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Item Open Access Buffalo Death Mask(2014-07-09) Hoolboom, Mike; Schwartz, JudithThe thesis essay has arrived in six parts. It opens with a discussion of my method, and closes with a detailed look at Buffalo Death Mask, the short digital movie I made in 2013 about AIDS. In between are a pair of what moviemakers like to call establishing shots. There are a couple of chapters on emotional establishing shots narrating fear and death. And there is a chapter that tries to approach the simple and complicated question of what artists might be doing when making experimentalist movies. Why all this need to trouble the form?Item Open Access Conditions Variable: Assemblage Theory and Systems Theory in Creative Practice(2014-07-09) Ouellette, Troy David; Couroux, Marc G.This dissertation will situate the twenty-first century phenomenon of Assemblage theory, which originated in the field of philosophy, within the last 100 years of creative practice. Drawing from Manuel DeLanda’s application of Assemblage theory, I will devise a means to discuss creative practice without reducing its analysis to ‘structured fields’ or ‘closed systems’. Rather, comparisons will be made between a system and an assemblage to illustrate how the two part ways, and find common ground. To better understand the way in which systems have been applied in artistic practice, an investigation of two major twentieth-century paradigm shifts will be examined. The first example is the Bauhaus school and its post-European formal offshoot in America, the New Bauhaus, and how it adapted its European predecessor’s principles of design. The second is the technological revolution, which engendered Jack Burnham’s Systems Esthetics, Experiments in Art and Technology (EAT) and the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In light of these developments, I argue that a flexible, descriptive, Assemblage theory is needed to better articulate how art (the work and its making) functions within an expanded field of practice as it now exists. The adaptable and transmutable nature of Assemblage theory is also illustrated through example. In the process this dissertation will offer new ways to articulate and understand creative practice and propose a new strategy for art to be understood. Finally, I will employ Assemblage theory to analyze my own creative endeavours.Item Open Access Time Caught by the Tail: Fast Forward: Pause(2014-07-09) Erfanian, Eshrat Safavian; Tenhaaf, PetronellaThis thesis examines the effect of the new technology and the virtual time on the visual language, production and consumption of image, and in particular image of alterity. By revisiting works of 1960s artists and their relationship to the technological growth in post WWII, I examine the anxious subjectivity evident in their work in order to draw parallel with contemporary works of art, and their relationship to the new technology and notion of time. Relying on key debates, thesis explores the Modernist aesthetic dislike for representing the image of worker as political subject in Fordist mode of production (which measured time in blocks of production and cycle of consumption). It then addresses works of art that attempt to bring back the image of worker as political subject in recent years but face the shift from Fordist to Post-Fordist (with the new technology, time that it takes to produce an idea or the immaterial labor can not be measured). Therefore, the museums have become the new factories and viewers are producing unpaid immaterial labor (“meaning” making). With images readily available on Internet from the new global unrest, it is evident that there is a search for the image of the next political subject. With this in mind, I examine the representation of the image of alterity through cinema and visual arts. I conclude that production of image of alterity, or image as evidence, is more of a factory production than a human production, with camera and new technology used by the military and Hollywood. Again relying on key debates, this thesis revisits the art produced by the Futurists and their obsession with the production of aerial images of cities, and their similarities to our everyday exposure to areal images (Google Earth) and how these images in general have shifted our view from a horizontal point of reference to earth, and stability, to a vertical and unstable position, which historically is associated with time of war and conflict. Finally, this thesis explores the use of special effect in video editing, which turns aerial images of city of Tehran, into an intricate tapestry. This special effect signifies the similarities between baroque quality of Islamic art of 12th century and the fragmentation of image and information in our present time, urging us to re-examine the fast forward idea of technology and make an effort for a pause.Item Open Access Excavating Artiface(2014-07-09) Clyne, Amanda Joy; Armstrong, David ScottWe are all image-makers, whether in paint, pixels or persona, and every image contains a vulnerability and resistance to exposure. Inevitably, the acts of looking at and making images lead to a kind of erotic pathos. Seduced by the ornamental skins of images and individuals, we seek bonds of emotion and empathy in external artifice. But while these skins provide clues as to what may lie beneath the surface, they ultimately conceal more than they reveal. Inspired by portraiture, couture and the history of painting, I