What is belonging? What does belonging mean as lived experience? What happens when displacement disrupts belonging as solid given? / I investigate these questions from my unstable position as displaced cultural 'other', as artist, as woman and as city dweller. Personal memories, dreams and the experience of reality form threads of reference that are akin to Walter Benjamin's notion of memoirs, rather than being an autobiographical chronology. / I question how a sense of belonging may be instilled, maintained, lost, achieved, resisted; how a sense of otherness may develop, persist, (re)surface. Do migrants merely amplify a universal dilemma? My position as migrant is a complex interweaving of presence and absence, developed gradually over time as a result of a wide range of factors, including the abiding effect of early childhood experiences. I focus on geography and language as central to the experience of cultural displacement and move between ambivalent positions and the seemingly solid territories of authoritative theories. / The structure of the thesis reflects these complexities. It is a psychogeographical mapping of several journeys in one, like a Deleuzian rhizome route system, or Debordian dérive, or what Jean-Luc Nancy calls a mêlée. As methodology I draw on these theories to bring together complexities, by interweaving experience, practice and theory. / The thesis comprises art works and a written exegesis. Drawings, photos, maps and other artwork intersperse with writing; artefacts include text, maps, knitting and series of images that document walking projects. I link walking to uttering, to language and the telling of stories. I explore the complex dilemmas of translation, of language as loss, contained as interiority and language as appropriated, claimed from without. Both exegesis and studio work form part of a process that is expressive, while situated within a critical context. / I argue the validity of ambivalent belonging, formed and maintained in transient connections between fragmented aspects of experience, while keeping open the potentiality of ongoing change. This research into the meaning of belonging is full of intuitive beginnings and remains open ended. / Thesis (PhDVisualArts)--University of South Australia, 2005.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/267371 |
| Creators | Van Niele, Irmina. |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | copyright under review |
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