This research focuses on selected artworks by contemporary artists Mona Hatoum and Candice Breitz to critically examine how they have explored language as a visual and conceptual tool through the use of video and installation. The primary aim is to consider how and why these artists have explored paradoxical aspects of language and to examine the ways in which they have used their medium to question or challenge the adequacy of communication through language. Born in Palestine but exiled in Britain as a result of the outbreak of war in her home country, Mona Hatoum’s artworks reach deeply into her own experience of exile. Her video work Measures of Distance (1988) is concerned with language and its effectiveness in communication between people separated by geographical and emotional distance, a theme that is very close to the concerns I have in my own practical work. I critically examine Hatoum’s artwork to demonstrate how the complex layering of spoken word, written script and visual imagery, together with the complication of the viewer’s position, merge to foreground contradictions and conflicting states. I consider Candice Breitz’s investigations into the contradictory and provocative nature of speech and language against the background of her upbringing in apartheid South Africa and critically examine her concern with the ways in which identity is culturally constructed. Her preoccupation with the relationship between the mass media and the linguistic formation of self is examined. I have chosen to focus mainly on her video installations: Babel Series (1999), Alien (2002), Karaoke (2000), Four Duets (2000) and Legend (2004). My own practical work is discussed alongside these concerns, particularly in relation to contemporary electronic communication such as email and sms text messaging – along with the frustration that results from its impersonal nature (in contrast to old fashioned letter writing). I also discuss its impact on relationships separated by great geographical distances.

This dissertation is a study of the early career of the American artist Joan Jonas that spans the years 1970-1984. At the turn of the 1970s, Jonas was one of the first artists to pick up a video camera. Exploring “live” video’s unique capacity to mediate the present moment, Jonas actively integrated the technology into her live pieces, which are some of the earliest examples of what was then first called “performance art.” Performance art has often been aligned with presence. In contrast, I argue that what at stake in the proliferation of live artworks by Jonas and others that merged performance and video was not a reserve of unmediated experience, but a presence that was newly technologized: telepresence. As Jonas investigated the novel ability to perform at a distance enabled by electronic media, her work led somewhere surprising: to telegraphy, telepathy, and the earliest telephones—“tele”-technologies that appear long obsolete (or completely fantastical). Evoking optical telegraphs, spirit mediums, speaking trumpets, and science fictional prostheses, Jonas’s early oeuvre reactivates the historical contexts and unrealized potentials surrounding these dead media. In so doing, she illuminates enduring formations of the body, subjectivity, and teletechnology underlying not only the twinned emergence of performance and video art in the 1970s, but also telepresence as a seemingly very contemporary (and increasingly pervasive) category of experience.

This dissertation examines the video-installations created by American artist Dan Graham in the 1970s. It investigates the artist's relationship to Minimalism by analyzing themes Graham highlights in his own writings and in interviews. In particular, I explore how the artist's understanding of Herbert Marcuse, Walter Benjamin, and R.D. Laing informed his post-Minimalist work and how concepts gleaned from these sources are manifest in his video-installations. Also undertaken are discussions of the artist's interest in aestheticized play, the just-past present, the debate between Behaviourism and phenomenology, surveillance, and Modern architecture. In addition, I investigate Graham's position in Conceptual art, use of site-specificity, and the practice of institutional critique. At the outset, I provide an in-depth analysis of two of Graham's magazine pieces, Schema (March 1966) and Homes For America, that ties together the artist's reading of Marcuse and his rejection of Minimalist phenomenology. Next, I give an account of the artist's connection to early video art and his use of time-delay in works such as Present Continuous Past(s) and Two Viewing Rooms as a means to highlight the just-past present. Finally, I examine Graham's architectural video-installations Yesterday/Today, Video Piece for Showcase Windows in a Shopping Arcade, and Video Piece for Two Glass Office Buildings as instances of site-specific art and as part of the artist's practice of institutional critique. I also explore his references to the notions of art-as-window and art-as-mirror as an expansion of his engagement with Minimalism. Throughout, my discussion includes comparisons between Graham's work and that of other artists like Vito Acconci, Bruce Nauman, and Hans Haacke. In sum, this study offers an expanded understanding of how Graham employed video and installation in his art as a means to move beyond Minimalism and to interrogate contemporary American society.

