Incarnate: presence and vestige in contemporary art practice

As a species of hunter and gatherer, we as humans are driven to collect things that we can use to sustain our lives, but once the intrinsic need of this process is met, animals of all sorts will collect objects for other purposes. To the contemporary artist, this innate sense of object envy or the desire to collect has become a driving force behind much contemporary art practice and is firmly posited in art theory. Patterns are emerging within collecting processes that have become templates for unique styles of representation, be they conceptual or practical. This research probes beneath the surface of artistic practice in relation to collected object inclusive artistic practice in the search for a model to explain the phenomena which has become more prevalent over the past century. The historical discourse of object collecting, classification and display from the Medieval Reliquary, cabinets of curiosities, early museums and the modern and contemporary museological frameworks of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries forms the basis of this research. It is hypothesized that this historic continuum of collection processes has generated culturally and socially influenced object interaction behaviours that underpin the manner in which humans collect, classify and display objects. These historically informed behaviours have, over the span of history, resulted in a set of codified practices of collecting, classification and display. These practices, which have been repeated over the course of object collecting history, appear to have been adapted and incorporated into contemporary visual arts practice in those instances where artists engage with collected objects. To investigate the resonances of characteristic practices of historic collection processes that can be observed in contemporary collected object inclusive artistic practice, a series of researcher generated theoretic paradigms titled the Butterfly Pin Constructs, has been developed. The Butterfly Pin Constructs consist of five individual constructs that represent key elements of collecting, classification and display which have persisted and evolved since the Medieval period. These theoretic representations provide a platform upon which to discuss collected object inclusive artistic practice and the impact of the legacy of collection processes upon this contemporary phenomenon. This research utilises interview data from four Australian sample artists and the visual analysis of a number of their works of art to interrogate the framework of the Butterfly Pin Constructs and the role they may fulfil within the creative process. The Butterfly Pin Constructs, as embodiments of key characteristics of historic collection processes, are the central framework upon which an understanding of the phenomena of collected object inclusive practice can be positioned. As such, the interview responses and works of art of the late Tom Risley, Donna Marcus, Patrick Hall and Glen Skien, each of whom engage in collected object inclusive artistic practice, offer a sample set of this artistic phenomenon upon which to assess the validity of this theoretic model as offering an alternate paradigm to examine collected object inclusive artistic practice.

Counter-scripting the body in pain, an artistic interrogation into pain as practice, site and subversive force conceptualises and enacts forms of resistance to the human tendency to negate pain, drawing on methods and sensibilities specific to artistic knowledge and practice. Through a series of text-based artworks, this project offers alternative modes for probing, perceiving, and understanding chronic pain, challenging dominant socio-cultural attitudes that regard pain as something to avoid or resist. The tripartite series: 'May and the Potentiality of Pain' (2014-2015); 'It's Always Three O'clock in the Morning' (2016); and 'Gibraltar, A Walk with Disturbance' (2017) are at the centre of an exploration into the motifs pain as practice, site, and subversive force. The artworks were created in tandem with an ethical strategy for art pursued through an experimental art-writing strategy I have labelled counter-scripting. Elaborating and engineering affect through performance, the art texts of the three artworks challenge dominant individual and cultural tendencies to explain, suppress, and ultimately annihilate pain. Looking at the body in long-term pain, it becomes particularly important to regard physical and mental processes as coextensive, intertwined attributes instead of relying solely on linguistic acts to address and understand out sensory and corporeal experiences. Contemporary arts practice has proven particularly effective in mediating embodied experience and knowledge, through its ability to extend beyond the conventional uses of accepted representational motifs to address inter-embodied life. Considering relations of pain as its material, this study directs attention to the significance of contemporary arts practice for reconceptualising common perceptions of the presumed meaninglessness of chronic pain. A change of perspective of long-term pain must be adopted, the study insists, not only by those who themselves suffer but also by societies within which all embodied beings are immersed and whose reality said beings share.

