Memory, image, matter: Trauma and acts of un-forgetting

How might we conceive of the role of memory as a non-representational mode of commemoration that reconstitutes and transforms lived experience? In this paper I will draw on aspects on Indigenous epistemology and apply conceptions of memory outlines in works of Edward Casey, Henri Bergson and others to consider how social and psychological effects of trauma are manifested through generations. An understanding of the relationship between images, memory and matter and of memory as a primarily eidetic and material process may also help to suggest how some people may be able to avoid or overcome trauma. As image production, art-making generates images that like memory, perform acts of "unforgetting" through which the past is returned as a presence that is materially apprehended. This process can both sustain and transform individual and collective histories. Central to this idea is the notion that, the structure of mind and of memory are co-extensive with the external world an that the articulation of consciousness is crucially dependent on space and place.

Pop art: making mathematics popular

Leicha Bragg shares an effective activity for integrating visual arts, technology and mathematics. Such an approach has the potential to enhance students' visual reasoning and spatial ability by using multiple perspectives of learning. 

The performance of trauma in moving image art

This thesis argues that the perceptual apparatus required to view abstract and graphic films can illuminate our understanding of trauma as a social/medical concept. such 'materialist' films predict the new contemporary 'Gestalt of the senses' ushered in by digital media.

The performance of trauma in moving image art

With reference to recent neurological research into Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) using new imaging technologies and models of implicit and explicit memory systems developed from this research, The Performance of Trauma in Moving ...

The planter's guide; or, A practical essay on the best method of giving immediate effect to wood, by the removal of large trees and underwood; being an attempt to place the art, and that of geneneral arboriculture, on fixed and phytological principles; interspersed with observations on general planting, and the improvement of real landscape. Originally intended for the climate of Scotland.

Mode of access: Internet.

Cherbourg time : young black and deadly art 2003-2007

Art is most often at the margins of community life, seen as a distraction or entertainment only; an individual’s whim. It is generally seen as without a useful role to play in that community. This is a perception of grown-ups; children seem readily to accept an engagement with art making. Our research has shown that when an individual is drawn into a crafted art project where they have an actual involvement with the direction and production of the art work, then they become deeply engaged on multiple levels. This is true of all age groups. Artists skilled in community collaboration are able to produce art of value that transcends the usual judgements of worth. It gives people a licence to unfetter their imagination and then cooperatively be drawn back to a reachable visual solution. If you engage with children in a community, you engage the extended family at some point. The primary methodology was to produce a series of educationally valid projects at the Cherbourg State School that had a resonance into that community, then revisit and refine them where necessary and develop a new series that extended all of the positive aspects of them. This was done over a period of five years. The art made during this time is excellent. The children know it, as do their families, staff at the school, members of the local community and the others who have viewed it in exhibitions in far places like Brisbane and Melbourne. This art and the way it has been made has been acknowledged as useful by the children, teachers and the community, in educational and social terms. The school is a better place to be. This has been acknowledged by the children, teachers and the community The art making of the last five years has become an integral part of the way the school now operates and the influence of that has begun to seep into other parts of the community. Art needs to be taken from the margins and put to work at the centre.

Destination know-where : a road map of a PhD journey in theatre for young people

Within contemporary performance arenas young people are fast becoming part of the vanguard of contemporary performance. Performativity, convergence and openness of form are key animating concepts in the landscape of Theatre for Young People (TYP). To ignore what is taking place in the making of performance for and by young people is to ignore the new possibilities in meaning-making and theatrical form. This thesis investigates the contemporary practice within the field of Theatre for Young People. Pivotal to the study are three hallmarks of contemporary performance – shifting notions of performativity; convergence articulated in the use of technology and theatrical genres; and Umberto Eco’s realisation of openness in form and authorship. The thesis draws from theatre and performance studies, globalisation theory and youth studies. Using interviews of Theatre for Young People practitioners and observation of thirty-nine performances, this thesis argues that young people and Theatre for Young People companies are among the leaders of a paradigm shift in developing and delivering performance works. In this period of rapid technological change young people are embracing and manipulating technology (sound, image, music) to represent whom they are and what they want to say. Positioned as ‘cultural catalysts’ (McRobbie, 1999), ‘the new pioneers’ (Mackay, 1993) and ‘first navigators’ (Rushkoff, 1996) young people are using mediatised culture and digital technologies with ease, placing them at the forefront of a shift in cultural production. The processes of deterritorialisation allows for the synthesis of new cultural and performance genres by fragmenting and hybridising traditional cultural categories and forms including the use of new media technologies. Almost half of all TYP performances now incorporate the technologies of reproduction. The relationship between live and mediatised forms, the visceral and the virtual is allowing young people to navigate and make meaning of cultural codes and cultural forms as well as to engage in an open dialogue with their audiences. This thesis examines the way young people are using elements of deterritorialisation to become producers of new performance genres. The thesis considers the contemporary situation in relation to issues of performance making and performance delivery within a global, networked and technology-driven society.