The exhibition Is There No One in the World Who Can Fly? consists of three connected bodies of works. Life On Earth is a series of photo-performances exhibited on digital screens. Some of the images are still others are animated; they all propose that the body is a transmitter that breaths in content and breaths it out as a visual shape in the form of extensions, armatures or expulsions. Mammal is a large-scale video projection of a multi-breasted female figure projected on a free-standing wall. The breasts are animated and stretch out to explore and search the surrounding space. Worknest is a series of videos about the act of working which are projected onto the floor and appear as a community of guarded openings into tunnels beneath the ground.

The exhibition Is There No One in the World Who Can Fly? consists of three connected bodies of works. Life On Earth is a series of photo-performances exhibited on digital screens. Some of the images are still others are animated; they all propose that the body is a transmitter that breaths in content and breaths it out as a visual shape in the form of extensions, armatures or expulsions. Mammal is a large-scale video projection of a multi-breasted female figure projected on a free-standing wall. The breasts are animated and stretch out to explore and search the surrounding space. Worknest is a series of videos about the act of working which are projected onto the floor and appear as a community of guarded openings into tunnels beneath the ground.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T18:10:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Roberto Moreira S Cruz.pdf: 4466258 bytes, checksum: 4ee768cfbe9e374dd6510dd7ca142b03 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-06-03 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This thesis specifically addresses the concept of expanded cinema for the analysis of works which use multiprojections. Review authors as Raymond Bellour, Philippe Dubois, Dominique Paini, Anne Marie Duguet, among others, underlining the approach presented by Gene Youngblood in his book Expanded Cinema (1970). Locate in the historical context of the 1960s until nowadays, cinematographic and videographic experiments that suggested expressive and relevant modes to this definition, working sounds and projected images and their relation with the exhibition space and the viewer. Specifically considers the narrative possibilities observed in filminstallations and audiovisual performances. It analyzes the peculiarities of these formas of display, in relation to proposal narratives in which the enunciation of films establishes a clear correlation with the time of projection. The thesis also presents a specific report on the international exhibition Cinema Sim- Narrativas e Projeções, help by Itau Cultural in 2008, curated by Roberto Moreira S. Cruz. This exhibition was a milestone in the development process throughout the study. Demanded a review of the recent audiovisual productions is within the context of contemporary art / Esta tese aborda especificamente o conceito de cinema expandido para a análise de obras que utilizam multiprojeçãos. Revê autores como Raymond Bellour, Phillipe Dubois, Dominique Paini, Anne Marie Duguet, entre outros, destacando especialmente a abordagem apresentada por Gene Youngblood em seu livro Expanded Cinema (1970). Localiza no contexto histórico dos anos 1960 até a contemporaneidade, as experiências cinematográficas e videográficas que propuseram modos expressivos pertinentes a esta definição, ao trabalhar os elementos plásticos e sonoros das imagens projetadas e a sua relação com o espaço da exibição e o espectador. Considera especificamente as possibilidades narrativas observadas nas experiências cinematográficas em filmeinstalações e performances audiovisuais. Analisa as particularidades destas formas de exibição, em relação às propostas narrativas em que o enunciado dos filmes estabelece uma nítida relação com o momento da projeção. A tese apresenta também um relato específico sobre a exposição internacional Cinema Sim Narrativas e Projeções, realizada pelo Itaú Cultural em 2008, com curadoria de Roberto Moreira S. Cruz. Essa exposição foi um marco no processo de desenvolvimento de toda a pesquisa. Exigiu uma análise de como a recente produção audiovisual se insere no contexto da arte contemporânea