Inquiry and Engagement
Asynchronous Session
The Artaudian-embodied Voice as Tragic Chorus: Imagined Swathe of Poetic Relations View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Hazel Antaramian Hofman
This project conceptualizes a totality of the Artaudian phenomenon as a spatial affecting event enjoined by the ancient Greek chorus, where an imagined poetic relation, between these two vocalized and moving bodies as pluralities, is manifest as Artaudian choral voice. Here is where connections between Artaud, the ancient Greek tragedy, and Nietzsche’s Dionysian serve as portals back to the originary theatre. In the historical interstices, along the borderlands of philosophy, social thought, and theatre and art theory, is where the Artaudian-choral voice is carried into an afterlife as found in such thinkers as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Julia Kristeva; and such artists and writers as Nancy Spero, Jerzy Grotowski, and Peter Brook. Furthermore, what is revealed in this project is that which has been obscured, that is, masked from its effects upon the works of Black Mountain College faculty, such as David Tutor and John Cage; in the Lettrist and their noteworthy path to the International Situationists; in the moments of the Living Theater and its carryover toward Allan Kaprow and the Happenings. These sonorous and gestural effects as afterlife are reverberating echoes where Artaud’s singularity: his failures, tragedies, theories, and theatrical impossibilities, are transformed into a ‘voice’ as a choral bodily paradigm revealing much of the idiosyncratic aspects of the inseparability of life and art, that is to say, his oeuvre as an effectuating specter-like existence in the fields of philosophy, literature, film, psychoanalysis, and participatory art.
Featured Public Art for Whom? : Exploring the Benefits of City-led Participatory Art Practices in Disadvantaged Neighborhoods of Madrid View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Milagros Hurtig
This research examines who benefits from the use of city-led participatory art projects in disadvantaged neighborhoods. After the neoliberal crisis in 2008, discourses on creativity evolved from art projects aimed at pursuing economic growth to art projects with social and cultural aspirations. Participatory art projects are practices where the public is involved in the design and production of the artwork. Urban governments in Europe have used participatory art due to their assumed potential to enhance citizen engagement. However, there is a lack of critical and evaluative insight regarding the implementation and after-use of these creative practices and their inclusionary or exclusionary effects on local communities. The three-year public art program Imagina Madrid (2017-2019) is analyzed to shed light on these debates. Attention is paid to the disadvantaged contexts where these practices took place and the communities for which these practices are developed. The primary data source was 22 in-depth interviews conducted with public authorities, artists, and citizens, accompanied by participatory research. Findings indicate that participatory art projects can have outcomes contrasting initial objectives and do not always benefit local communities. This thesis argues that participatory art is always a situated practice, and thus, greater sensibility regarding local contexts is essential for maximizing the benefit of disadvantaged groups. This study contributes to expanding the knowledge on the use of participatory art practices, and it offers an insight into which elements of public art practices are beneficial for maximizing social impact.
The Case for Poiesis in Arts and Conflict Studies: Graffiti in the Palestinian Context View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Chelsea Wilkinson
Through ethnographic and online research, this paper explores graffiti as a tool for resistance and social change in Palestine, specifically offering an analysis of Palestinian reactions to the West Bank Barrier’s graffiti and graffiti tourism through the lens of poiesis, the active shaping of the environment to create meaning. For many Palestinians, making art on the wall is a form of resistance to not only Israeli occupation, but to graffiti by internationals which often overshadow Palestinian art in media coverage. Placing graffiti directly on this wall meant to silence them allows Palestinians to assert their own narrative by actively shaping and reshaping the wall’s appearance. This creative shaping is a framework in the field of expressive arts referred to as poiesis, which means to create sense of the world through art-making. Using graffiti on the West Bank Barrier is a prime example of this phenomenon. Defacing gives Palestinians the power to destroy international graffiti that they feel is toxic or categorizes them as violent (i.e. anti-Semitic or racist graffiti). Alternatively, some artists target specific tourists via graffiti to shape the wall into a tool for direct communication with social movements, Americans, and Christians, who have power to change public attitudes in their home countries towards the Palestinian cause. Though the wall continues to devastate Palestinian lives, graffiti allows them to express their own narrative and project their stories into public view, and potentially strengthen the message of resistance by shaping the wall into a global call for justice and solidarity.
Timor Loro Sae, a Country and an Animated Film View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Costa Valente Antonio
Timor Loro Sae is the name of a country and the title of an animated film. The country is one of the youngest countries in the world, born in 2002. The film by Vítor Lopes was born at the same time, following political and social events. The initial narrative was transformed as events unfolded. The traces and stains of this historical film also live between transformations and transformations / action in its 12 graphic and mutant minutes. Our study takes place between the desire to explore the graphic and narrative options of the film and an approach to the history of the country.
An Anthropological Approach to Inquiry: Peripheral Identities and Photography in Asia View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Phyllis Hwee Leng Teo
The paper investigates the possibilities photography as a research method broadens the empirical scope of an inquiry. Photography has played an integral role in the study of human behavior over time, with photographic inventory contributing to the study of material culture and the use of space. Drawing on the work of South Korea’s Pandora Project and Singaporean photographer Wei Leng Tay, this paper examines the significance of human relationships and aspects of environments in understanding individuals and culture from an anthropological approach in image-making. Photographing social circumstances and interactions in private and public gatherings, the photographers demonstrate that photography can be employed as a constructive method of inquiry and dissemination of research findings, as well as a powerful mode of representation.
The Model’s Reductiveness and Its Speculative and Generative Potential: A Critical Discussion about the Affordances of the Model View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Barbara Rauch, Michelle Gay
Models, as used in many disciplines, can be theoretical, conceptual, heuristic, and prototypical. Our theorizing goes beyond any particular model but inquires concepts and ideas of models and prototypes employed in creative practices. The critical discourse around the model object, or scaled object, invites different perspectives that address scaling, unscaling, a disruption of grand vision, the importance of the ‘locale’, and presents both specific and metaphorical space to test new and challenge existing paradigms. The ‘model’ discussion then enters current dialogues about the virtual, the digital as material and as spatial. We see the model (as simultaneously object and action) as a framework for both making theory and practicing theory. Playing on the cross-disciplinary language of the ‘model’ in academia, “modelling” is the working method to surface questions and situate creative inquiry. New Materialism offers a conceptual framework where humans, non-humans, machines and discourses challenge the boundaries of past disciplinary edges. Interested in this porosity we investigate new approaches to research through making through the use of the ‘model’ - as site for critical and creative thinking-through-making, to unpack what reductiveness might mean and to present a ‘new model’ allowing for intersections and generative potential. This project crosses disciplinary boundaries in re-evaluation of model spaces, including, Design, Art, Digital Humanities and New Materialism discussions to position Research-Creation as a “Thinking-through-Making” approach.
