According to UNESCO’s Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity there exists a need in light of the “imbalances in flows and exchanges of cultural goods and services at the global level” to enable “all countries, especially developing countries and countries in transition, to establish cultural industries that are viable and competitive at a national and international level” (2001). The dissertation explores ways in which viable cultural industries can be established in developing countries. More specifically, the focus is on the development of film industries in countries in transition. Three national film industries, examined in light of their historical development and contemporary situation, provide the empirical basis for the dissertation’s claims and arguments. The three developing countries under investigation are Bhutan, Mongolia, and Myanmar, and in each case the study traces the historical trajectory of the relevant film industries leading to the mapping of the recent trends and tendencies. The examination of the individual cases foregrounds industrial and commercial challenges and solutions rather than the aesthetic or stylistic properties of specific films. That is, the study seeks to explore how educational practices, production modes, approaches to distribution and exhibition, and cultural policy measures have facilitated or thwarted the emergence of film industries in three developing countries in the Asian region. The approach taken builds on the call for a more inclusive approach to the study of world cinema (Nagib 2006). Equally important is an analytical approach derived from the field of small national cinema studies, one that underscores the need to explore solutions to problems facing filmmakers in countries sharing similar developmental challenges (Hjort & Petrie 2007). Following this conceptual perspective the study aims firstly, through its historical examination, to contribute to expanding the historiography of world cinema, where little to no attention is given to these largely unexplored national cinema cultures. Secondly, following the mapping of the contemporary situation of the institutional and organizational make-up of the film industries in question, the aim is to identify the systematic challenges and opportunities that are embedded in specific film sectors. The approach is applied with the intention of facilitating a constructive discussion that explores and compares proactive strategies. The point ultimately is to identify models that might be more generally relevant and thus transferable across national boundaries.

Museums have the responsibility to meet the needs and expectations of audiences with different backgrounds, including families, students, adults and the elderly. However, the needs of higher education students can easily be overlooked in Hong Kong art museums because their age and educational background fall into different target segments. By the late twentieth century, learning opportunities for higher education students, especially those who were majoring in fine arts, art history and museum studies were inadequate in Hong Kong. In view of the increasing arts programmes offered by tertiary institutions in 2000s Hong Kong, art museums play an important role in developing higher education students’ creativity and critical thinking by making use of their resources and expertise. Collaboration between art museums and universities through curricula is one effective method for strengthening art education at tertiary level in twenty-first century Hong Kong. Based on local and overseas scholarships on museum studies and archival materials in different museums, this dissertation examines both past and current education services provided by art museums in Hong Kong in order to reveal the benefits and difficulties of developing museum-university collaboration. Having interviewed with museum directors, curators and professors, I will present both qualitative and quantitive analyses of the education services provided by four focused institutions, including the University Museum and Art Gallery of the University of Hong Kong, the Art Museum of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Museum of Art, and M+. While reviewing learning models and pedagogical methods for higher education in a museum context, successful case studies of museum-university collaboration in overseas institutions, such as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, will also be discussed. I will propose effective methods for strengthening collaboration between art museums and universities in Hong Kong. The research finding of this dissertation will provide feasible plans for museum practitioners, professors and policy makers to enhance the quality of higher education in art-related disciplines and museum services with insightful ideas.