look to images where artifice reigns, in the historical portraits and contemporary fashion photographs that feign perfection. In the studio, I provoke their metamorphosis through experimental processes and hybrid modes of image making to excavate their artifice. The resulting works are portraits of portraits that dismantle the spectacle of image-making, and reflect the fragile nature of seeing and being seen.Item Open Access "Wayfaring Line" Lines of Thought, Gesture and Time(2014-07-28) Kirchner, Christina Marie; Armstrong, DavidThis thesis support paper explores the role of the line in my artistic practice, and its nature and meaning within the context of my graduate work. The line is the material, pictorial and theoretical foundation for my thesis exhibition, "Chain of Days". This paper examines the line as a metaphor for my working process, the trace of the line as a material index which points to an action, and explores the links between my practice of drawing lines and the historical traditions of embroidery and lace-making.Item Open Access Trying Not to Die(2014-07-28) Bond, Gordon William Torrance; Singer, Yvonne“Trying Not to Die” is the title of a series of paintings which are part of my Masters of Fine Arts thesis exhibition. The paintings speak directly to the work of, painter, Philip Guston. In this paper I will discuss “Trying Not to Die” with reference to the process-based approach Guston employs and the themes of the grotesque and anxiety present in his work. This paper uses Philip Guston as a foil, comparing and contrasting specific works by Guston to works in “Trying Not to Die”. By locating key differences and similarities between Guston’s work and my own, the paper unpacks specific elements of my painting process and expands on the themes of caricature, the grotesque and anxiety about death in my work.Item Open Access Way and Weighing: Abstract Painting(2014-07-28) Jerome, Amelie; Jones, Janet A.The thesis Way and Weighing: Abstract Painting explores the concepts of time, place and contemporary abstract painting as experienced through my current studio practice. It reflects on the process and thought involved within the body of paintings that will form my Master’s thesis graduating exhibition entitled Way and Weighing. “Way and Weighing” is the first line of a poem written by philosopher Martin Heidegger, entitled “The Thinker as Poet” (1). Heidegger relates the process of thinking to his observations of nature, and alludes to the nature and process of thinking itself: its dangers, failures and timely process. To me, it echoes the practice of art-making itself. It evokes a metaphor between action and thought, being and painting. “Way” also echoes “The Way”, an expression frequently referring to a spiritual path, or simply "way" referring to the “way” things are done, approached, seen – an angle, or a perspective. “Weighing” brings to mind choosing, balancing elements in painting, or “weighing” ideas and values. My paintings are a way of weighing action and thought in the process of abstract painting.Item Open Access Of Becoming(2014-07-28) Grisey, Mary Gayle; Singer, YvonneThis thesis will outline my material processes, ideas and concepts during my studies at York University’s MFA in Visual Arts. I briefly discuss weaving and women in mythology and history, and connect my work to that of contemporary artists situated in the practice of weaving. I then describe my art-making process and discuss artists who also use methods based on destructive techniques and intuition. Finally, I discuss concepts that are pertinent within my art practice: archaeology, psychology, the emotional body, the uncanny, haunting and sticky auras.Item Open Access In Transition(2014-07-28) Roglic, Milena; Jones, Janet APrecarious circumstances within our environment galvanizes our feelings towards an uncertain and unknown future. In Transition is a series of work that responds to transitional urban landscapes that fluctuate between collapse and renewal. Through the exploration of oil paint medium, application and formal devices, each painting becomes a pursuit in reorganizing cluttered and unresolved urban scenes while maintaining ambiguous qualities relating to the initial source. Contradictions and opposition arise in reaction to conceptual strategies and undergoing processes, however, implement emotive responses to stimulate and challenge the viewer.Item Open Access Beside Oneself: Towards a Participatory Feminist Art Practice(2015-01-26) Schogt, Elida; Tenhaaf, PetronellaComprised of a research paper and the presentation of a performance, my dissertation in studio-based visual art is part of a larger discussion about the role of art and the viewer-participant within social and political systems. Working with queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s notion of beside and what she calls its useful resistance to narratives, as well as feminist theorist Elizabeth Grosz’s return to bodily specificity in her reading of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s BwO (Body without Organs), I move from my former reliance on psychoanalytic tropes and representational forms towards a spatialized, embodied, and participatory art practice. In what curator and critic Lucy Lippard characterizes as the feminist values of collaboration, dialogue and constant questioning of aesthetic and social assumptions, I situate my practice alongside Lygia Clark’s experientially interactive installations, Sophie Calle’s intersubjective