Out In Thin Air, Daiqing Zhang

Masters Theses

My work often takes form in experience-charged installations underscored by phenomenology. The whys and hows behind the work mostly remain unspoken, since I would rather my work speak for itself. This writing project offered me the opportunity to comb through and tell the stories and thoughts that informed the work.

I have built a collection of documentation about the experience of having a sensitivity to moments of wonder in everyday life. These archives recorded sensuous imprints in life composed of mundane phenomena. In the collection there are images/footage of a glimpse of light leaking through cloud crevices; a brush of …

To Dig A Hole And Fill It Back Up, Jackson Whetstone

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Abstract:

The socioeconomical philosophy of the United States is still very much related to the Marxist Labor Theory of Value which states that “the economic value of a good or service is determined by the amount of socially necessary labor required to produce it” (Das Kapital, Marx 1.) This philosophy has penetrated the way that we think about art and object, and in turn positions art as a means of transaction, thus limiting art to a form of glorified currency. This Essay will chronicle my art practice, that have led up to two thesis pieces, Trench and Dig …

Iterative Performance: Resistance And Opportunity In The Rhythm Of Returns, Jillian Jetton

Theatre Thesis - Written Thesis

This paper defines iterative performance as a live, time-based project in which multiple returns to the same framework (score, prompt, location, group) at regular intervals fundamentally shapes the dramaturgy of the work. The author asserts that the rhythm of regular returns inherent to iterative performance offers an alternative temporality that resists dominant, capitalist and heteronormative modes of living and making art, and creates the conditions for distinct artistic possibilities. Chapter 1 outlines the theoretical frameworks for this argument and introduces three key ways in which iterative performance is able to achieve the aforementioned goals. Chapter 2 explores three case studies …

Existentialism And Creative Practice, Catherine Hudgens

School of Art Undergraduate Honors Theses

The creative process mimics the existentialist philosophy of human freedom and the responsibility to create one’s own meaning in life through an emphasis on invention, experimentation, and ceaseless becoming. Through my body of work, I examine the meaning-giving capacities of the viewer and creator as agents involved in a work of art. The sculptures, as well as found objects, have the power to illuminate the human circumstances they emerged from, while the process of making is also the process of learning, where objects can be used to understand ourselves and the world. Philosophical concepts can be accessed through art in …

Apotheosis, Zekiel Betzer

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Zekiel Dirk Betzer’s oil paintings are a visual representation of transfiguration – the elevation of daily life into myth. He believes that if we defer to monolithic ideologies to narrativize our life, we are prescribed a relationship with the transcendent, rather than discovering it, leading us down the path of ideological possession. He is principally interested in how we, as both artist and audience, invent meaning and how this invention informs the way we engage with reality; especially how objects or memories become sacred.