The art of being a fan : complicity and criticality in contemporary art and fandom

This practice-led research project aims to use contemporary art processes and concepts of fandom to construct a space for the critical and creative exploration of the relationship between them. Much of the discourse addressing the intersection of these spaces over the last three decades tends to treat art and fan studies as separate areas of critical and theoretical research. There has also been very little consideration of the critical interface that art practice and fandom share in their engagement with one another ��� or how the artist as fan might creatively exploit this relationship. Approaching these issues through a practice-led methodology that combines studio based explorations and traditional modes of research, the project aims to demonstrate how my 'fannish' engagements with popular culture can generate new responses to, and understandings of, the relationship between fandom, affect and visual art. The research acts as a performative and creative investigation of fandom as I document the complicit tendencies that arise out of my affective relationship with pop cultural artefacts. It does this through appropriating and reconfiguring content from film, television and print media, to create digital video installations aimed at engendering new experiences and critical interpretations of screen culture. This approach promotes new possibilities for creative engagements with art and popular culture, and these are framed through the lens of what I term the digital-bricoleur. The research will be primarily contextualised by examining other artists' practices as well as selected theoretical frameworks that traverse my investigative terrain. The key artists that are discussed include Douglas Gordon, Candice Brietz, Pierre Huyghe, Paul Pfieffer, and Jennifer and Kevin McCoy. The theoretical developments of the project are drawn from a pluralistic range of ideas ranging from Johanna Drucker's discussion of critical complicity in contemporary art, Matt Hills' discussion of subjectivity in fandom and academia, Nicolas Bourriaud's discussion of Postproduction art practices, and Jacques Ranci��re's ideas about aesthetics and politics. The methodology and artworks developed over the course of this project will also demonstrate how digital-bricolage leads to new understandings of the relationships between contemporary art and entertainment. The research aims to exploit these apparently contradictory positions to generate a productive site for rethinking the relationship between the creative and critical possibilities of art and fandom. The outcomes of the research consists of a body of artworks ��� 75% ��� that demonstrate new contributions to knowledge, and an exegetical component ��� 25% ��� that acts to reflect on, analyse and critically contextualise the practice-led findings.

Reinforced concrete wall construction formed with OSB:First published use in the United Kingdom and acknowledged by Terry Pawson Architects as the source of inspiration for the internal concrete finish of the 2010 Carlow VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art.

The artefact was published in the following : <br/><br/>Bennett, D., (October 2007), Architectural Insitu Concrete, RIBA Publishing, London, , ISBN 124-3671-245, pp 101-103 <br/><br/>Bennett, D., (2008), Concrete Elegance Four, London, Concrete Centre and RIBA Publishing, pp cover, c, 4, 9-12 &amp; back.<br/><br/>Stacey, Professor M., (2011) Concrete: a studio design guide, London, Concrete Centre and RIBA Publishing, pp74-75.

Intimate Ecologies: An exploration of the languages of contemporary exhibitions and making in museums and related cultural spaces in the UK

Intimate Ecologies considers the practice of exhibition-making over the past decade in formal museum and gallery spaces and its relationship to creating a concept of craft in contemporary Britain. Different forms of expression found in traditions of still life painting, film and moving image, poetic text and performance are examined to highlight the complex layers of language at play in exhibitions and within a concept of craft. The thesis presents arguments for understanding the value of embodied material knowledge to aesthetic experience in exhibitions, across a spectrum of human expression. These are supported by reference to exhibition case studies, critical and theoretical works from fields including social anthropology, architecture, art and design history and literary criticism and a range of individual, original works of art. Intimate Ecologies concludes that the museum exhibition, as a creative medium for understanding objects, becomes enriched by close study of material practice, and embodied knowledge that draws on a concept of craft. In turn a concept of craft is refreshed by the makers��� participation in shifting patterns of exhibition-making in cultural spaces that allow the layers of language embedded in complex objects to be experienced from different perspectives. Both art-making and the experience of objects are intimate, and infinitely varied: a vibrant ecology of exhibition-making gives space to this diversity.

Uncertain Spaces: Virtual Configurations in Contemporary Art and Museums

Cont��m artigos apresentados na International Conference ���Uncertain Spaces: Virtual Configurations in Contemporary Art and Museums���, na Funda����o Calouste Gulbenkian (Lisboa), 31 Outubro - 1 de Novembro de 2014) de: Helena Barranha e Susana S. Martins - Introduction: Art, Museums and Uncertainty (pp.1-12); Alexandra Bounia e Eleni Myrivili - Beyond the ���Virtual���: Intangible Museographies and Collaborative Museum Experiences (pp.15-32); Annet Dekker - Curating in Progress. Moving Between Objects and Processes (pp.33-54); Giselle Beiguelman - Corrupted Memories. The aesthetics of Digital Ruins and the Museum of the Unfinished (pp.55-82); Andrew Vaas Brooks - The Planetary Datalinks (pp.85-110); S��ren Meschede - Curators��� Network: Creating a Promotional Database for Contemporary Visual Arts (pp.11-130); Stefanie Kogler - Divergent Histories and Digital Archives of Latin American and Latino Art in the United States ��� Old Problems in New Digital Formats (pp.131-156); Luise Reitst��tter e Florian Bettel - Right to the City! Right to the Museum!(pp.159-182); Roberto Terracciano - On Geo-poetic systems: virtual interventions inside and outside the museum space (pp.183-210); e, Catarina Carneiro de Sousa e Lu��s Eust��quio - Art Practice in Collaborative Virtual Environments (pp.211-240).

On the troublesome relationship of feminism and terrorism: representing the female terrorist in contemporary art

This paper analyses tendencies in debates about cultural representations of terrorism to assume that artists make critical interventions, while the mass media circulates stereotypes. Some recent feminist analyses of female terrorist acts have re-instituted essentialist arguments in which violence and terrorism is described as inherently masculine, while women are by nature pacifist, so that femininity is the antithesis of militarism. More progressive analyses mostly tend to expose the circulation of stereotypes and their gender bias, in order to protest the misrepresentation of women in violence. These analyses do not construct alternative accounts. Through an analysis of two works by artists Hito Steyerl and Sharon Hayes, the paper argues that some of the moves to re-image the question of women, violence and agency have already been made in contemporary art practices. Through analysing legacies of terrorism and feminism, it becomes possible to rethink the question of agency, militancy and the nature of political art. The paper appears in an edited interdiscplinary collection arising from a conference at Universit��t der Bundeswehr in Munich. It relates to wider projects involving collaborations with Birkbeck and Edinburgh on representations of terrorism and on violence and contemporary art.

Developing a collections management policy for the Ethnology Division of the National Museum, Monuments and Art Gallery of Botswana

The culture and political environments of Botswana influence the collections management policy of its' National Museum, Monuments and Art Gallery. The emphasis of this research is to make the museum relevent to the needs of the local people by developing more suitable ideas. The developed policy is intended to reflect these unique needs.

"And he was beautiful" : contemporary Athapaskan material culture in the collections of Field Museum of Natural History / William E. Simeone, James W. VanStone.

n.s. no.10(1986)

Catalogue of a collection of paintings, etc. presented by Mrs. Liberty E. Holden to the Cleveland Museum of Art /

Half-title: The Holden Collection.