The Object/The Body/The Ritual: An Affectual Dissection of Plastic Bags Through Performance Design

Roland Barthes has famously noted plastics as miraculous substances of infinite transformations and transmutations, yet we are in the midst of a paradigm shift in which the material plays an increasingly destructive role in our society and environment. The thesis addresses the question of how meaning is made and transformed by theoretically and practically dissecting plastic through three distinct research areas: object, body, and ritual. Most prominently, my thesis demonstrates how situating the plastic bag in a funeral can forge human to non-human reverence and reformulate affectual associations. Through creative investigation and extensive multidisciplinary research in visual arts, film, and queer theory, I aim to provide a deeper understanding of how plastics can obscure and entangle the boundaries between theatre and performance art.