Fine Arts Commons^™

Usages Du Ciné-Tract Dans Le Film « Demande À Ton Ombre », Camille Leprince

Regards

Lamine Ammar-Khodja's first feature film, produced in 2012, Demande à ton ombre (Ask your shadow) is part of the so-called "creation" documentary. A diary and political chronicle, this film which runs from January to March 2011 plunges us into the news of the Arab uprisings seen from Algeria. While distinguishing itself in several respects from a militant cinema, Demande à ton ombre does not deny certain processes of the tradition of cine-tracts. In order to measure this distant, even distanced, proximity to the resources of militant and engaged cinema, it is proposed here to analyze their function and …

Crossings Of Heritage, Memory And Archives: A History Of Moroccan Cinema In The Bouanani Archives, Sarah Dornhof

Regards

This article interrogates archival forms and practices in relation to remembering the “lost archives” of Moroccan cinematographic history.
It presents the Bouanani Archives — a private, fragmented, and still largely uncatalogued collection located in the Bouanani family apartment in Rabat, comprising a variety of texts, visuals, and objects connected to Morocco’s cinematographic and cultural memory.
The archive is the personal legacy of filmmaker, writer, and artist Ahmed Bouanani (1938–2011), his wife Naïma Saoudi (1947–2012), and their daughter Batoul Bouanani (1969-2003), all of whom worked for Moroccan cinema.
Today, it is preserved and cared for by his daughter Touda Bouanani and …

Ciné-Archivistes And The Metaleptic Archive Of Lebanese Cinema, Claire Launchbury, Marilyn Matar, Max Silverman

Regards

The article considers three Lebanese films – Il était une fois, Beyrouth (1995) by Jocelyne Saab, the short Le Liban à travers le cinéma (2003) and the documentary Cinéma de guerre au Liban (2003), both by Hady Zaccak – to explore the archival impulse in their composition.
We suggest that this impulse takes two major forms: the use of a montage of sequences from Lebanese films, or films about Lebanon, and crossovers between narrative thresholds and between fact and fiction.
We draw on Gérard Genette’s version of metalepsis to analyze the nature of these crossovers, and on the notion of …

Memories As Old As Outer Space, Nicholas Benfey

Theses and Dissertations

My paintings draw from personal memory, as well as the nostalgic longing and nightmarish foreboding of the irrational psyche. Cosmic ruptures, cliffs, cemeteries, and parking lots appear alongside snowglobes and canopy beds. I aim to suggest things to be wary of, while giving space for optimistic fantasy and reflective wonder.

Sculpture As Memoir, Tirzah Reed

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Questions guide my art practice, so they naturally guide the structure of this thesis.

Remember?

If I remember, what then?

What makes a memoir?

What is the work made of?

Nouns and adjectives—why have both?

What’s the role of sound?

How does the form of installation relate to memoir?

How do we take an installation from situation to story?

What happens in the studio?

What gets me to the studio in the first place?

What matters?

Objects have power. They hold the histories of their owners—or if they have not had previous owners, they at least carry the connotations of …

With Kindest Regards To You And Miss Sparks, Claire E. Kelly

Honors Scholars Collaborative Projects

This work explores the life of a woman, Katherine Josephine Sparks, who lived in Nashville from 1910 to 1993. Vignettes of her life are revealed through the Katherine Sparks Collection at the Nashville Archives, in which over 18,000 items including letters, photographs, memorabilia, and legal documents house parts of her family’s story. Katherine lived an unassuming life, she never married, and she had no children. There is very little documentation of her life left other than what is held in this archival collection. Without the archive, this record would be lost—a small part of history that would go undiscovered and …

L’Adieu Hors De Tout Lieu. L’Espace Funéraire Réinventé Par J. Amado, Réimaginé Par O. Fazwy, Dahlia El-Séguiny

Regards

In The Double Death of Quincas-Water-Bray by Jorge Amado and its Egyptian cinematographic adaptation, The Paradise of the Fallen Angels by Ossama Fawzy, the funerary preparation leads to an ironic reflection on life and death, and the confrontation between the value systems of the bourgeoisie and the marginalized.
This article studies the question of borders, “real” or virtual, between narrative spaces.
It is based on the concept of heterotopia (Michel Foucault), which offers a reflection on the constitution of a “different space” within the real location, and the notion of intermediality (Silvestra Mariniello), which questions the conceptual space that emerges …

