This research project investigates factors contributing to what I consider to be an erosion within the contemporary culture of the imagination- crucial to the very concept of what it is to be human. It has been said that the 'civilising' of art within contemporary culture may have flogged the human imagination into retreat. If so what might be the best way for art to help us visualise more creative ways of living and being? This is the key question I have pursued in this research project, the main outcomes of which are a body of creative art works (presented for examination in the form of a site-specific installation, together with documentary archive of photographs and other interventions) and an exegesis which explores the critical context for these. In proposing site-specific installation art as a vital alternative to the over-commodification evident within much contemporary art, I also see repetition and play as being strategies with particular potential for encouraging active artist-participant dialogue on the subject of the poetico-ethical imagination- along lines suggested by thinkers such as Robert Kearney and Ken Wilbur. The artefacts and installations presented for examination are mostly devoid of textual explanation and commentary, with the aim of emphasising direct sensory experience. However, throughout the written component (exegesis) I have taken the creative liberty of including textual fragments and other visual elements as a means of suggesting that a form of disassociation, meandering or breakdown has occurred. The reader will also notice an absence of capitalisation in the titles of chapters (and certain works). In this I have sought to explore possibilities for undermining academic form through imaginative play.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/269047 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Bartley-Clements, Jo-Anne |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | EN-AUS |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Copyright 2006 Jo-Anne Bartley-Clements |
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