This research investigates the area of practice commonly known as community art, defined to be where a gathering of people participates in facilitated collaborative art making aimed to be increasing their autonomy in generating artistic and social satisfaction and enrichment. This definition is a result of integrating existing research, literature, interviews with practitioners and analyses of their work. It is an interdisciplinary research conducted through a grounded methodology where data from practitioners and literature mutually inform to yield insights into a seemingly unstructured practice. Seven interviewees were chosen to represent a coherent and recognized body of practice. They are practicing visual and performing artists who specialize in facilitating people of communities in collaborative art process. Each having over 15 years of experience in committed engagement with communities, they are also trainers, educators and professionals in various tertiary, cultural and public institutions. They are either based or are/were committed to the development of community art in Hong Kong, and are all experienced overseas1. Their mix of art disciplines and effectiveness across countries indicate a fundamental connection in their view of art and people that is beyond artistic media and cultural context. Thus, a Hong Kong perspective is provided that may contribute to other metropolitan settings in Asia and worldwide. Guided by the data, this research sought theoretical support for the community artists’ operational concepts of art, people, community and participation. The literature drawn include the ethology of art (Dissanayake, Davies), the nature of the experience of art (Dewey), theories of education (Freire, Dewey), theories of community and individuals (Putnam, McKnight & Block), psychological theories on experience and motivation (Csikszentmihalyi, Ryan & Deci), and theories of social psychology on identity and social belonging (Baumeister & Leary, Aron & McLaughlin-Volpe). This interdisciplinary perspective builds a framework that explains how the artistic and social dimensions in community art, instead of being in compromise, can be synergetic. Of special interest are the untapped aspects of Freire and Dewey’s theories often overlooked by scholars of artistic engagement with communities. Requiring expertise beyond a single scholar, this research proposes only one effective integration of the above disciplines. This research conceptualizes the development of community art to be an interplay of artistic movements, to progressively seek social relevance from object, place, then to people, and at the same time to return art into the hands of the people. It is a practice distinct but in relation to the overlapping categories of the socially engaged arts, dialogical art, community cultural development, community-based art education and public art (Bishop, Cartiere, Goldbard, Kester, Thompson). The shifting definitions have nurtured a blossoming of artist engagement in the society, but has also resulted in miscommunication of what exactly academics, artists and institutions are planning, funding, doing, evaluating and researching. In contrast to an embracive attitude that has unfortunately led to confusion, this research proposes certain defining characteristics for community art, with implications that seek to further the discourse of artistic engagement with communities.

This research investigates the field of modern ink painting, in particular the advocacy of shuimohua (水墨畫, literally water ink painting) which appeared in Hong Kong in the mid-1960s. The research is based on textual materials such as artworks, writings, treatises, newspaper and periodical documentation, as well as interviews with artists or artists’ families. Because of the emergence of numerous terms related to ink painting and ink art in recent decades, it is crucial to trace their origins in order to develop a foundation from which to understand the complexities of the field related to ink. The starting point chosen for this research is the 1960s in Hong Kong which was a period of in which Hong Kong enjoyed much greater freedom in the arts compared to the mainland China and Taiwan. This atmosphere of greater freedom nurtured various new directions for Chinese painting, including the advocacy of shuimohua initiated by Lui Shou Kwan (呂壽琨 1919–1975) who wrote and lectured extensively about his ideas on shuimohua. The advocacy of shuimohua opened a host of possibilities and influenced Lui’s students and contemporaries. Lui stressed the value of sincerity, gen (根 root), shi (適 adaption), inner expression and innovation. Lui held that these are fluid concepts subjected to change according to individuals. Five artists, Hon Chi Fun (韓志勳b. 1922), Irene Chou (周綠雲 1924–2011), Wucius Wong (王無邪b. 1936), Kan Tai Keung (靳埭強b. 1942) and Leung Kui Ting (梁巨廷b. 1945) were selected to examine the impact of shuimohua. These artists are consistent with Lui’s ideas of a broader concept and vision of art, but they all developed their own visual language and style in their artistic paths. There is no evidence of a “Lui’s School” or stylistic resemblance. Another advocate of modern ink painting Liu Kuo Sung (劉國松 b. 1932) and his students, in addition to modern ink painters overseas like Tseng Yuho (曾佑和b. 1924) are also explored to provide a more comprehensive analysis of the scene. Art with the media of ink, such as experimental ink painting, blossomed in mainland China in the 1980s. This research tries to touch upon the evolution and relationship between shuimohua and ink art. Exploring the character of Lui’s advocacy of shuimohua and tracing the origin of terminology related to ink painting and ink art are small but necessary steps to further conversations about the development of ink today. This contributes an historical as well as a Hong Kong perspective that may provide insights into the modernization of ink painting in the larger context of Chinese painting.

