Visual Studies Commons^™

Post-Representational Presence: Disruptive Actions & Visibility Politics In New Media, Christian Hendricks

Theses and Dissertations

This text is a written component to a master’s thesis in the fine arts. It is a research-intensive text that conventionally examines contemporary conditions of politics and modes of representation, and analyzes the most innovative artists and visual producers working in these areas. However, the text also includes exercise modules with “challenges” for the reader, similar to a textbook. In the modules, the examples provided are works of my own. I also include text, images, and documentation of my own work from my MFA thesis exhibition.

[For The System, Alternate Title: If It Sort Of Looks Like A Duck: Reflecting On Bad Photographs And Chains Of Custody], Jodi Kearns, Brian C. O'Connor

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Though the system will not permit it, our abstract is an out-of-focus photograph of ducks at 1900 pixels wide and black and white, which is approximately 20% the size of the original color photograph we use for our title. By most technical standards, it is a bad picture. Straightening the horizon, cropping the image to emphasize the two foremost ducks, brightening the image to highlight the feet, and adding a caption that indicates activity might yield a “better” picture for some viewers. This piece captures nearly 20 years of conversations about good and bad pictures, and continues the conversation from …

Magical Realism And Film: A Look At Midnight’S Children, Jeff Floss

English Theses

Magical Realism, arguably one of the most important literary forms to develop in the 20th century, is rarely discussed as a film genre, though there are notable film adaptations of magical realist novels. This thesis explores the film adaptation of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children to demonstrate how a magical realist novel may be adapted to a visual form, and still maintain the aesthetic sensibilities—and political implications—of the literary original. Drawing on film adaptation studies, close reading, and film analysis, the thesis argues that film can be an effective magical realist genre, even if the conventions of visual mediums are dramatically …

East, West And In-Between; Pass It On, Kam Fung, Sita Wong

Artists-in-Residence Programme : Exhibition Catalogues

East, West and In-Between

If art is a reflection of the creator, then Wong’s work is a visual collage of influences from East and West. She is interested in creating works where, within one piece, both cultures converse with one another not only through their traditions of material, form and craftsmanship, but also through their original cultural contexts. Her current work elaborates the local culture and craft traditions of Chinese pottery with a modernist and contemporary sense of design.

Pass It On

Clay, a material full of possibilities, is best to describe a class of uninitiated ceramics learners in the …

The Suppression Of Satirizing Belgian Community Difficulties In Flemish Cinema And The Film Adaptation Of Will-O'-The Wisp, Gertjan Willems

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The Suppression of Satirizing Belgian Community Difficulties in Flemish Cinema and the Film Adaptation of Will-O'-the Wisp" Gertjan Willems analyzes two film projects of Frans Buyens. In 1970, Buyens received a positive funding recommendation for Top-Hit Girl, a satire about community difficulties in Belgium. However, Minister of Culture Frans van Mechelen refused to support the project because it conflicted with his pro-Flemish views. The minister successfully swept this controversial decision under the rug by offering Buyens the option to trade his socially critical project for a film adaptation of Willem Elsschot's novel Will-O'-the Wisp. …

Pink Is The New Bull: The Feminization Of Pit Bulls In Visual And Literary Discourses As A Rescue Tactic, Stephanie Hogue

Master of Arts in American Studies Capstones

Since the 1980s, pit bulls have been portrayed in a raced, classed, and gendered national discourse that has associated them with minority males of color in low-income urban areas. This discourse has led to a villianization of the breed that has resulted in restrictions on pit bulls and their owners. This project seeks to explore the raced, classed, and gendered representations of pit bulls in cultural productions and the nuanced ways in which the intersectional identities ascribed to pit bulls have impacted their status as acceptable pets in the United States.