Drowning In Our Tears, Kelley-Ann A. Lindo

Theses and Dissertations

Drowning in our Tears is a series of works – installation, print media, and sculpture that explores themes of precarity, ephemerality, collective memory, and vulnerability. The need to create and preserve an archive has been the of the driving forces behind the works. I am interested in this notion of creating new language and perspectives from past trauma and hardships. The archive presents us with a site where excavation of meaning can occur, identities preserved, and new identities formed. In my work, I try to bridge the gaps, using the fragments of memory, the past and present experiences to create …

La Guerre Civile Libanaise Au Cinéma Et Les Circulations Transculturelles, Thomas Richard

Regards

The trajectories of Lebanese film directors and their work, characterized by a strong international dimension and by their insertion within the art film networks, bear the mark of interactions between local and global visual and memorial norms linked to these trajectories, in a globalized cultural environment. These films, though enriched by this international dimension, may appear to develop their narrative following the demands of international festival audiences, risking that these demands become constraints, and at the risk of possible loss of contact with local audiences.

Résumé

Les circulations des cinéastes libanais et de leurs œuvres, fortement marquées par une dimension …

The Object Memory Palace, Amra Causevic

Theses and Dissertations

I am interested in orchestrating instances of potentiality or concrete possibilities that proposes the futurity of play through means of touch, activation, assembly, and interaction within art spaces. The installation mentioned is composed of found objects and repurposed materials that address themes of place, memory, object-ness, and the archive, through gestural means of poetics and map making. It is an invitation to create new logics and find moments of empathy, connectivity, and hopes for a collective.

Unraveling Memory Through Childhood Relics, Franchesca Rousseas

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

The formation of memory is a universal experience that occurs at an individual level. Memory is intangible and abstract, but it can be tied to physical objects such as photographs. These objects may remain the same throughout the course of our lives, but our memories are subject to change. Information is inevitably lost or altered over time, as our minds are more pliable than they are rigid. These alterations result in the desire to reconstruct and reinterpret past events given the information that is still accessible. Focusing on objects of domesticity that trigger childhood memories, I reveal how the act …

I Hear You Now, I See You Then, Quinn Hunter

Art + Design Masters Theses

In the research driven project I Hear You Now, I See You Then, I refer to the contemporary and historical erasure of the labor of African American women using research gathered from the southern plantation economy to create an art installation. The objects in this installation are primarily made with artificial hair integrations and utilizing labor intensive methods that are similar to those used to install the hair on the Black body. The objects I make reference the luxury items in the domestic spaces of historic plantation sites that have been re-branded to be used in the wedding /tourism industry. …

Kavana: Photography, Jewish Storytelling, And Memory, Hannah Altman

Theses and Dissertations

Jewish thought suggests that the memory of an action is as primary as the action itself. This is to say that when my hand is wounded, I remember other hands. I trace ache back to other aches - when my mother grabbed my wrist pulling me across the intersection, when my great-grandmother’s fingers went numb on the ship headed towards Cuba fleeing the Nazis, when Miriam’s palms enduringly poured water for the Hebrews throughout their desert journey - this is how the Jew is able to fathom an ache. Because no physical space is a given for the Jewish diaspora, …

The Missing Archive Of Loss, Zeina G. Halabi

Regards

The article examines the power of visual archives and the implication of their absence on the work of mourning. It explores the photographic work of the Iranian artist Azadeh Akhlaghui, who retroactively assigned visual identities to the unrecorded death of prominent Iranian figures. The scenes of death, reconstructed in highly staged photographs, operate as the guardians of collective memory insofar as they enable the work of mourning – a process of reckoning with loss that ultimately frees the collectivity from enduring melancholia.

Résumé

L'article examine le pouvoir de l’archive visuelle et les implications de son absence sur le travail de …

Out Of The Box: Hiraeth: The Nostalgia Within Abandoned Homes, Jessica Mcdaniel

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

Student researcher Jessica McDaniel explains why abandoned houses obtained a reputation for horror, as well as how this fear is not all that remains in what were once homes.

