Unthinkable

'Unthinkable' is an installation comprising drawings and fabric works, which were placed onto a large-scale wall painting. This work engages with the gender politics of art criticism through strategies of redrawing, in particular the commentary that Helen Frankenthaler's painting practice was 'unthinkable' without Jackson Pollock. 'Unthinkable' was developed and presented as part of BEAF 2013: Brisbane Experimental Art Festival, curated by Rachael Parsons and Stephen Russell, held at the Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts.

O Retrato de Oscar Wilde uma análise de sua obra crítica : conferências e ensaios

A presente dissertação pretende analisar a visão do autor irlandês Oscar Wilde sobre diferentes expressões artísticas, e discutir como ele relacionava tais formas de arte com a vida cotidiana. Para tanto, o primeiro capítulo é dedicado à vida de Wilde por entendermos que a sua vida foi, igualmente com os seus textos, uma obra de arte. No segundo capítulo, foram analisadas as conferências proferidas pelo escritor em uma turnê que ele fez pelos Estados Unidos e Canadá no ano de 1882. No terceiro, e último capítulo, foram selecionados três ensaios nos quais os temas debatidos sempre convergem para a discussão sobre a arte e sua relação com a vida

Dilatando o corpo da arte: provocações de Um Crime Delicado na literatura e no cinema

A dissertação estuda o romance Um Crime Delicado, de Sérgio SantAnna (1996), ao filme quase homônimo, de Beto Brant (2005), tendo como principal questão a imagem do corpo no contexto sócio-cultural urbano e a sua representação na arte contemporânea. O romance de SantAnna acolhe, na urdidura ficcional, subtemas da maior relevância, tais como o lugar da deficiência física no horizonte de uma cultura hedonista, violência sexual (contra a mulher) e os poderes da crítica de arte (da autojustificação ao desvirtuamento de seus fins). A adaptação fílmica, por sua vez, introduz mudanças na obra de partida que complementam e enriquecem o romance e suas questões. No exercício comparativo, a tradicional discussão sobre as relações interartísticas (calcadas em Lessing), o culto à beleza e respectiva hostilização da feiura, os limites da exacerbação sensorial a partir do uso artístico da nudez provocaram a incorporação de outras obras de arte e de artistas à discussão de conceitos imprescindíveis: o abjeto, o contraditório, a intermidialidade. No primeiro capítulo, circunscrevemos historicamente nosso tema, focalizando a representação do corpo como lugar de multiplicação e relativização de significações; a seguir, apresentamos o painel de contradições que a sociedade excitada do século XX (Christoph Türcke, 2010) projeta sobre a questão corporal; e, para finalizar, propusemos a dilatação teórica do adágio horaciano ut pictura poesis /a poesia é como a pintura ao cinema poético (com suporte teórico de Claus Clüver, 2011, e Wolfgang Moser, 2006). Concluímos sugerindo que as intermidializações propõem novas interpretações aos textos literários, mas podem ser bem mais contundentes como formas de potenciação estética e de crítica social.

Informatic Opacity: Biometric Facial Recognition and the Aesthetics and Politics of Defacement

Confronting the rapidly increasing, worldwide reliance on biometric technologies to surveil, manage, and police human beings, my dissertation Informatic Opacity: Biometric Facial Recognition and the Aesthetics and Politics of Defacement charts a series of queer, feminist, and anti-racist concepts and artworks that favor opacity as a means of political struggle against surveillance and capture technologies in the 21st century. Utilizing biometric facial recognition as a paradigmatic example, I argue that today's surveillance requires persons to be informatically visible in order to control them, and such visibility relies upon the production of technical standardizations of identification to operate globally, which most vehemently impact non- normative, minoritarian populations. Thus, as biometric technologies turn exposures of the face into sites of governance, activists and artists strive to make the face biometrically illegible and refuse the political recognition biometrics promises through acts of masking, escape, and imperceptibility. Although I specifically describe tactics of making the face unrecognizable as "defacement," I broadly theorize refusals to visually cohere to digital surveillance and capture technologies' gaze as "informatic opacity," an aesthetic-political theory and practice of anti- normativity at a global, technical scale whose goal is maintaining the autonomous determination of alterity and difference by evading the quantification, standardization, and regulation of identity imposed by biometrics and the state. My dissertation also features two artworks: Facial Weaponization Suite, a series of masks and public actions, and Face Cages, a critical, dystopic installation that investigates the abstract violence of biometric facial diagramming and analysis. I develop an interdisciplinary, practice-based method that pulls from contemporary art and aesthetic theory, media theory and surveillance studies, political and continental philosophy, queer and feminist theory, transgender studies, postcolonial theory, and critical race studies.

