Minerva Elements Records
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 2 of 2
-
ItemDouble bind: splitting identity and the body as an object( 2009)Double Bind: Splitting identity and the body as an object is a research project consisting of studio-based practice presented mainly in video installation format. This work looks at hysterical symptoms as a performance of a body’s split identity. The project draws on the Lacanian theory of Mirror Stage which proposes that the self experienced by the subject, and the image of that self (represented in a mirror-like reflection, or an image) are different to each other, and the development of self-awareness as misrecognition of one’s self. As a conspicuous example of split body, Chapter One describes how the hysterical body, in clinical and artistic representation, is dissociated into multiple selves. In Chapter Two, I discuss some examples of contemporary performance artists who use themselves as subjects, but whose bodies become objects that do not portray the self. In the final chapter I explain how, in my video work, I objectify my own body and how I assess whether this is a mode of self-portraiture. During the course of this research, I studied a wide range of medical resources and psychoanalytical literature, much of which employed visual illustration and documentation. For example, I have drawn inspiration from Jean-Martin Charcot’s photographic documents of female hysterics whom he treated as patients at the French hospital of La Salpêtrière in the late 19th century; in particular the figure of his most famous patient, known as Augustine. My research also involved studio-based investigation, such as experimentations with the performance of my own body in video format, and the contextual study of artistic and critical texts relating to contemporary media art. The aim of this research is to demonstrate the ways in which my video performances split the body, creating an Other within one body that can be compared with the hysterical body of a patient, like Augustine, performing for her doctor. In this condition, I perform as the subject and the object of the gaze at the same time. My self-portrait is split in this way: it creates a body double, which I misrecognise as myself. But in doing so, I am both the director and the performer of the image. This is the double bind that my video work puts me into.
-
ItemRational irregularity: art, artist, and chronic chaos of the contemporary era( 2009)My research investigates the premise that fear, anxiety and uncertainty in reason, impact on the essence of the desire to believe in structures, our categorisation of ideology, myself, my approach to artwork and creativity in this contemporary era. This thesis is divided into three different chapters based on the motif “Rational Irregularity”. The first chapter is about the “idea” of antinomy in reason in philosophy and psychoanalysis drawing on Kant, Lacan and neuroscience (nerve science). The second chapter considers the position of art and the artist through Derrida and Danto’s discourses. It further explores the mechanism of art and creativity in the contemporary era using my own interpretation of Lacan’s method of psychoanalysis. The third chapter considers my artworks which are based on the psychological symptom of Sleep Paralysis and the fasting experience through the form of video installation. The reason I focused on the discourses of contemporary philosophy is that I feel the knowledge of theories in any time affects the mechanism of human civilisation in that era. That in turn influences people, the subject and the phenomena of art. This discourse is fluid and the possibility of further discourse emerges from this understanding. Philosophy influenced my way of perceiving phenomena in the world. The understanding of these ideas and the expressions of my artworks became more complex because of those theories and related readings, I entered a problematic realm through this new knowledge. This paper seeks to extrapolate the chaos of these complex thoughts and ideas so I can better understand the mechanism of my art.