School of Art - Theses
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ItemInstalling and unsettling imaginaries: rehearsing the social within the self( 2018)The practice-led research outlined here explores ways of bringing attention to the mutual contingency of the self and the social through self-portraiture, culminating in a large multichannel projection and sound installation titled How to Deal with Difference (2018). In this thesis I discuss some of the formative influences on this work from various threads of social theory and contemporary installation practice. What we recognise as ourselves is deeply embedded in the social institutions we exist within. Drawing on Cornelius Castoriadis and others, I will use the term 'imaginary' as an articulation of the social constructions that both form and are formed by the individual. I also refer to the artworks created through this research as 'imaginaries', and through their installation have attempted to unsettle the solidity of various perceptions of the self, and the social. My studio practice is situated through analysis of related works by prominent contemporary artists, noting some of the similarities and differences to the approach I have taken. Works by William Kentridge, Camille Henrot, Pipliotti Rist and Lisa Reihana are discussed in some detail, my purpose here being both to acknowledge their influence and to articulate something of what is distinctive in the work I have created. Partly inspired by Judith Butler's account of performative identity and self-poesis, I filmed myself performing many varying and contradictory 'selves', in an exploration of my own relationality and self-formation. In imagining, performing and arranging these characters, I drew from social imaginaries I am implicitly involved in. By digitally compiling the footage, I composited myself into plural existence to disrupt the sense of singular coherence, although it is obvious that all characters are performed by me. I have positioned the performances as 'rehearsals' – they are not polished or complete, but iterative and partial. By trying on characters I do not think of as me, I seek to explore, through rehearsal, the social within myself. The result is an agonistic portrait of my own socially situated self, which is intended to allow multiple modes of engagement and space for self-reflection.
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ItemPulse, chance, flux: the energetic image( 2015)Pulse, chance, flux: the energetic image is a practice-led research project which investigates the possibilities for extending analogue film and digital video projection beyond mere image reproduction, to become a transmission of embodied energy. The project is broken down into three key areas of investigation: pulse (vibration; frequency), chance (indeterminacy; synchronicity) and flux (the flow and transduction of energy). This project argues for the existence of a fundamental pulse to the world, or rather for millions of pulses, overlapping each other. From the addition of a multitude of pulses of information arises interference: the complexity of the world. Key works of vibration by Alvin Lucier, Tony Conrad and Bridget Riley are discussed. Artistic strategies of chance are investigated as a means to imbue works with the complex- ity of interference and to question how deeply relation really goes. Key time-based works by John Cage and David Tudor are compared for their strategic attempts to model the indeterminacy of the world in their very form. Flux is articulated as being the flow of energy. Douglas Kahn’s concept of the Aelectrosonic (the always-moving electromagnetic) is discussed and an argument is raised for its extension from sonic practices to include the luminous. In thinking about Kahn’s idea of transduction as the ‘locating moment’ of energy, a fundamental technical difficulty in working with light energy versus sound can be accounted for by abandoning literal transductions, instead turning to allusions. Three projection installation works, Modulations (2012–2015), Black Noise (2012) and Dark Matter (2015), were created, each comprising arrangements of projection devices, objects and images in relation. Flicker was used as a tactic to transmit an apparent embodied energy via the projection to the visitor. Decentralisation and dislocation were used strategically to continually shift attention from object to image to space to experience. The marriage of these theories and tactics is intended to create an energetic ‘noise’ in the space, in the projection machines and in the neurophysical of the viewer.
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ItemI thought you were her sister...I thought you were your sister( 2010)'I thought you were her sister…I thought you were your sister' is an art-based research investigation into my biological identity as a twin. I undertook this method of examination to explore twin idiosyncrasies, shared thoughts and experiences, blurred memories and uncertainties relative to the twinned appearance of sameness that ultimately produces difference. Creative strategies of mechanical twinning and observations of biological twinning were applied as techniques of re-editing and manipulating found family footage, of my twin and I, to conceptualise twin identity as abstract visual forms that are then spatially installed to construct an environment relative to the viewer’s experience of twins.