The aim of the study is to evaluate the aesthetic qualities of the Hong Kong built environment. To this end, it adopts the framework of the philosophy of architecture in the analytic tradition as proposed by Roger Scruton in his classic The Aesthetics of Architecture, which was first published in 1979. Central to this framework is our aesthetic sense of appropriateness, which leads to a distinctive reading of architecture as an art of the ensemble. From this perspective, the chief architectural task is to establish right visual relations among the parts of a whole. Aesthetically, this results in the desirable aesthetic quality of unity in variety. Morally, the task reflects our nature as social beings, who aim at living peacefully with others. By offering a commonly held compositional pattern established through the execution of details, traditional Western and Chinese styles used to provide architects with the necessary equipment to carry out the task, so that they can fit buildings not in an individualistic manner, but with regard for the tastes of others, resulting in a harmonious and civil built environment. Against this background, the study first examines, and criticises, the prevalent modern and post-modern styles of the local built environment, by showing that they generally lack sufficient consideration for architectural harmonisation, and hence contribute greatly to the incivility of the local built environment. The study then extends its scope from the local context to China in search of an architectural style that is suited to the aesthetic task of harmonisation. The study finds that the Lingnan style established from the late nineteenth to early twentieth century in the Canton region embodies aesthetically significant principles enabling architectural harmonisation, which are rooted in the aesthetic sense and capacity of the region (to which Hong Kong belongs). It thus concludes that the Lingnan style could provide valuable resources for reflection on the establishment of architectural harmony, and hence serve as an important reference for local practices that aim to improve the built environment.

Rubicon: The Dialectic is a virtual reality (VR), multi-channel, video-art installation, created after researching interactivity, virtual reality, 2D and 3D animation, filmmaking, philosophy, and music. I intend to manifest my feelings as a Venezuelan, a Latin-American, and a free thinker by sharing with the spectator a VR immersive piece representing my inner struggle in these times of political meltdown. Attempting to go beyond the two orders that structure reality according to French structuralist psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, The Imaginary and The Symbolic, I am searching to approach the third Lacanian order that structures human existence--the one that opposes and exists beyond reality, The Real (in this case my Real). This order is the negative space of reality and cannot be defined into the "symbolic" or the "imaginary" (Macey 324). This attempt to represent The Real transcends narrative standards and mainstream commercial use of VR, using instead artistic abstraction and freedom of visual language and expression. This paper is a way for me to describe and share my journey and artistic process on extrapolating my psyche into an immersive VR art piece, Rubicon: The Dialectic.

This thesis addresses relationships between art, aesthetics and men’s association football, and seeks to frame the latter as a source and locus of aesthetic variation and dissensus, in opposition to its typical presentation as a source of fleeting and purely physical pleasures. Its focus is the contemporary scene of global elite football, whose roots I argue can most effectively be traced back to the creation of the English Premier League and the UEFA Champions League in 1992. Through four chapters encompassing multiple case studies, I examine some of the aesthetic conceptions that are embedded within contemporary discourses around football, before analysing artworks and aesthetic practices that reproduce the game in various forms. Throughout the study, I am interested in bringing into focus the border-line between the cultural fields of art and football. I frame all of the objects, practices and artefacts that I analyse as sites of inter-section between these two rival sets of discursive formations, as well as offering theoretical and methodological reflections on the cultural dynamics that lead to these formations being considered as distinct fields in the first place. My principal research questions can be expressed as follows: what intellectual processes come into play when objects in the field of contemporary football approach the field of contemporary art and vice-versa, and what forces are active in each field that prevent this rapprochement from achieving total fulfilment?In order to approach these questions, my thesis is effectively divided into two halves. In the first half I use concepts derived from the study of art and visual cultures to bring to light some of the aesthetic debates that occur within football’s interpretative community. In chapter one I consider the manner in which aesthetics and sporting ethics become intertwined around the controversial issue of “diving”, while in chapter two I demonstrate the ways in which the animated highlight GIF holds in suspension notions of novelty, boredom and individual genius. In the second half of the thesis I analyse a number of artistic projects which address football – Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno’s film Zidane: a 21st Century Portrait, Maider López’s participatory performance Polder Cup and Craig Coulthard’s landscape intervention Forest Pitch, among others – by reading their aesthetic propositions against some of those that are rooted in the game itself. Addressing the functions that these works apply to the popular expressive content that already adheres to football can, I argue, be instructive in considering the cultural politics of contemporary art more generally. Finally, I conclude that contemporary football is a prominent site of complex aesthetic negotiations that warrants greater attention from the inter-discipline of visual studies.

