknowledge the complex ways in which drug using contexts, social relationships, desire, pleasure and aesthetics are involved in the production and reduction of drug-related harm.[NP] Deleuze and Guattari’s ethico-aesthetic philosophy offers a conceptual framework through which to begin to grapple with the sensory and affective elements of illicit drug use and their implications for an embodied ethics. Following an introduction to their key concepts, this thesis explores the implications of their ontology for understandings of injecting drug use across four inter-related dimensions: the drug using body; urban spaces of injecting; public overdose memorials; and drug referenced, ‘heroin chic’ advertising imagery. It argues that aesthetics and ethics are complexly intertwined, and that ethically positive responses to drug use require an active appreciation of the ways in which aesthetics affect bodies and their capacities to form relations with others

This thesis explores the way music is characterized, used, or accounted for in recent (post-1968) French thought, focusing in particular on the work of Jean-Luc Nancy, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, and Alain Badiou. In spite of the differences in their philosophical-theoretical positions, all of these writers invoke music - both directly and indirectly - to negotiate their relationship to ontological, political, ethical and aesthetic concerns, particularly in terms of how it relates to the (im)possibility of a subject, the condition of truth, and the role of philosophical thought itself. The thesis situates these texts in a longer genealogy of musico-philosophical interactions and also brings them into dialogue with recent musicological approaches, thus showing how an inherited idea of what music 'is' is often assumed rather than critically re-evaluated. In short, by tracing the musical-transcendental baggage of an inherited metaphysical conception of music - one which often understands music in close relation to the feminine, (sexual) excess, and the beyond of language and/or the symbolic - the thesis shows that though music is instrumentalized by progressive thinkers as a way of shifting theoretical/philosophical paradigms, it nonetheless does so in a way that has a strong sense of continuity with previous thinking on music. Secondly, the thesis highlights the way in which music in its metaphysical-ontological guise is often conceived as synonymous with Western high art classical music (which is itself constructed as absolute and transcendent, and ontologically independent of its means of (re)production or context) whilst non-literate, popular, folk and world musics - on the occasions that they are considered and not simply ignored or denigrated - are notably considered almost exclusively in terms of their social-cultural or technological contexts. Finally, the thesis demonstrates that much of this takes place through a simultaneous instrumentalization of gender as an organisational category for philosophy, and one which all too often has the consequence of sending women - along with music - to the beyond of pre-, inter-, or post-signification.