Art Practice Commons^™

The Relationship To Architecture Is Not Insignificant, Rachel Hillery

Theses and Dissertations

Working with writing, psychology, photography, and architecture, I develop texts that are performed with custom-built furniture and objects in unexpected spatial conditions. The paper traces the development of my writing and performance and my explorations of power and gender dynamics.

Subverting The Nature Of Thing: Gender Agency In Spiritual Systems And Contemporary Performances Of Zimbabwe's Shona People, Rujeko S. Dumbutshena

Theatre & Dance ETDs

Gender, ritual and performance in the Shona cultures of Zimbabwe, are inexorably linked. They demonstrate how the flexibility of the Shona spiritual systems offers agency to ritual leaders and practitioners. The story of Murumbi Karivara, a Shona rainmaker from the 19th Century, provides the inspirational imagery for the researcher’s Masters of Fine Arts thesis concert DE RERUM NATURA - the way things are (performed on September 2 and 3, 2018). The researcher positions herself among contemporary Shona artists living in Zimbabwe and abroad who negotiate the spaces they occupy during ceremonies, on concert stages, and in institutions; to find autonomy …

Humans Aren't Boxes, Art Isn't Finite, Brianne Alta Humphreys

Theses and Dissertations

I am bored. All around me are systems that perpetuate repetitive, reductive, and mundane modes of living. In an attempt to counter a culture obsessed with singular ways of existence and bite-sized perfection, I utilize moving mediums of video and performance to dive head first into a vast array of sloppy sincerity. The crisp, white-washed, analytical, and restrictive is loudly replaced with the empirical, haphazard, and instinctual. My intention is to create and encourage raw, performative-based work that is as multifaceted as unbridled life itself. This alive and physical practice hosts a conglomeration of sweat, memories, heartbreaks, hymn singing, line …

Performing The Quality Of Imperceptible Interactions Between Individuals: A Technological Challenge Regarding The Collective, Marine Theunissen

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Contemporary technologies allow incredible possibilities of capturing individuals, but a problem arises when it comes to capturing a chorus, that is to say a "collective body" in motion. This proposal will address the problem of the sensitive capture of the quality of the interrelations between individuals, and of their refined interpretation through algorithms to "output” them in other forms. We will address two questions on the subject: how to capture the relations between individuals within a collective? How to create a circular-causal loop, whose artistic material (the digital data) is the interrelations of a collective, without engendering redundancy in their …

Mitsu Salmon Interview, David Yonamine

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Artist Bio:
Mitsu Salmon creates original performance and visual works, which fuse multiple disciplines. She was born in the melting pot of Los Angeles to a Japanese mother and American father. Her creation in different mediums, the translation of one medium to another, is connected to the translation of differing cultures and languages.

Salmon received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2014. In 2005 she graduated from NYU where she majored in Experimental Theater, studying theater and visual arts. She has lived in India, England, Germany, Amsterdam, Japan, and Bali.

She has performed solo …

Rudolf Laban's Dream: Re-Envisioning And Re-Scoring Ballet, Choreutics, And Simple Functional Movements With Vector Signs For Deflecting Diagonal Inclinations, Jeffrey Scott Longstaff

Journal of Movement Arts Literacy Archive (2013-2019)

Several methods of movement notation, forerunners of modern-day Labanotation/Kinetography were published by Rudolf Laban in his 1926 book Choreographie. One of these has been referred to as vector signs because they represent movement as orientations (slopes) of lines through space. This article begins by comparing Labanotation direction symbols with Laban's earlier vector signs by looking at differences when simple sequences are scored in both formats. Concepts of space within the vector signs are examined, particularly Laban's idea of deflecting inclinations where movements are categorized as mixtures of two fundamental contrasting spatial and dynamic tendencies: dimensional stability and diagonal mobility. This …

Murmur/Murmuro, Paola M. Di Tolla

Theses and Dissertations

By using repetition or misplacing intonations and accents, etc. one can imitate the slipperiness of spoken language. However, it is the accidental slippage that I find most revealing and exciting because it allows for two conversations to exist in one. Once spoken language is transcribed as text, it is put through another filter and the risk of [accidental] slippage increases by a different measure. Fingers don’t keep up or autocorrect insists on taking matters into its own hands.

Making Sounds, Patrick Costello

Theses and Dissertations

Using collaboration and performance as tools, I situate my personal story, my body, and my skills and interests within a contemporary landscape that is intersectional, full of partialities, and rooted in evolving ecologies.

Power Suit, Clarice Cuda

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

The focus of this project began in utilizing hair as a vehicle to investigate rituals associated with mourning, grief, and the liminal space that exists between life and death. After an in depth search into the cultural, physical, spiritual, and material aspects of hair, I enacted process and labor to create a sculptural form that performs in response to grief.

I chose to work with acrylic hair, as it exists in a space between the real and unreal, and visually is absorbed as the uncanny representation of the separated body. I wanted to discuss the body, while emphasizing its absence. …

Absence Is Presence With Distance, James Bayard

Theses and Dissertations

Prompting obvious considerations for freedom and nationalism, language and race, time, and decay, the work asks not only what it means to be an American today, but also, more broadly, what it means to be human—to breathe and act, to live and die.