I aim to demonstrate that through visual and literary …

Tragic Mulatta 2.0: A Postcolonial Approximation And Critique Of The Representations Of Bi-Ethnic Women In U.S. Film And Tv, Hadia Nouria Bendelhoum

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This study analyzes the representations of five bi-ethnic women characters in U.S. mass media both before and after U.S. “post-racial” era, to find and expose evidence of the continuity and perpetuation of racist stereotypes against biracial/bi-ethnic women. I utilize a thematic textual analysis, supported by the theories, ideas, and critical views of postcolonial theorists Frantz Fanon, Gayatri Spivak, and Edward Said, and composed of three prominent themes which expose the nature of the representations of lead bi-ethnic characters in current mass media entertainment (TV programs and films). The themes further explored through this project are: bi-ethnicity (one Black parent and …

Literary And Cinematic Representations Of Neoliberal Forms Of Contemporary Violence In Latin America With Special Interest In Mexico And Colombia, Ivan De Jesus Iglesias

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the last decades, with an increased rhythm and greater intensity, the so-called neoliberal violence has come to play a relevant role within the history of world societies. The Latin American institutional, political, social, and economic changes of the 1970’s and 1980’s, especially those produced under dictatorships, contributed to create the conditions for the implementation of the processes of economic liberalization and global market as part of the concept of institutional modernization and cultural globalization that gave rise to the neoliberal mentality. In this context, neoliberalism becomes hegemonic as a mode of discourse and is incorporated into the way individuals …

Digital Art History “Beyond The Digitized Slide Library”: An Interview With Johanna Drucker And Miriam Posner, Miriam Kienle

Artl@s Bulletin

Johanna Drucker and Miriam Posner were two of the organizers of the Getty/UCLA Summer Institute in Digital Art History “Beyond the Digitized Slide Library” that took place in the summers of 2014 and 2015. With their extensive expertise in the field, they developed a program that challenged participant to think about the broad theoretical implications of their respective projects and to gain practical tools in digital art history. In this interview, they will describe some of their thinking behind the institute and the state of the field of digital art history, including a discussion of the impact of network visualizations …

Hong Kong Ink Painting : Its Role In The Development Of Chinese Painting In The Second Half Of The Twentieth Century And Beyond, Hung Sheng

Lingnan Theses

This research investigates the field of modern ink painting, in particular the advocacy of shuimohua (水墨畫, literally water ink painting) which appeared in Hong Kong in the mid-1960s. The research is based on textual materials such as artworks, writings, treatises, newspaper and periodical documentation, as well as interviews with artists or artists’ families.

Because of the emergence of numerous terms related to ink painting and ink art in recent decades, it is crucial to trace their origins in order to develop a foundation from which to understand the complexities of the field related to ink. The starting point chosen for …

All In - And More! Gambling In The James Bond Films, Pauliina Raento

UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal

Scholarly analysis of gambling in the James Bond films is rare, despite the multitude of topics in Bondology and the fictional agent’s global fame. The odd commentary in gambling scholarship criticizes the franchise from the perspective of harm prevention. This article counters both groups of scholars with a qualitative interpretation of Bond’s gambling habits and the role of gambling and risk taking in the film series. A basic toolkit of visual methodologies is applied to the 24 EON-produced Bond films released in 1962–2015. The examination shows the critical importance of gambling to character identity, power hierarchies and communication, atmosphere, and …

From Locus Amoenus To Locus Horribilis: Provincial And Urban Spaces Of Cultural (Re)Assertion And Hegemony In Yates And Sigel’S When The Mountains Tremble And Bustamante’S Ixcanul, Katrina Abad

Views from Below: The Underdog in Contemporary Latin American and Spanish Film

The trope of locus amoenus, or the idyllic representation of heaven on earth, and its counterpart locus horribilis, or the mundane incarnation of hell, was first critically defined by Ernst Robert Curtius in 1953 and identified in religiously influenced literature as early as Latin and medieval European works. Since then, the locus theory has appeared in numerous secular texts and films, such as Marcelo Ferrari’s Sub Terra (2004), as a means of distinguishing the once-pristine ‘purity’ of provincial spaces from the physically and metaphorically cramped mines and buildings produced by an urbanized modernity. This essay seeks to translate …

The Anti-Hero Perspective Of Sebastián Silva’S The Maid, Amber Bradley

Views from Below: The Underdog in Contemporary Latin American and Spanish Film

Many contemporary Latin American films portray a character or a protagonist that strives to bring in an audience to emphasize the “underdog” and their role in society. In Sebastián Silva’s Chilean film, The Maid (2009), Raquel is a maid and nanny, who achieves the exact opposite throughout the movie. This servant’s societal perspectives concerning distinct classes and gender roles are shown through her photographs and passive aggressive actions towards some of the family members and the other women, who are hired to help her lighten the housework of the home. Raquel’s attitude, mistreatment and tricks demonstrate her apparent desire to …

Cinematographic Resources As Meaningful Affordances In A Foreign Language Class, Denise Osborne