video-art and Doris Salcedo’s participatory research-based sculpture; as well as performance artist Andrea Fraser’s institutional critique and multi-disciplinary artist Emily Roysdon’s choreographed movement. The dissertation artwork is a performance of choreographed movement by a group of girls and diverse adults, who create a composite character, the realization of a two-year period of research and planning. The performance begins the moment the viewer-participant enters Toronto’s Old City Hall, which currently functions as a provincial courthouse. Guided upstairs into a grand, open hallway and then up again through a long corridor, movement and tableaux punctuate the spaces, culminating in the dissertation defense. In both the writing and the artwork, I harness affect theory to examine ways the dissociated self, fractured through childhood sexual abuse, can be reconfigured through participatory practices into a cohesive whole that challenges established power structures.Item Open Access Visualization of Ethnicity: Beyond What You See(2015-08-28) Pak, June Youngboon; Balfour, BarbaraFor my doctorate research, I am investigating discursive analyses of ethnic visibility, particularly of the hyphenated ethnic subject living in a Western society. As Rey Chow points out, becoming visible in this “post-race” era is no longer simply a matter of having visual representation but more importantly it is a matter of reconfiguring the power dynamic between the centre and margins. In order to elaborate the contentious issues of being visible, I am working through the hyphenated ethnic subject’s dilemma in this dissertation. On the one hand, if she accepts her ethnic visibility, that is remaining in the categorization of being the Other, she will end up participating in the institutionalization of ethnicity. On the other hand, if she denies the categorization of being ethnic, that is being invisible, blending with the rest, she will have to face the danger of being accused of becoming “too westernized” or “white-washed.” My research is a twofold approach. First, I investigate theoretical writings in order to analyze various elements — ethnicity vs. race, hyphenation, multiculturalism — that contribute to this dilemma. Second, I’m using my art works — The Invisible Transformation Project (ITP) and June on June: a script — to perform invisibility in order to raise questions about the identity formation process: What does it mean to be visibly different from others? Can ethnic (non-white) artists sustain their criticality through works beyond the ethnic lens?Item Open Access Encountering This: Orange Peel and Onion Skin(2015-08-28) Culver, Ashley Diana; Lau, Yam K.Attention with care given to the other is at the core of my practice. Encountering This; Orange Peel and Onion Skin contains accounts of encounters with this and considers my relationship and understanding of this. This paper is not concerned with placing myself nor my work in the context of contemporary art rather the priority of the paper is on attention and a way of being, in relation to things. I place my work in relation to Jan Zwicky, Elaine Scarry, and Tim Lilburn. These writers and thinkers are engaging with a conversation about ones’ relation to the other. In the paired exhibition Orange Peel and Onion Skin, ‘this’ is navel orange peel and red onion skin. The work is a parallel investigation of two particular, related things foregrounding their thisness. The work will be exhibited in Gales Gallery, an off-site location, and a kitchen studio space.Item Open Access Dubious Cosmology: A Photo/Sculptural Rendition of Landscape and Modern Myth(2015-08-28) Morton, Ella Sharp; Vickerd, BrandonDubious Cosmology is a series of photographs and sculptures that examine the visual portrayal of landscape and science fiction in contemporary Western culture. The work considers why human beings feel the need to have a dialogue with the unknown, and how this dialogue takes on both rational and outlandish forms. The historical photographic processes of tintypes and cyanotypes, along with three-dimensional collage, work together to inform modern myth and fringe beliefs through the tropes of science fiction. The work draws on antiquated and contemporary techniques, found objects, and original photographs to create a surprising experience of landscape and the mystery imbued within it. Ultimately, the project proposes that, in spite of our efforts to discern and decipher the unknown, we must simply appreciate it, and acknowledge that we may know very little about the nature of the universe.Item Open Access Body, Mat, Mark-Making(2015-08-28) Harber, Scott; Lau, Yam K.I explore painting and drawing through a binding of its performative activity with the practice of Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. Constraints are put in place to impose constant and abrupt switching between mark-making and grappling activity. The repetition involved in this structure fuses these two distinct activities into one. The experience of mushin (no-mind), a state one enters when deeply immersed in martial art activity, overlaps into the process of mark-making. This experience of mark-making subsequently influences the activity on the mat. Affect, as a pre-cognitive entity, participates alongside conscious activity in this feedback loop of influences. From this view, I revisit the idea of constraint and mushin. The resulting works depict fragmented bodies-in-process, produced under a state of