Australian native animals have inhabited the realm of invention in the Western imagination ever since the first platypus specimen was sent to England and declared a hoax. The very singularity of our native fauna reinforced Australia's remoteness from the 'home' countries, both physically and culturally. This uniqueness has also seen Australian animals readily - and conspicuously - serve as embodiments of national identity and pride, but as Australians reconsider their place on the world stage, especially in light of the global increase in environmental awareness, their relationship with their most prominent 'ambassadors' has also come under revision. This essay draws on the themes and issues raised by eleven contemporary Australian visual artists, from a broad range of disciplines, who participated in the group exhibition Antipodean Bestiary at RMIT Project Space/Spare Room in 2007. Spanning indigenous culture and early colonial history through multicultural immigrations to contemporary 'larrikinism', environmentalism, and eco-nationalism, artists Jazmina Cininas, Annette Cook, Marian Drew, Rona Green, Rew Hanks, Danie Mellor, James Morrison, Geoffrey Ricardo, Heather Shimmen, Julia Silvester and Jacqui Stockdale highlight the rising profile of Australian native animals in contemporary art practice and renegotiate the myriad roles native fauna have played in shaping a national identity.

Description: The history of the Caribbean world is inseparable from its relationship to space, perceived or imagined. It begins with the ambition to conquer the world through a spatial representation seeking the artistic talent of seafarers. Since the time of conquest, this “other” space—at times superimposed on the space of the other—is subject to the imperative to possess a terra incognita, whose supposed virginity stirs all desires, as evidenced by the America of Van der Straet. Thus, through its many spaces of inscription, the map is both real and unreal. It lies at the edge of supposedly incompatible universes invoking eminently complex topologies. Firstly, because the very concept of a map invokes an ambition that is a priori excessive: that of representing the deployment of a multidimensional world, in perpetual evolution, through a two-dimensional representation that is tangible and temporarily fixed. Secondly, because this navigational tool, a real one—transmitted from generation to generation—has undergone a multitude of substantial mutations that have profoundly modified, in turn, the extent and quality of our relationship to the world. Any change of this order reminds us, whenever it occurs, how much we can reside in the unreal. This paradoxical aspect must certainly not make us forget the primary purpose of the map, which no longer needs further proof: to allow humankind to situate itself in a geographical, topological, or even cultural space, and to discover others. Over the course of explorations, the civilizations of the world consequently faced the same question of identity with more or less success: where are we and where can we go from here? [. . .] [. . .] Contributions to this multidisciplinary workshop may take the form of a 25-minute academic paper followed by a 15-minute discussion. The field of intervention encompasses visual and fine arts, languages, literature, civilization, history, geography, and the fields of human and social sciences. The exchanges may be structured around pictorial, sculptural, or performative works—not excluding other modes of expression likely to amplify the scope of the artistic message, such as poetry. Artists wishing to participate in this meeting will have the opportunity to exhibit two or three works that resonate with the chosen theme. Send the title of the presentation, an abstract, and a bio-bibliographic note by February 10, 2018, to Frederic Lefrancois, coordinator of the research forum, to the following address: frederic.lefrancois@outlook.fr