Ai Weiwei: La recepción de su producción artística

Actualmente Ai Weiwei es el creador con mayor proyección dentro y fuera de China, destacando especialmente por su prolífica, heterogénea, comprometida y polémica producción artística. Sus propuestas suscitan un gran interés y obtienen una destacada repercusión tanto en China como en un escenario internacional. Precisamente, es uno de los artistas contemporáneos chinos que ha logrado una mayor presencia en los medios de comunicación y en los espacios expositivos españoles, siendo un ejemplo de ello la organización de la primera exposición museística de su obra en el Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo (2013) y el estreno de la película documental sobre su vida y su obra Never Sorry (2013), dirigida por Alison Klayman. Ai Weiwei es un autor mediático y su visibilidad deviene una plataforma desde donde articular proyectos artísticos que enfocan determinadas problemáticas sociales. A la vez, la crítica política de Ai Weiwei resulta especialmente atractiva en un contexto euroamericano que subraya su papel de disidente y agitador. Dentro de tales parámetros se ahondará en la recepción de la producción artística de Ai Weiwei en el marco internacional y en el contexto español, analizando la aproximación que la prensa esboza sobre dicho autor.

O artista pelo artista na voz do próprio

Este doutoramento em Estudos de Arte centra-se no artista plástico, em Portugal, hoje. De acordo com o seu carácter projectual, estrutura-se em dois vectores distintos, ainda que relacionados entre si e devedores um do outro: -Um corpo prático, assente na prática artística de atelier e dando continuidade ao percurso artístico autoral próprio (conducente à série de imagens fotográficas “Prática Artística Enquanto Ferramenta de Higiene Pessoal”); -Um eixo reflexivo, construído a partir da análise qualitativa do conteúdo de um conjunto de entrevistas presenciais realizadas a artistas plásticos portugueses (conducente ao manifesto artístico “O Artista pelo Artista”). Neste sentido, este estudo vai ao encontro de vinte e seis artistas plásticos contemporâneos portugueses reunidos numa amostra seleccionada pelo crítico de arte Miguel von Hafe Pérez. A saber: Alberto Carneiro, André Cepeda, André Gonçalves, Ângela Ferreira, António Olaio, Carla Cruz, Carla Filipe, Cristina Mateus, Daniel Blaufuks, Eduardo Batarda, Fernando José Pereira, Francisco Queirós, Gerardo Burmester, Joana Vasconcelos, João Pedro Vale, João Tabarra, José de Guimarães, Mafalda Santos, Marta de Menezes, Miguel Leal, Miguel Palma, Paulo Mendes, Pedro Calapez, Pedro Proença, Rui Chafes e Zulmiro de Carvalho. O documento que reúne o conjunto das entrevistas realizadas, anexo a esta investigação, distancia-se do discurso utilizado nas retóricas das narrativas históricas, teóricas ou críticas. Aqui, procuram-se as palavras dos criadores, sem mais. Decorrente do percurso metodológico que orientou a análise qualitativa do conteúdo, este estudo propõe o manifesto artístico "O Artista pelo Artista" enquanto resultado do exercício de investigação. Ainda, este trabalho apresenta a série de imagens fotográficas “Prática Artística Enquanto Ferramenta de Higiene Pessoal” como projecto-tese centrado no movimento que guiou todo o processo investigativo: da reflexão sobre o outro (e sobre as suas palavras) para a reflexão sobre o próprio (e sobre a sua intimidade). Através das vinte e seis entrevistas, do manifesto “O Artista pelo Artista” e da série de imagens “Prática Artística Enquanto Ferramenta de Higiene Pessoal”, esta investigação devolve a palavra aos próprios artistas, a todos os outros operadores da esfera artística e ao público interessado em conhecer o criador apresentado por si próprio, sem mediadores, num acto sincero, franco e generoso.