mushin that involves the constrained combination of unconscious and conscious, mental and bodily influences.Item Open Access Re-working(2015-08-28) Thomas, L. Frances; Jones, Janet A.The thesis Re-working explores the concepts of affect, constant change, the unfinished and undefined, and the ineptness of representation. It is a reflection and contemplation on the ontology of painting and the ongoing and undeniable allusive force of the abstract image as evidenced by the continued liveliness of, and interest in, the painting medium. My choice of the title Re-working speaks to the editing and revisions necessary in the process of realizing an image. At the same time I am inferring a larger and more encompassing sense of functioning and being in the world. It is the case that self and identity, the natural world, relationships and existence itself, are always in a constant state of flux, re-working and adaptation in the causes of renewal and sustainability.Item Open Access Cut Twice: Experiments in Kinetic, Interactive Sculpture(2015-08-28) Houston, Rebecca Jane; Vickerd, BrandonThis thesis support paper is an exploration of the process, creative influences and philosophical framework surrounding the creation of the body of work contained in the art exhibition “Cut Twice” (Gales Gallery, May 4-9, 2015). Alongside a narrative describing the making of a large pile of kinetic lumber, two main areas of consideration are discussed; firstly, the desire of the artist to create sculpture that is interactive, framed in part as an extension of a career in the community arts, and secondly, an inquiry into a radical materialism that sees all matter as entangled intra-activity through the lenses of Jane Bennett’s eco-political Vibrant Matter and Karen Barad’s Agential Realism. How might an expanded sense of the aliveness of matter (in this case off-cuts and discarded lumber from construction sites) change our relationship to waste and possibly to each other? If matter is a “doing”, not a thing, can interactive, kinetic sculpture express this material vibrancy and enhance an art viewer’s awareness of their relationship to matter?Item Open Access Felt Knowledge(2015-08-28) Bruce, Katie Marie; Balfour, BarbaraBodies, inclusive of flesh|bodies and object|bodies, show the wear brought upon them by physical labour; the particularity of their history engrained upon the skin|surface of both sentient and non-sentient entities. Although the discrete life experienced by the object|body cannot be recalled mnemonically, the developments on a surface can be partially decoded, revealing an archive of gestures brought about purposefully and incidentally. Without the capacity for verbal expression, the archive of marks left on the object|body’s surface cannot be relayed as a narrative of events. Instead, it is left to those with flesh|bodies to seek an understanding through touch. As touch binds two bodies together through gesture, they merge and dissolve the boundaries of their singularity, momentarily entering into shared understanding. In this way, the archive of trace left on surface is an ongoing experience of the labour that created it, perpetuating the act by grafting present and past together.Item Open Access As We Write, So We Build(2015-08-28) Carlesimo, Teresa Margaret; Vickerd, BrandonThis thesis support document accompanies my Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition as we write, so we build. My work explores themes of place, placelessness and memory in relation to the built environment. Using typical construction materials I create sculpture-based installations to investigate our relationship to our everyday surroundings. I draw from my personal experiences and observations of my surroundings to construct architectural fragments that provide an immersive, embodied experience for the viewer. The research images that are included in my Thesis Exhibition contextualize my practice by relating it to my investigation of the built form of the city, while this support document provides further context through reference to my artistic process and influences.Item Open Access Rhythm and the Monstrous: A Diary Manifesto for Oil Painters(2015-08-28) Wing-Hann Wong, Amy; Jones, Janet A.The invisible threads that form identity politics are especially messy today. Through the lens of a transnational/intersectional/feminist sensibility, my thesis paper and body of work weaves influences from both visual and music culture. Socio-political agency is explored through reconfiguration. Both thesis and artwork are informed by the organizational principles of collage logic - specifically through the contrast in texture and rhythm, and employing the notion of the monster as a harmony of incongruence.Item Open Access Nice to "Meet" You(2015-08-28) Pantieras, Christos; Yates, Kevin M.This paper accompanies the key manifestation of my research at York University: the solo thesis exhibition entitled, Nice to ‘Meet’ You, installed at Gales Gallery from March 30th to April 3rd, 2015. My research explores how we interact through social media and online platforms, and the desire to make a connection with one another. Through a contextualization of my studio practice this paper provides an overview of my thesis exhibition and addresses how my work is a reflection on how we interact online when seeking out an intimate connection. What remains as a relational artifact when correspondence is broken? What is the ongoing story after ‘delete’? Is it ever truly over?