During my early introduction to architecture I found that I was motivated not only by matters pertaining to what architecture is, but also, to what it can do. Thus, the questions motivating this work derive from my education in architecture which, at their most rudimentary level, entail a deep fascination with the nature of space, and thus the problem of time. And, subsequently, a practical desire to understand the conditions that constituted experience, and thus perception, sensation and mind. My interest also developed from a general disposition towards others and world founded in principles of human equality and rights with respect to both freedom and responsibility. During my years practicing architecture, these questions as they were brought through the perspective of design continued to inspire me. At the same time, my interest in investigating these questions through theoretical and philosophical research persisted until my aspiration to engage in critical thought outpaced my desire to practice. Hence, a turn in career to work as an academic in the discipline of architecture and the area of architecture theory. This research may be perceived by some as situated outside the realm of architecture. However, this is not the case. My approach to architecture theory is not one that begins with a study of the object, or, for some, one might say the subject of architecture. That is, if the object is understood as the manifestation in thought, process or form of the building or built environment (real or conceived) itself; and if the subject is understood as the thought or idea emanating from the mind of the architect (as author). While there is much architecture theory advanced from this perspective lining my own bookshelves and utilized in my work as an educator. The concerns that have always called me towards thinking about architecture as the imagined and constructed world in which we live are those that query the very nature of concepts, notions, ideologies and intellectual constructions and beliefs upon which culture and society – architecture as both a cultural product and a social actor – are formed. This goes, as well, to the considerations that motivate my concern for people, not users or inhabitants as such, but as ontologically situated beings in the world. Accordingly, my work primarily deals with the content, history and effects of architecture as it relates to theories of space, time, the body, and cognition. Employing and developing theories and methods from disciplines including philosophy, cultural studies, literary theory, political, social and economic theory, cognitive psychology, and the neurosciences in the broadest sense. Admittedly, the nature of theoretical discourse has shown itself to be problematic over the past fifty-plus years; it has also proven to be transformative. Critical thinkers in the late 1960s developed a sustained critique of their philosophical predecessors – primarily in regard to Marx on one hand and Heidegger on the other – with a critique of social history and a displacement of metaphysics resulting in a repositioning of social and cultural discourse. Of course, the debate unfolded against the philosophical and aesthetic background of not only Marx and Heidegger, but also Nietzsche, Hegel and Freud on one hand, and Manet, Cézanne, Baudelaire and Mallarmé, Wagner and Debussy on the other. In architecture, the debate extended to Ruskin and Wölfflin, and to Wright and Corbusier, amongst others. This period, in itself, refers to an unprecedented artistic, scientific, economic, and technological mutation. Prevalent underpinnings remain identifiable, for instance an attack on the absolute nature of knowledge, which has brought about a fundamental rethinking of both the nature of consciousness, as well as a critique of science. As Foucault suggested, one of the great problems that arose in the 1950s was that of the political status of science and the ideological functions that it could serve. Another rebuke can be seen as the challenge to the primacy of truth as an adequation of subject to thing. This culminated in a radical critique of subjectivity resulting, some years later, in the so-called post-humanist-subject. In order to be rid of the subject itself, Foucault, in ‘Truth and Power’ (1977) argued that it was necessary to dispense with the essentialist subject both at the extremes and in-between the enlightenment’s humanist subject and its ideals of knowledge as self-constituting; as well as phenomenology’s fabrication of the subject as evolving through and embodying the course of history. Reflecting on this history, that post-war moment of theory, one cannot help but be struck by the complexity and the ambiguity of the adventure; qualities most evident in the fact that new spaces and new means of writing and drawing, of thinking and making emerged. Ideas that modified our understanding of both communication and the image, of both space and time. Discourses, when combined with a reflexivity within certain architectures and certain texts, rendered them somehow indefinitely open. In the 1960s, literary theory transformed thought on both sides of the Atlantic. For instance, Roland Barthes’s de-sanctioning of the biography-centric author, or the removal of authority from the author turned scriptor in ‘The Death of the Author’ (1967), or Julia Kristeva’s concept of intertextuality with ‘Word, Dialogue and Novel’ (1969). These works impacted our thinking on linguistic phenomena and the origin (or non-originality) of textual content and further, on the invention of new forms of writing and affective relations. Such theories informed and redirected thinking in architecture, for instance, Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas’s work ‘Semiotics and Architecture: Ideological Consumption or Theoretical Work’ was published in the first issue of Oppositions, an architectural journal produced between 1973 and 1984 by the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York. With this, the influence of the French intellectual climate as well as the Italian discourse on semiotics was brought to the centre of Anglo-American discourse in architecture theory. The intellectual trajectory along which this history is traced and the terrain on which it now takes place will be recognisable to anyone familiar with the work of such thinkers as Henri Bergson, Louis Althusser, Gabriel Tarde, Walter Benjamin, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Jean-Francois Lyotard, and, of course, Félix Guattari, Gilles Deleuze, and Maurizio Lazzarato. The importance of the radically original works that emerged in the seventies and eighties cannot be overestimated, for instance: Foucault’s Discipline and Punish and his lectures at the Collège de France, The Birth of Biopolitics, and Deleuze and Guattari’s Capitalism and Schizophrenia volumes Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus. These works, translated into English shortly after their original publication, were being read throughout many disciplines outside of philosophy including schools of architecture, and their influence can only be said to have increased. I share the above brief history so as to situate my work for those less familiar with the work of theory – whether architecture or otherwise – as this, too, is the intellectual trajectory and exploration along which my own work, as well as many of my contemporaries, travels. In my own work, the influence of the nineteenth/ twentieth-century French vitalist philosopher Henri Bergson – the great thinker of time and, as Walter Benjamin suggested, a seminal source to consult in considering the problem of experience – has quite profoundly informed my thinking and shaped its outcomes. Both with respect to time and space as well as body and brain, his influence is reflected in the title of this volume. That said, this is not a collection of chapters on Bergson’s philosophy. It is a collection on critical concepts I believe to be of importance for contemporary critique, delivered through topics that are relevant – at times directly and at others indirectly – to our current moment. This is a work of great commitment and it has sustained itself over time. It is my hope the reader finds some value in this as well.