Fotografia : a arte submetida à crítica

O presente trabalho consiste num estudo sobre as revistas Objectiva (1937-1947) e Foto Revista (1937-1939), estabelecendo-se como uma reflexão em torno da crítica de arte fotográfica. Na década de 1930, assistiu-se, em Portugal, a um interesse renovado pela fotografia (tida como) artística. O Estado Novo suportou regulares eventos neste domínio - são exemplos os Salões Nacionais de Arte Fotográfica, com início em 1932, que posteriormente tomaram contornos mais alargados, com o advento dos Salões Internacionais de Arte Fotográfica em 1937. Entretanto, a crítica de arte dedicada à fotografia ficara sem um suporte jornalístico. Contudo, em finais dos anos 30, o entusiasmo em torno da fotografia artística tomou contornos mais expressivos com a aproximação dos salões de foro internacional, o que levou ao ressurgimento de publicações periódicas dedicadas à fotografia. Depois de seis anos sem qualquer revista especializada neste domínio, assistese ao advento da Objectiva e Foto Revista, publicações mensais, as quais proporcionaram espaço e visibilidade para a crítica dedicada à fotografia artística. As duas publicações dedicaram-se, entre outras vertentes, à apreciação dos eventos mais significativos no território nacional, ao aconselhamento dos amadores fotográficos emergentes e à discussão dos temas mais pertinentes à época. Num período em que a produção artística fotográfica se encontrava, de um modo geral, dessincronizada do panorama internacional, e tendo em conta a conceção de crítica de arte como orientadora de tendências, importa conhecer as opções, entendimentos e proliferação de valores que esta promoveu, respeitantes à fotografia nacional (então) contemporânea.

La subjectivité poétique face à la peinture : le cas de L'Atelier contemporain de Francis Ponge

L’Atelier contemporain recueille la plupart des textes sur l’art de Francis Ponge. Malgré sa réputation de « poète des choses », celui-ci n’y écrit pourtant pas avant tout sur les œuvres finies (les tableaux), mais plutôt sur les artistes mêmes. S’appuyant sur un approfondissement de la conceptualisation de la poétique pongienne comme érotique entre le sujet et l’objet, ce mémoire cherche à découvrir, à travers les questions particulières que la peinture pose à l’écriture de Ponge, les raisons du déplacement du regard de l’écriture de la chose muette à la personne parlante. Il semble que Ponge, face à des œuvres artistiques non verbales, soit à la recherche d’une signifiance qu’il ne peut trouver, ce qui l’oblige à se tourner vers les personnes. Mais ces personnes finissent toujours par céder la première place, dans L’Atelier contemporain, au « je » du poète.

El arte de los videojuegos: una filosofía de las ficciones digitales interactivas de masas

Ciertos videojuegos hoy en día, a parte de ser objetos culturales reconocidos en la cultura digital, brindan una experiencia estética que desde la filosofía del arte debe ser analizada. El presente texto investiga a fondo sobre la naturaleza y un posible status artístico de algunos videojuegos "candidatos", siguiendo las teorías de reconocimiento según criterios de los objetos del arte planteada por Dutton y Gaut.

Foucault's 'What is an author' : towards a critical discourse of practice as research

A vexed issue for many artistic researchers is related to the need for the artist/researcher to write about his or her own work in the research report or exegesis. In the creative arts, the outcomes that emerge from an alternative logic of practice are not easily quantifiable and it can be difficult to articulate conclusions objectively given the emotional and ideological investments and the intrinsically subjective dimension of the artistic process. How then, might the artist as researcher avoid on the one hand, what has been referred to as 'auto-connoisseurship', the undertaking of a thinly veiled labour of valorising what has been achieved in the creative work, or alternatively producing a research report that is mere description or history?

In this paper I suggest that a way of overcoming such a dilemma is for creative arts researchers to shift the critical focus away from the notion of the work as product, to an understanding of both studio enquiry and its outcomes as process. I’d like to draw on Michel Foucault’s essay ‘What is An Author ‘ to explore how we might move away from art criticism to the notion of a critical discourse of practice-led enquiry that involves viewing the artist as a researcher, and the artist/critic as a scholar who comments on the value of the artistic process as the production of knowledge.

Foucault’s essay provides artistic researchers with a template for more objective and distanced discourse on the practice-led research process and its writing. It allows researchers to locate themselves within contexts of theory and practice and provides an analytical framework though which researchers might locate themselves and their work within the broader social arena and field of research, As I will show with reference to the work of Donna Haraway and a number of commentaries on Pablo Picasso’s Demioselles d’Avignon, an application of Foucault’s ideas need not negate those subjective and situated aspects of practice as research.

