Staging the Encounter: the Work of Art as a Stage is a practice-led PhD project that consists of a thesis and a studio component in sculpture. Through a research question on the dimension of staging in the practice of sculpture, understood as the spatial staging that is intrinsic to placing objects in space, I speculate on the effect of this agency on the encounter of the viewer with the work of art. In this respect staging is linked to the modality of aesthetic presentation and the emergence of affect in the viewer. The thesis investigates different trajectories of thought that reveal a shift in art from an aesthetic experience keyed on objects to activated scenes of encounter. The aesthetic event becomes an in-between zone where objecthood, medium and autonomy are redefined. The first chapter explores a subject produced by an encounter with a work of art. Two stories of aesthetic embodiment in ancient Greek drama and Sanskrit performance describe a dynamic co-creation between the viewer and the work of art; here the aesthetic model dictates its events to theory. The affective becomings latent in the art encounter restore a connection between the viewing subject and its faculty of entering the world through the senses. In the second chapter I explore the implications of staging for contemporary sculpture and installation. A sculptural performativity across situated objects and emerging affects maps as lines of force in the space that art stages. The expanded space of sculpture reverberates social and political frictions through a subversive materiality, casting objects as agents of an insubordinate order. The third chapter presents my studio practice, which develops through a series of sculptures, video works and performances. In these works I set up spaces that act as rehearsals, scenes that act as platforms for encounters. I also describe case studies of encounters with works of art that manifest the elements that I discuss throughout the thesis: a staged encounter that produces an oscillation in the viewer between states of affect and becoming and critical reflection.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:577724 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Pasidi, Antigoni |
| Publisher | Royal College of Art |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://researchonline.rca.ac.uk/1365/ |
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