Institutionalized government support for artwork incorporated into transportation environments has a history spanning more than 80 years in the United States. Although the Federal Transit Administration has a history of policy guidelines, and the American Public Transportation Association, and Americans for the Arts have developed best practices for the successful integration of artworks during the planning and construction phases of transportation projects, little research exists concerning the public life of those artworks during the operational phase, beyond maintenance concerns. This paper examines an artist-led tour program initiated by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro), as a case study, to demonstrate one way contemporary artistic practices are strategically implemented to further community engagement, by extending the reach of existing, integrated artworks during a capital project’s operational phase. The study begins with a context for public art in transportation environments, including a brief overview of the tradition of government support for public art in the United States. Artworks integrated within the Metro system are examined with a focus on features that engage customers as landmarks, inspire responses from participants rooted in the memory of historical events or popular culture, and respond to pre-programmed cues. Lastly, this research discusses the transformational value offered by contemporary artistic practices rooted in relational aesthetics, approaches that prioritize transitory experience over material product, by providing continued engagement with communities beyond the planning and construction phases, as examined through an artist-led tour program developed by Metro.

How can we make, unmake, and remake the world by playing through art? This is the thrust of Tim Stott’s inquiry throughout Play and Participation in Contemporary Art Practices. Echoing Luhmann’s ‘O...

The research deals with the concept of (Retro) style in graphic design, especially in contemporary image and illustration. And that is after the success of this style in achieving popularity in the pictograms in publications on a large scale of all kinds and techniques. In this presented research we focus on this “reactionary” trend in art as a special intellectual and artistic style that relied heavily on the concept of (Nostalgia) for the past, and the possibility of benefiting from that new trend to revive the artistic and visual identity of the culture of each society and choose “Egypt” as a model, as a broader and comprehensive vision than its current marketing and commercial goal, and because it has already surpassed that stage and demonstrated the effectiveness of playing on the sensitive chord related to linking the past with the present, and its success greatly in the (Retro marketing) process.