Amalgamations, Brennan Probst

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

I explore time, memory, and the artist’s ability to convey experience through autobiographical photographs and drawings. In my compositions, I provide an intimate look into my life, while making wider observations about how my mind processes the world. My work is concerned with circumventing the objective, static qualities of photography. I attempt to create images that convey how experiences feel, instead of how they look through the lens of an optical apparatus. With my work, I do not wish to take from the world around me, but rather to create from the world within me. By utilizing multiple exposures and …

Over Certain Undecidedness These Heartstring Intimations, Martha Hemingway

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

over certain undecidedness these heartstring intimations is the culmination of a two-year-long abstracted cycle of textured conversation, internal eye contact, and endless playlist-making. Hemingway’s work is based in process-oriented reflections on habitual behavior, manifestation of sentiment, and sense of self. Her paintings draw inspiration from the ways in which we approach and avoid our internal and external routines – how degrees of our subconscious considerations affect how we extend ourselves to others. Individual auditory preferences of different colliding souls have carved a space for her in a language of empathetic abstraction – attempting to elaborate the curious beauty and pain …

Deconstructing The Present || (Re)Constructing The Past, Hugh Hoagland

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Though we live only in the present, our every experience will eventually fade into the depths of memory. Deconstructing the Present || (Re)constructing the Past introduces my artist practice on a broad level, one that is preoccupied by the difference between present experience and its memory, as well as the ways we weave memory into the physical environments of architecture and material objects. This thesisestablishes a specific signal memory for the body of work, the memory of a structure that, for a brief time, was a sanctuary for myself and many others. The paper then follows the arc of …

This Is Just To Say, Iren Tete

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

My memories are marked by the desire to evade logic. At a young age I became a proficient player of the “What If” game.

What if I could hold light in my hands?

What if shadows had form that could be touched?

What if I could see through structures?

These mental exercises affected my relationship with reason and validity. Aware of the threat of the ordinary, I embraced the inherent magic in the notion of possibility. I understand possibility as the limitless potential of object, thought, or scenario. This potential extends beyond the apparent and prompts more questions than it …

En Quête D’Image(S) : L’Emploi Des Archives Pour La Construction D’Une Mémoire (Visuelle) Palestinienne, Charlotte Schwarzinger

Regards

By relying on the works of two Palestinian directors – one being a found-footage documentary and the other an experimental piece – this article examines the importance of archives in the elaboration of Palestinian visual memory. Through its complex cinematographic history and the “missing image / ‘invisibled’ image,” Palestinian creators today use the medium of film to bear witness to their presence. The author aims to think through the use of archives in this struggle against invisibility and toward the recognition of a history, a culture, and a memory that are constantly threatened by erasure. At the border between historical …

La Mémoire Comme Ressource Et Enjeu De Lutte Dans Les Documentaires Syriens De L’Après 2011, Nicolas Appelt

Regards

In Syrian cinematographic creation – essentially documentary – which escapes the control of the regime, memory occupies an important place in the representation of the conflict that tears the country apart. Drawing from three Syrian documentary films shot after 2011 – Houses without Doors, 194, Us Children of the Camp and The Taste of Cement – we will put into perspective how the memory of one side is mobilized as a resource for representing the conflict, including after leaving Syria, and, on the other hand, how it is an issue in reclaiming the story of this conflict, in a …

De L’Historien Au Citoyen : Une Nouvelle Génération D’Artistes Libanais À La Conquête De La Réconciliation D’Après-Guerre, Joséphine Parenthou

Regards

Twenty-eight years after the ceasefire, the Lebanese civil war remains a constant theme for Beirut artworks and speeches, whereas society and institutions have made it a taboo. Art constitutes a fortunate entrance for apprehending the social world and its evolutions in a context of a long post-war period. The effectiveness of the reconciliation process, even its takeover by artworld actors, can be measured through unofficial paths. Moreover, the transformation of war social representations within the artworld, between a war generation and a post-war generation, reflects a redefinition of both the artist’s figure and function in its relationship to politics: formerly …