Feminist poetics : symbolism in an emblematic journey reflecting self and vision

My thesis tilled Feminist Poetics: Symbolism in an Emblematic Journey Reflecting Self and Vision, consists of thirty oil paintings on canvas, several preparatory sketches and drawings in different media on paper, and is supported and elucidated by an exegesis. The paintings on unframed canvases reveal mise en scčnes and emblems that present to the viewer a drama about links between identities, differences, relationships and vision. Images of my daughter, friends and myself fill single canvases, suites of paintings, diptyches and triptychs. The impetus behind my research derives from my recognition of the cultural means by which women's experience is excluded from a representational norm or ideal. I use time-honoured devices, such as, illusionist imagery, aspects of portraiture, complex fractured atmospheric space, paintings and drawings within paintings, mirrors and reflective surfaces, shadows and architectural devices. They structure my compositions in a way that envelops the viewer in my internal world of ideas. Some of these features function symbolically, as emblems. A small part of the imagery relies on verisimilitude, such as my hands and their shadow and my single observing eye enclosed by my glasses. What remains is a fantasy world, ‘seen’ by the image of my other eye, or ‘faction’, based on memories and texts explaining the significance of ancient Minoan symbols. In my paintings, I base the subjects of this fantasy on my memories of the Knossos Labyrinth and matristic symbols, such as the pillar, snake, blood, eye and horn. They suggest the presence of a ritual where initiates descended into the adyton (holy of holies) or sunken areas in the labyrinth. The paintings attempt a ‘rewriting’ of sacrality and gender by adopting the symbolism of death, transformation and resurrection in the adyton. The significance of my emblematic imagery is that it constructs a foundation narrative about vision and insight. I sought symbolic attributes shared by European oil painting and Minoan antiquity. Both traditions share symbolic attributes with male dying gods in Greek myths and Medusa plays a central part in this linkage. I argue that her attributes seem identical to both those of the dying gods and Minoan goddesses. In the Minoan context these symbols suggest metaphors for the female body and the mother and daughter blood line. When the symbols align with the beheaded Medusa in a patriarchal context, both her image and her attributes represent cautionary tales about female sexuality that have repercussions for aspects of vision. In Renaissance and Baroque oil painting Medusa's image served as a vehicle for an allegory that personified the triumph of reason over the senses. In the twentieth century, the vagina dentata suggests her image, a personified image of irrational emotion that some male Surrealists celebrated as a muse. She is implicated in the male gaze as a site of castration and her representation suggests a symbolic form pertaining to perspective. Medusa's image, its negative sexual and violent connotations, seemed like a keystone linking iconographic codes in European oil painting to Minoan antiquity. I fused aspects of matristic Minoan antiquity with elements of European oil paintings in the form of disguised attribute gestures, objects and architectural environments. I selected three paintings, Dürer's Setf-Portrait, 1500, Gentileschi's Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting, 1630 and Velazquez's Las Meniruis, 1656 as models because 1 detected echoes of Minoan symbolism in the attributes of their subjects and backgrounds. My revision of Medusa's image by connecting it to Minoan antiquity established a feminist means of representation in the largely male-dominated tradition of oil painting. These paintings also suggested painting techniques that were useful to me. Through my representations of my emblematic journey I questioned the narrow focus placed on phallic symbols when I explored how their meanings may have been formed within a matricentric culture. I retained the key symbols of the patriarchal foundation narratives about vision but removed images of violence and their link to desire and replaced it with a ritual form of symbolic death. I challenged the binary oppositional defined Self as opposed to Other by constructing a complex, fluid Self that interacts with others. A multi-directional gaze between subjects, viewers and artist replaces the male gaze. Different qualities of paint, coagulation and random flow form a blood symbolism. Many layers of paint retaining some aspects of the Gaze and Glance, fuse and separate intermittently to construct and define form. The sense of motion and fluidity constructs a form of multi-faceted selves. The supporting document, the exegesis is in two parts. In the first part, I discuss the Minoan sources of my iconography and the symbolic gender specific meanings suggested by particular symbols and their changed meanings in European oil painting, I explain how I integrate Minoan symbols into European oil paintings as a form of disguised symbolism. In the second part I explain how my alternative use of symbolism and paint alludes to a feminist poetic.

Unthinkable

'Unthinkable' was an installation comprising drawings and fabric works placed onto a wall painting. This work engages with the gender politics of art criticism through strategies of redrawing and (re)performance, in particular the commentary that Helen Frankenthaler's painting practice was 'unthinkable' without Jackson Pollock.

L'Arrière-pays de Yves Bonnefoy, viagem e escrita de si

This essay attempts to approach the book L’Arrière-pays by Yves Bonnefoy from two central ideas: the notion of travel and autobiographical writing. They belong to the poet’s project, according to which, since L’Improbable published in 1959, and with reference to Baudelaire, “poetry and travel are of the same substance”. Invited by Albert Skira to participate in the collection  Sentiers de la création, Yves Bonnefoy produces in  L’Arrière-pays  a long essay in which he combines art criticism, philosophical reflection and personal narrative. With narrative projects abandoned or transformed into poems, as in the case of L’Ordalie, incorporated into the book Du Mouvement et de l’immobilité de Douve (1953), Yves Bonnefoy in L’Arrière-pays establishes a first path to reconsider the association between narrative and fiction and, for that reason, is the central text of what the poet called his «conversion».