Views from Below: The Underdog in Contemporary Latin American and Spanish Film

Cinematographic resources as meaningful affordances in a foreign language class.” In this presentation, Osborne will discuss a proposal for use of films as works of art in foreign languages classes. She will show how cinematographic features (e.g., sound, color, lighting, camera angles, mise-en-scène) and their implication for film narrative − rarely emphasized in foreign language classrooms − can be a powerful tool to engage students in a dialogical and ecological construction of knowledge. Consideration of cinematographic features in scenes from the Brazilian Portuguese films Abril Despedaçado (Cohn & Salles, 2001) and Raízes e Asas (Cabral & Pimenta, 2011), and …

Scapegoating In The Films By Alejando Fernández Almendras, Ilka Kressner

Views from Below: The Underdog in Contemporary Latin American and Spanish Film

Chilean filmmaker Fernández Almendras has examined the processes of victimization of the “poor man” in several of his feature films, most prominently Matar a un hombre [To Kill a Man] (2014, Winner of the World Cinema Grand Jury Price at Sundance Festival) and Aquí no ha pasado nada [Much Ado About Nothing] (2016). Both works exemplify processes of victimization through verbal performative acts: words in the form of humiliations, menaces and blackmail become the fatal weapons of scapegoating.

The Fluid Gaze In Virtual Reality, Soudhamini

Film and Media Arts Faculty Articles and Research

"In 2006, in the course of an Artists Residency in Munich I made a video triptych titled Meditations on the Tiger, in which a story unfolds over three adjacent screens... The story is as linear as it can get, but working with three screens I found I could move laterally as well... There were multiple tracks of time running together on that train - the real time of action and event, the hurtling projected time of anticipation and expectation, and the deep, reflective time of memory, thought and speech. 3 video timelines synchronized so we begin to approach image, just …

2017 State Of The Visual Resources Association, Jen Green

Dartmouth Library Staff Publications

During the 2017 Annual Business Meeting of the Visual Resources Association in Louisville, Kentucky, the president highlighted the accomplishments and challenges of the Association in a state of the association presentation. This article provides the transcript.

Now That Was A Nice Hanging: The Hateful Eight As Parable?, Richard G. Walsh

Journal of Religion & Film

The opening of Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight conjoins the iconic landscape of the Western, Christianity’s chief symbol the crucifix, and Tarantino’s oeuvre. The film gives the crucifix so much screen time that one wonders what its significance might be. That the film climaxes with the lynching of Daisy Domergue renders the crucifix teasingly parabolic. The opening-closing frame parallels the two hangings, as do the various eulogies associated with the lynching. That Daisy’s lynching takes place at the hands of the film’s two surviving characters—who, like the horses that lead the stagecoach team delivering Daisy to her fate, are black …

El Arte De "Lágrimas En La Lluvia", Todd K. Mack

Alambique. Revista académica de ciencia ficción y fantasía / Jornal acadêmico de ficção científica e fantasía

Uno de los elementos destacados de Lágrimas en la lluvia, la excelente novela de ciencia ficción de la madrileña Rosa Montero, es la genial inclusión de obras de arte con fines simbólicos dentro de la obra. Entre estas obras de arte se incluye el famoso cuadro de Johannes Vermeer, Una señora escribiendo una carta con su criada. En este artículo, el dr. Todd Mack muestra cómo este cuadro presagia el principal dilema de la protagonista de la novela. Bruna Husky es una replicante, y por eso sabe exactamente cuánto tiempo vivirá. El conocimiento de su inescapable fin hace …

Políticas De Lo Estético En La Ilustración De Ciencia Ficción. El Caso De “Think Blue, Count Two” De Cordwainer Smith, Silvia Gabriela Kurlat Ares

Alambique. Revista académica de ciencia ficción y fantasía / Jornal acadêmico de ficção científica e fantasía

Desde el período del Dadá se han ido borrando los límites entre las formas artísticas y sus soportes, entre las estéticas de uso y las estéticas formales, entre los espacios altos y bajos de producción cultural, y también, entre la percepción de centros y periferias que parecen haberse astillado y reproducido a la interioridad de espacios hasta hacer de la hegemonía misma, al decir the Beasley Murray, un concepto no sólo inestable sino casi inexistente. En el caso de la ciencia ficción, esa porosidad hace a la constitución misma de una estética que opera desde la factura del naturalismo pero …