El objetivo de este articulo es demostrar —en lo referente a obras realizadas con objetos cotidianos— el incipiente giro materialista en el arte contemporaneo respecto al precedente giro textual y avanzar algunas conclusiones recientes acerca del encuentro entre lo «cotidiano», materialismo/realismo especulativo (Quentin Meillassoux; Levi Bryant; Graham Harman) y la practica artistica, que se aproximaran concretamente por medio de las obras de Nicolas Lamas: Boundary (2013) , Ball (2013), Line (2013), What does a fish know about the water in which he swims all his life? (2014) y Geometritation of the world (2013). En lo referente al estudio de «lo cotidiano» en el ambito artistico, hemos asistido a la promocion de un arte centrado en los elementos inmateriales de la relacion sujeto-realidad proxima. Sin embargo, recientemente presenciamos un giro en la produccion artistica y teorica determinado por el encuentro entre el arte y las teorias adscritas al materialismo o realismo especulativo , que condiciona la interpretacion de las «cosas» cotidianas y favorece una redefinicion en sentido experimental de tales practicas artisticas objetuales. Estamos asistiendo a un cambio de paradigma referente a la presencia de elementos de «lo cotidiano» en el arte contemporaneo: desde el marco linguistico y textual, que interpreta las practicas con objetos cotidianos recurriendo a la semiologia y la semiotica, hasta el marco poetico especulativo, que contempla lo cotidiano en la obra de arte a partir del nuevo concepto de materialidad establecido por las teorias del materialismo/realismo especulativo y en general del nuevo materialismo. Los elementos materiales cotidianos en las obras que se inscriben en el segundo paradigma no son usados como signos funcionales con un referente trascendente, es decir, como metaforas, sino que son objeto de una especulacion y experimentacion que trata de profundizar en su identidad fisica. Podemos considerar las obras compuestas por objetos corrientes del artista peruano Nicolas Lamas especulaciones materiales sobre la realidad a partir de la manipulacion plastica y la instalacion de elementos cotidianos en continuo dialogo con el espacio y con los demas objetos inmersos en el.

As digital technologies have become more pervasive, this thesis argues, there has been an accompanying expansion of a phenomenon here called ‘peripheral digital activity.’ This activity includes unplanned and unexpected events that arise in conjunction with digital technologies and that are poorly classified using conventional notions of ‘interaction,’ ‘user experience,’ or purposeful ‘use.’ To ground this idea, the thesis looks to artistic strategies that might critically investigate the concept of peripheral digital activity, in this case arguing that Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy of organism, with its emphasis on whole-part relations, holds special relevance. The thesis proposes an original Whitehead-centred analysis of art as a manner or ‘mode’ of decision procedure. Developing this analysis via Whitehead’s notion of actual entities and through a discussion of digital function, the thesis examines the practice of contemporary artist Tino Sehgal. Reading through theories of social and participatory art, the thesis arrives at Sehgal’s proposition of ‘cleaner conceptualism.’ Outlining a systems-based interpretation of cleaner conceptualism, Sehgal’s constructed situations are contrasted with the idea of art as a decision procedure proposed by Sol LeWitt. Whereas LeWitt organizes his idea of decision procedures as a dualist critique of instrumental rationalism, Sehgal creates a new mode of monist decision procedure. Using this monist strategy, Sehgal mobilises participants, collectors, and curators in a way that is entangled with and presupposes digital function even as his practice foregrounds non-technological body-to-body human engagement. The thesis claims that Sehgal’s practice is one strategy for critically investigating the effects of peripheral digital activity. Proposing directions for future research, the thesis ends with a Coda that provides a preliminary analysis of the paintings Laura Owens as a diagnostic tool for investigating digital functional augmentation.

Cutting Edge of the Contemporary: KNUST, Accra, and the Ghanaian Contemporary Art Movement

As an art form the artist's book inhabits an uncertain status sited between language, sign, image and object. It is because of its characteristic ambiguity that I have made it the subject of my research and intellectual enquiry for this exegesis. Although my studio practice has often entailed working with images and language, it was through further research that my work took on a different context and with time became precursors for books. This study explores the development of the new work with its emphasis on process. The books that resulted were deconstructed fragments from a larger work on paper. These emphasised an interrupted and changed narrative and the potential for an alternative reading and interpretation. In order to establish a historical context for my studio research, this exegesis examines the concepts of chance, process and activism. These specific subject areas are central to the charged but intermittent historical trajectory of the artist's book. The influential legacies of both William Blake and Stephane Mallarme are discussed, as is the role of the Russian and Italian Futurists and their instigation of the artist's book as a voice of protest during the social and political unrest at the beginning of the last century. Within a Contemporary context an exploration of the works of John Cage, Ed Ruscha and Robert Rooney represent three diverse approaches to the artist's book. All of these artists and writers have, in various ways prompted me to think about the very nature of reading and its meaning. The results of my enquiries are recorded in the following chapters.

