Art History and Visual Culture
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Browsing Art History and Visual Culture by Author "Fisher, Jennifer"
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Item Open Access Repositioning Neuroaesthetics Through Contemporary Art(2014-07-09) Mckay, Sally Jean; Fisher, JenniferNeuroaesthetics has tended to privilege neuroscientific understandings of art, eliding centuries of art historical research on perception and culture. Instead, this dissertation extends neuroaesthetic research to examine the specific social, sensorial and perceptual processes occurring as artworks are encountered in exhibition contexts. How does neuroaesthetic perception operate in contemporary artworks? What modes of cognitive address are involved? How can neuroaesthetic engagement facilitate embodied knowledges? This dissertation first inquires into the neuroaesthetic literature in order to establish its neuroscientific foundations, and then advances a perceptual standpoint stemming from art and art history. Drawing from feminist theories of embodiment, I reposition neuroaesthetics to incorporate art historical inquiries into body and mind through direct engagement with art. I argue that such a revised neuroaesthic perception must take into account post-humanist troublings of nature/culture dichotomies. I also suggest that the paradigm for embodied perception that has emerged from both cognitive neuroscience and affect theory can expand neuroaesthetic understanding. My investigation has led me to first-hand experience as a research subject of neuroscience experiments, which show that current fMRI contexts in fact delimit the perception of art and inhibit possible neuroaesthetic significance. Instead, I undertake neuroaesthetic research in exhibition contexts where self-reflexive awareness facilitates insights into perception and cognition that are inaccessible within the epistemological conditions of neuroscience labs. The first case study examines how an installation by the FASTWÜRMS collective reveals cognitive processes of abduction by inviting navigation through an infinitely complex web of objects and images. Turning from association to visual cognition, I consider how Olafur Eliasson’s immersive light installations manipulate colour perception thereby facilitating critical awareness of techno-mediated environments. Third, my analysis of a conceptual work by Kristin Lucas explores how the performance of digital and legal technology invites embodied transformations. Finally, I examine how the affective tensions produced in a video by Omer Fast activate an awareness of intersubjective communication that corresponds with recent neuroscientific developments in mirror-neuron theory. By taking contemporary artworks as its focus, the dissertation extends neuroaesthetic inquiry to demonstrate contextual understandings of how the cognitive processes of art constitute physiological engagements between body, brain and world.Item Open Access Total Work of Fashion: Bernhard Willhelm and the Contemporary Avant-Garde(2016-09-20) Lau, Charlene Kay; Fisher, JenniferIn fashion discourse, the term avant-garde is often applied to garments that fall outside of the mainstream fashion, whether experimental, conceptual or intellectual. However, such usage overlooks the social and political aims of the historical, artistic avant-gardes. Through an examination of the contemporary avant-garde fashion label Bernhard Willhelm led by designers Bernhard Wilhelm and Jutta Kraus this dissertation reconnects the historical or original vanguard and its revolutionary potential and proposes that Bernhard Willhelm belongs to an emerging, contemporary narrative of the avant-garde that intersects with fashion. In this study, I analyze Willhelm and Krauss collections, ephemera, runway presentations, exhibitions, online media, fashion films and critical reception from the brands inception in 1999 to 2016. Firstly, I develop the notion of fashion-time and contend that Willhelm and Krauss designs reject accelerated change, oscillating between the temporalities of fashion and anti-fashion and fashion and art. Secondly, I argue that the designers devise a political fashion, one that simultaneously critiques global politics and challenges norms in the fashion system. Thirdly, I assert that enduring collaboration with other cultural producers underpins Willhelm and Krauss work. The interdisciplinarity born of their collective work informs their spectacular visual language, the of sum of which I term a total work of fashion. By exploring these tenets of Willhelm and Krauss practice, I demonstrate that the avant-garde project is dynamic and in constant flux, at times incorporating dialectical facets that continually expand the disciplines of fashion and art.