Patricia Nguyen Interview, Joyce Shoults

Asian American Art Oral History Project

BIO: Patricia Nguyen is an artist, educator, and scholar born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. She is a Ph.D. candidate in Performance Studies at Northwestern University and a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow for New Americans. Her research and performance work examines critical refugee studies, political economy, forced migration, oral histories, inherited trauma, torture, and nation building in the United States and Vietnam. She has published work in Women Studies Quarterly, Harvard Kennedy School's Asian American Policy Review, and The Methuen Drama Anthology of Modern Asian Plays edited by Siyuan Liu and Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr. Patricia is currently …

Alejandro Acierto Interview, Madeline Bolton

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Artist Bio: Alejandro T. Acierto is an artist and musician working in time-based media. He has exhibited his work at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, Issue Project Room, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago, Salisbury University, SOMArts and presented performance works at the Brooklyn International Performance Art Festival, Center for Performance Research, and Center for New Music and Technology. Acierto has held residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Banff Centre, High Concept Laboratories, and Chicago Artists' Coalition. He is currently a FT/FN/FG Consortium Fellow, a Center Program Artist …

I Don't Want You To Work As Me, I Want You To Work For Me, Emma Hedditch

Publications and Research

Performance, video scripts, and other writings, 2008 - 2015. This self-published ebook collects together performance and video scripts made by artist Emma Hedditch. These scripts take a poetic and informative form. They were performed at Flat-time House, London, Kunsthaus, Bregenz, Musee de Montmatre, Paris amongst other venues between 2008 and 2015.

Play Doh's Cave And The Pursuit Of The American Cream, Becky S. Sellinger

Theses and Dissertations

Take a minute. Imagine Wiley Coyote and Road Runner are in a domestic partnership. What would that look like? Close your eyes and Pause for 30 seconds. Don’t you see? Coyote never catches up. They keep running faster and faster. Everything in the house gets swept into the whirlwind they’ve created in their paths - the books, the shelves, the bed, and the desk lamp. Their circling movement creates a vacuum, which ultimately causes the entire structure to implode upon itself.

This text is an examination of my work and its relationship to the economic and the domestic. The metaphor …

New Challenges For The Archiving Of Digital Writing, Heiko Zimmermann

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "New Challenges for the Archiving of Digital Writing" Heiko Zimmermann discusses the challenges of the preservation of digital texts. In addition to the problems already at the focus of attention of digital archivists, there are elements in digital literature which need to be taken into consideration when trying to archive them. Zimmermann analyses two works of digital literature, the collaborative writing project A Million Penguins (2006-2007) and Renée Tuner's She… (2008) and shows how the ontology of these texts is bound to elements of performance, to direct social interaction of writers and readers to the uniquely subjective …

Guddling About: Experiments In Vital Materialism With Particular Regard To Water, Minty Donald

The Goose

With reference to Jane Bennett’s notion of "vital materialism," this photo essay documents and reflects on Guddling About: a series of experiments or actions carried out by artists Nick Millar and Minty Donald with the Bow River and its watershed in Calgary and Southern Alberta in August-September 2013. Each experiment is described as a set of instructions — a script or score for an event — which can be enacted in any location where human settlement has evolved around a river. The experiments will be repeated, and new ones developed, with the River Clyde in Glasgow and Southern Scotland in …

Reflexions, Takeshi Kanemura

CGU MFA Theses

Through my art, I offer viewers environments that function in a manner similar to public parks. People visit parks not to talk about the park and its elements, but to have their own time and space to interact with themselves and/or others. Although each of my offerings is distinct, all are united by the way they function: to create the possibility of human interaction. Even when I am not present, the spaces I have created are interactive performances. After visitors leave, my art again becomes incomplete, and an invitation for other viewers. The whole process encompasses the production of the …

Dab Shunt Spoor, Jen Grabarczyk

CGU MFA Theses

My work functions as an act of bearing witness. In it, I process consciousness, memory, narrative and time through the choreographed integration of cerebral representations and bodily movement. Through forms both strange and elegant, I seek to activate a viewer’s memory and consciousness–psychologically and corporeally.

Jacob Fowler Mfa Thesis Statement, Jacob Fowler

CGU MFA Theses

I am invested in mindless activity, repetitive actions, and hasty production. Performance and completion are at the forefront of my hurried work habits. Practicality has directed my selection of materials and decision-making process toward meaningful and intentional outcomes. However the outcome is reminiscent of goal-oriented activities that are misplaced, in essence, a pragmatic process of customization gone astray. Please see Download button in top right corner for the full statement.

Lani Montreal Interview, Thi Navi Thach

Asian American Art Oral History Project

2010 interview with Filipina teacher, writer, performer Lani T. Montreal by Thi Navi Thach

Rominna Villasenor Interview, Jamelle Apolinar

Asian American Art Oral History Project

2010 interview with writer, performer, visual artist Rominna Villasenor by Jamelle Apolinar