The construction and expression of collective memory is the eternal theme of Anselm Kiefer's contemporary art practice. Kiefer's multiple identities as a World War II veteran, a Catholic, and a Germanic ethnicity have made him instinctively inclined to portray collective memories such as national culture, religion, and war, and the symbolic expression and spatial turn of contemporary art have also had a significant impact on the formal construction and expression of meaning in Kiefer's artistic practice. This paper interprets the multiple directions of collective memory construction in Kiefer's works, including historical reflection, cultural tracing and human insight, and at the same time analyses the overall influence of symbolic embedding, spatial activation and translation mechanism on Anselm Kiefer's collective memory expression, and proposes a basic path for understanding the expression of the forms and connotations of collective memories in Kiefer's works from a methodological point of view: the spatial translation of symbols.

This article has two main goals. Firstly, the author gives a brief outline of the development of both liturgical theology and pastoral liturgical studies. Both of these disciplines are important in the field of liturgical studies and both have their roots in the Liturgical Movement, an important source for contemporary liturgical reflection. One of the main themes of the Liturgical Movement was the relation between theological reflection and pastoral praxis within the framework of the liturgy. Until this day, this proves to be a difficult issue. Therefore, a second goal of this article is to develop new perspectives on the relation between theology, liturgy and Christian life. The author starts from the definition of pastoral liturgy used by C. Vagaggini. He perceives pastoral liturgy as ‘the general way of conceiving and putting the pastoral into practice by consciously centering it in the liturgy’. The author tries to combine this insight with the liturgical theological propositions of the relation between liturgy and theology. Using a threefold liturgical lens, a concept of liturgical theologian D. Fagerberg, the author develops his reflections on pastoral and Christian praxis. Subsequently, he discusses the meaning of the bodily, relational and self-giving dimension of the liturgy. It is his conviction that these three liturgical lenses show some necessary and basic attitudes for both pastoral activity as well as Christian life in general. In the end, the liturgy, perceived as the human self-giving answer to Gods Trinitarian gift of self, brings us to the core of human existence itself. As such, this article explores living a Christian life as living a liturgical life.

This arts-based research investigates the ways in which contemporary transcultural artists (a category in which I include myself) have harnessed the frictions and tensions of cultural difference to develop their practices. Transcultural artists are understood in this research to be those who experience, adopt, and work across multiple cultures based on their heritage and upbringing. Two examples of such artists are Australian Aboriginal Tony Albert and Vietnamese-American Dinh Q. Le, who are discussed in this exegesis. Both artists leverage cultural difference to create artworks that offer alternate and deeper understandings of identities, and reveal forgotten or neglected voices and narratives of the past. They work across multiple platforms and spaces, highlighting the important role transcultural visual artists play in broadening definitions of art, artmaking, and art audiences. This exegesis draws on postcolonial theories, artistic fields, and cultural and historical contexts to contextualise my studio outcomes, including the history of Australian national identity, the series of events that led to my family’s migration to Australia, and the continued representation of Hmong as Other in Australia and the diaspora. As a first-generation Hmong-Australian, I have often felt the strain of cultural difference. Rather than dissuade or resolve the frictions and tensions of cultural difference, I have used these productively within my arts practice. The works I have produced throughout my doctoral candidature reimagines tropes of Hmong-Australian identity in ways that are playful and inclusive of my lived experiences. I have also reinterpreted past events associated with my family’s experiences of war and migration, drawing on personal memories, my father’s oral stories, family mementos, recorded documentation, and artefacts. To circumvent being pigeonholed as an ‘ethnic’ artist, I have worked across multiple disciplines and expanded my role as an artist by positioning my work within traditional and non-traditional art exhibiting spaces and contexts. These outcomes have reached those who are often marginalised by art institutions, as I have engaged them in both making and viewing art.