Art, adolescence and Social Work: Anja, the invisible manager

This article has been written with the intention of being able to analyse the contributions of art —theatre, in this case— to the practice of social work. For this purpose, we have chosen to read the social reality in which we intervene through the lens of social constructionism. This helps us to rescue the social and subjective side of art, and, moreover, to recover the depathologization of the subject in professional intervention. Thus, using a practical case taken from work with adolescents in the German FSJ programme, hand-in-hand with a young girl called Anja we trace the developmental and sociological aspects of adolescence in order to later address certain common points of art and psychosocial work. Art will hence be redefined as a transitional object allowing questions to be addressed relating to (self-) perception, attachment, communication and changes in conduct as the ultimate goal of professional action. Lastly, we note the limitations and risks of art-based intervention, in order to conclude with a final synopsis.

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.

Space and place

This article suggests an exploration of space and place as both an actual and metaphorical construct. The thematic intent and approach to my own artistic making is also addressed as a way of reflecting on the processes of art making.

During 2004 I travelled around the United Kingdom and Ireland, finishing up in Paris. Amongst many things, I pursued two particular interests, one, how place is a location of constant accretions of human intervention and presence and, two, the structure of bridges and the built environment formally, conceptually and historically. These two interests are an ongoing focus for my art making.

O ensino de redação em sites: diálogos em rede

We know that studies on reading and writing take place within the Linguistic for several decades and, with de computer, the language entered the network and this is opening a learning space for writing classes, no more reduced to a classroom but expanded to a universe that has no geographical boundaries, namely de Internet. Our research fits into this context and is part of the project The discourse on writing practices in contemporary Brazilian media: the art making, the pedagogical practice, and the production of meaning to develop discourse analysis on the practice of writing on sites dedicated to teaching and learning of this practice. The main objective of this research is to investigate the relationship between school attendance of redaction - made here as discourse gender, as you know Bakhtin - and the discourse of the sites that constitute our corpus. We set out the hypothesis that the sites are intended for the teaching/learning of writing seeking to create virtually teaching imaginarily conditions similar to those that exist in school attendance of the Portuguese language. We are interested in, therefore, observe, discursively, as the image is created of the interlocutors to which they are intended considering that the enunciators are not in front of those who occupy the place of real students, because they are virtual students. We, too, to know as the gender class manifested itself in those sites, as these sites dialogue with the face-to-face class in relation to ideology, the function of the teacher, the conception of language and writing. The constitution of the corpus was from search tools on the internet. The sites that we analyzed were: alunosonline.com.br, brasilescola.com.br, coladaweb.com.br, guiadoestudante.com.br, infoescola.com.br, mundoeducação.com.br, mundovestibular.com.br, português.com.br, professorjuscelino.com.br and redaçãodissertativa.com.br. The selection was qualitative, considering the...

Are Videogames Art?

My dissertation defends a positive answer to the question: “Can a videogame be a work of art? ” To achieve this goal I develop definitions of several concepts, primarily ‘art’, ‘games’, and ‘videogames’, and offer arguments about the compatibility of these notions. In Part One, I defend a definition of art from amongst several contemporary and historical accounts. This definition, the Intentional-Historical account, requires, among other things, that an artwork have the right kind of creative intentions behind it, in short that the work be intended to be regarded in a particular manner. This is a leading account that has faced several recent objections that I address, particular the buck-passing theory, the objection against non-failure theories of art, and the simultaneous creation response to the ur-art problem, while arguing that it is superior to other theories in its ability to answer the question of videogames’ art status. Part Two examines whether games can exhibit the art-making kind of creative intention. Recent literature has suggested that they can. To verify this a definition of games is needed. I review and develop the most promising account of games in the literature, the over-looked account from Bernard Suits. I propose and defend a modified version of this definition against other accounts. Interestingly, this account entails that games cannot be successfully intended to be works of art because games are goal-directed activities that require a voluntary selection of inefficient means and that is incompatible with the proper manner of regarding that is necessary for something to be an artwork. While the conclusions of Part One and Part Two may appear to suggest that videogames cannot be works of art, Part Three proposes and defends a new account of videogames that, contrary to first appearances, implies that not all videogames are games. This Intentional-Historical Formalist account allows for non-game videogames to be created with an art-making intention, though not every non-ludic videogame will have an art-making intention behind it. I then discuss examples of videogames that are good candidates for being works of art. I conclude that a videogame can be a work of art, but that not all videogames are works of art. The thesis is significant in several respects. It is a continuation of academic work that has focused on the definition and art status of videogames. It clarifies the current debate and provides a positive account of the central issues that has so far been lacking. It also defines videogames in a way that corresponds better with the actual practice of videogame making and playing than other definitions in the literature. It offers further evidence in defense of certain theories of art over others, providing a close examination of videogames as a new case study for potential art objects and for aesthetic and artistic theory in general. Finally, it provides a compelling answer to the question of whether videogames can be art. This project also provides the groundwork for new evaluative, critical, and appreciative tools for engagement with videogames as they develop as a medium. As videogames mature, more people, both inside and outside academia, have increasing interest in what they are and how to understand them. One place many have looked is to the practice of art appreciation. My project helps make sense of which appreciative and art-critical tools and methods are applicable to videogames.