Emotional Reverberations, Kirsten Heteji

Theses and Dissertations

Projecting psychological mindscapes onto domestic objects allows for an emotive and bodily connection to the domestic realm. Body, for me, is the clay and how it holds touch and softness indexically recording the actions of making in the final forms. Pushing, pulling and pinching clay evokes sensations that connect the maker’s body as well as the observer of the work to participate. I shift expectations by experimenting between the hard and softness of bodily material like clay, giving it emotional fragility in how it contrasts the original structure it imitates. I think about creating objects and the arrangement them of …

I Thought The Earth Remembered Me, Hannah Bates

Theses and Dissertations

The forest is teeming with activity: fungi transform dead logs into nutrients, roots entangle themselves with the earth, and strong winds break resilient boughs. Like the forest, the human body functions according to a complex system of agents - from the micro bacteria in the gut to the pores of the skin. The built world has often been rendered in opposition to these processes of nature. As a vessel through which the world is experienced, the body is an intermediary between raw matter and fabricated things. The planet is suffused with human life, and there is a critical tension between …

Graphic Content Warning; Personal And Political Traumas, Emily K. Wardell

Theses and Dissertations

The written portion of this thesis work is meant to address and further investigate the visual work created using mediums of print and found video. This artistic research has been interested in examining varying associations with truth, recollection, and evidence. This includes the recollection of public histories and news-media narratives as well as my own history and trauma. Through this work my aim was to create a deconstruction and revolt against how associations are formed, and how to understand imagery as information. This thesis first discusses my relationship to appropriated imagery, then connects and examines it through the addition of …

Nirmal Raja Interview, Dalton Campbell

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Artist Bio: Nirmal Raja is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Milwaukee, WI. Born in India, she has lived and traveled in several countries. Raja received a Bachelor’s of Arts in English Literature in India, a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Painting at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design and a Master’s of Fine Arts at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Her work deals with concepts of displacement, cultural negotiation and memory. http://nirmalraja.com

Mind In Hand, Anna Olson

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

This thesis explores the intersection of art and psychology as it manifests in my art practice, particularly in the medium of weaving. The contemporary frameworks of memory and archive provide the basis of this discussion, as well as findings from the field of Art Therapy. Difficult emotions like loss and grief often show up in my work, and I will discuss how artists like Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Sophie Calle also utilize these concepts. In weaving, I capture my internal mental states, memories, and perceptions of the future in a variety of found and gifted objects. Guided by the precedents set …

Aesthetic Autopsy. Collective Memory And Trauma In Contemporary Art From Angola, Nadine Siegert

Artl@s Bulletin

Angolan history is mainly a history of wars. After the long anti-colonial fight (1961 – 1974) that ended with the independence of the country in 1975, a civil war between the former independence movements started. In the 1980s, Angola was the venue for a proxy war between the Socialist bloc and Western countries, supporting the different protagonists fighting on Angolan territory. After the crumbling of cold war ideologies in 1989, the war continued as a struggle for political hegemony and access to natural resources until 2002, devastating lands, economy and social structures. These historical events might have led to trauma …

Personal Myth, Alecia Walls-Barton

Theses and Dissertations

In the body of work Personal Myth, intimate self-portraits are transformed into delicate, multi-layered, textile constructions. Drawing on universal and personal symbolism, these fabrications are an expression of the fallibility and vagueness of memory through the lens of childhood experience. Each piece is created by applying the hand work of sewing, traditional photography, and digital printing. The conceptual content and visual aesthetic of this series is profoundly influenced by many contemporary and historical photographers. The series presented for this thesis, Personal Myth, is an investigation of the intangible quality of a one's personal history and its impact upon identity.

« Tramontane (Rabih) » De Vatché Boulghourjian, Joseph Korkmaz

Regards

The story of a blind Lebanese musician confronting an unforgiving bureaucracy and the traumas of a violent past – the Lebanese Civil War – Vatché Boulghourjian’s Tramontane (Rabih) explores questions of memory and the lingering ghosts of war through the struggles of a war orphan seeking to obtain a passport. The article examines the trials he endures in his quest to uncover his identity, along with decades-old family and political secrets, adopting a historical perspective that draws parallels between the protagonist’s journey and society’s broader struggle to confront a troubled chapter in the nation’s history.

Résumé

L’histoire d’un …