This study explores the ways in which certain societal anxieties regarding femininity and masculinity surface in post-apocalyptic video games BioShock (2007 2K Games) and The last of us (2013 Naughty Dog). A postfeminist perspective is employed in order to explore the privileging of so-called ‘masculine values’ in late neo-liberal societies, and the subsequent negation of the (seemingly) binary opposite of stereotypical femininity. This explorative study is situated within a broad framework of postfeminism, and focuses on providing alternative understandings of the representation of gender in video games. By considering video games as a medium that is firmly rooted in traditional masculinity, I argue that anxieties regarding the subordination of so-called ‘feminine values’ in society as a whole, manifest visually in BioShock and The last of us, in both the gameplay as well as in narrative structure. In an attempt to gain a better understanding of how these anxieties surface, I explore the ways in which a disillusionment with ‘masculine values’ become evident in the post-apocalyptic settings of the two games under discussion. This study aims to highlight the ways in which BioShock and The last of us attempt to subvert normative constructions of masculinity, and instead posit feminine values as positive, desirable and necessary in order to acknowledge and realise a broader sense of ‘being human’; one that does not depend on culturally sanctioned notions of gender. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2016. / Visual Arts / Unrestricted

馬家寶（1925-1985）是1949 年後香港第一代油畫家，他活 躍於五十年代中至八十年代中的香港畫壇，以寫實風格的油畫著稱。 傳統藝術史一直關注代表不同地區及時代的主流藝術風格，而六十至 七十年代的港英政府和社會大眾均較為注重現代主義藝術的發展，馬 氏寫實風格的藝術創作與之相比有點守舊，所以他的藝術一直未能得 到研究香港史的學者和藝術家們足夠的關注和深入的研究。 雖然從傳統藝術史的角度來看，馬家寶的藝術只是六十至七 十年代少數、不具代表性的藝術創作，但是從藝術社會學和意識形態 學看來，驅使馬家寶畢生採用寫實的形式來創作藝術，和社會環境對 他的藝術創作所造成的影響，卻是個值得探索的問題。因此，此次研 究會將馬氏之藝術按時序分為三個階段，結合歷史、文化和社會背景 並進行對比，從而探索他堅持以寫實風格為終生藝術創作形式的原 因、藝術的觀點和藝術的追求。籍著對馬家寶藝術的個案研究，希望 本論文能為關注香港本地藝術發展史的學者和藝術家，提供一份參 考，從一個新的角度回顧及審視香港藝術史。

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the contemporary representation of the mythological figure Lilith. To complete this examination, this study briefly explores the intricate history of Lilith and her manifestations. This study investigates Lilith and how she is represented in a contemporary postfeminist media economy. Furthermore, the femme fatale, the abject and the female grotesque are explored. Lastly, this study examines two contemporary series that position Lilith as a prominent character. These series are: Shadowhunters (2016–2019) and The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018–). In the last section of this study, the concepts and tropes as outlined above are applied to the selected series. This dissertation aims to examine Lilith’s ambiguous position in relation to contemporary feminist politics. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2020. / Visual Arts / MA / Unrestricted