School of Culture and Communication - Theses
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ItemRethinking urban space through mediated performance( 2015)This thesis explores the contemporary mediated city, in which everyday social and spatial exchanges are mediated by pervasive communication technologies. Centred on a detailed ethnographic account of Blast Theory’s participatory art performance A Machine To See With during the Brighton Digital Festival 2011, the thesis investigates the changed status of embodied encounters in the city. Employing a theoretical approach based on Deleuze and Guattari’s framework of machinic assemblages, participatory art in public space is conceptualised as a collection of machines where agency is distributed and where the outcome is always emergent and unpredictable. The analysis of A Machine To See With as a collection of machines is extended towards reflecting on the technological apparatus that mediates our everyday lives in the contemporary mediated city and some of its pressing issues: the misinterpretation of communication failures; the normalisation of surveillance; the ethics of remote data storage; and our increasing dependence on technology to navigate urban space and negotiate embodied encounters. The field research is conducted through a close observation of Blast Theory’s performance. It is based on a methodological approach that assembles a ‘performative account of performance’ by combining Actor-network theory, multi-sited ethnography and mobile methods of research. The thesis proposes that emerging patterns of social interaction and reconfiguration of public space are mediated by an assemblage of narrative, technology and urban space in contemporary society. Forms of encounter mediated through biotechnological systems of trust displace older forms of social engagement. The field research conducted on A Machine To See With identified three overlapping modes of participation: playful, exploratory and critical. These modes are indicative of the process of artistic narration and participant translation that is triggered by the performance and its interpretation as an ‘open work’ despite its prescriptive narrative. The field research also revealed how perceived ‘failure’ of participants to follow the narrative prompts and their unexpected encounters with both human and non-human actants in urban space could potentially become affordances.
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ItemRelational 'glocalities': a study of 'cartographies' of media and migration through the approach of 'glocal' cosmopolitanism( 2012)In this thesis, I explore constructions of social spaces in experiences of media and migration. In particular, I focus on the interweaving of the ‘global’ and the 'local' in a distinctive, Singaporean context of contemporary globalised media and migration. This study involves a hermeneutical analysis of phenomenological interviews with twenty-one Singaporeans who are university students in Melbourne, Australia. While this thesis is primarily positioned in media and migration studies, I develop a conceptual framework that draws and builds on related discourses of mediated globalisation and cosmopolitanism, as well as mediated social spaces. In particular, I expand existing conceptions of 'relational space' to a tripartite conception. I conceptualise three dimensions of what I view as 'relational spaces': spaces as constructed through social relations (social spaces), relations between social spaces, and relations to social spaces. I argue that social spaces are constructed in experiences of media and migration as 'cartographies' (see Brah, 1996, p. 145) characterised by 'relational glocalities'. I define 'relational glocalities' as 'glocal' (R. Robertson, 1995) social spaces that are locally and unequally differentiated in relation to one another within 'global fields' (Glick Schiller & Çağlar, 2009; R. Robertson, 1992). Drawing on Beck’s (2006) approach of 'methodological cosmopolitanism' and Robertson’s (1992, 1995) conception of 'glocality' as a 'universalism-particularism nexus', I introduce the concept of 'glocal cosmopolitanism' to examine the construction of 'relational glocalities' through dialectical negotiation between 'universalism' and 'particularism'. The notion of 'relational glocalities' challenges the established approach of 'methodological nationalism' (Beck, 2006; A. Wimmer & Glick Schiller, 2003) that informs existing research on media and migration. It contributes to the reconceptualisation of sociospatial experiences of media and migration through the approach of 'methodological cosmopolitanism' (Beck, 2006; Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 2009; Beck & Grande, 2010; Georgiou, 2007b; Jansson, 2009). This study finds that a multiplicity and diversity of countries and cities of migration are apparent in and across macrostructural constructions of what I describe as 'biographical geographies'. 'Biographical geographies' are differentiated by stages of migration, the relevance of close personal relations for experiences of migration, as well as first-hand and second-hand experiences of migration. Expanding the view of social spaces beyond (particular) countries and cities, this study finds that a much broader variety of 'relational spaces' are relevant in microstructural constructions of 'cartographies'. I identify distinct 'relational spaces' that emerge as configurations of media, social relations, place, and space. In the final chapter, I discuss the broader potential of 'glocal cosmopolitanism' as a framework to examine sociospatial experiences of media and migration in a global environment of networked communication (Castells, 2010).