CONTAMEDIATION; IDENTITY OF THE IGBO AFRICAN MASK AS EMBODIMENT OF SELF AND SPIRIT

By engaging Heidegger’s notion of existential analysis, being-with, care, this dissertation introduces the term Contamediation, as the condition that collaborates, contaminates and mediates in the ongoing discourse on change in human flourishing through embodiment of self, spirit and nature. Sunnification is also introduced as shedding of light on the truth of existence through African philosophy of mask. I argue that the Igbo African mask functions not only as aesthetic art object, created through longstanding masking traditions, but also functions in a metaphysical realm that influences socio-cultural values. The identity of the mask in single or multi-faced configurations embodies spirit as a union of forces that permeates, animates and controls the workings of the mask through ritual entanglement. To demonstrate an ongoing hegemonic relationship of spirit, we elaborate on the idea of the Greek God, the One, Igbo God, Chukwu, and the Christian God in context of David Driskell’s artwork, Spirits Watching, along with works by other artists.vii The paper illuminates a trans-historical transformation and metamorphoses of extraction and relocation, through selected philosophical thinkers such as Derrida, Althusser, Sloterdijk and others, and elaborates on the nature of masked language as well as social and ideological structures that create a deviation from originary modes of reference in human consciousness and existence. The role of the artist philosopher, exemplified by Ana Mendieta, Nietzsche, and others, calls for freedom of expression, while further analysis is given to the notion of repatriation of the African mask to its place of origin, and to the impact of reparation on existential flourishing. Karl Jaspers reminds us in Kant, of inexhaustible possibilities that are tied to subject/object understanding within limits of experience, and we situate transcendental philosophy in self- understanding through self-consciousness.https://digitalmaine.com/academic/1074/thumbnail.jp

Summertime in the Belgrades : July 18, 2025

https://digitalmaine.com/summertime_in_the_belgrades/1233/thumbnail.jp

White Pine Needle Damage in Maine, 2024: Remote Sensing Product Accuracy Report:

https://digitalmaine.com/usda_feddocs/1010/thumbnail.jp

GeMS (Geologic Map Schema) Enterprise Geodatabase Implementation Project Report

Maine Geological Survey, Circular 25-17.https://digitalmaine.com/mgs_publications/1657/thumbnail.jp

CHALLENGING DISTRACTION IN EDUCATION: DISRUPTING PATTERNS OF INFORMATION DELIVERY THROUGH THE BODY, THE VOICE, AND THE ARTIST’S PRACTICE

This dissertation deconstructs the organizing principles that govern information delivery in the classroom, presenting them as a significant obstacle to democracy. While federal and state regulations have advanced standardized testing, instructional materials, and teaching methods, these strategies are highly contested by progressive educators and critics, such as Henry Giroux and Diane Ravitch. In contrast to the education theories that inform educational criticism, this project explores an alternative path through the work of artists and philosophers who challenge the control of a single-voiced narrative, including Franco Berardi, Mikhail Bakhtin, John Cage, Mark Lombardi, and Tim Rollins. My research focuses on Berardi’s argument that technological advancements have automated and restricted the relationship between sensibility, communication, and labor. At this intersection, the dominant patterns of information delivery in the classroom reveal that data collection serves an agenda that disregards both the individual and the social body. In response, this project traces a brief history of school regulations to uncover the techniques that impose student distraction. Given the prominence of technology in automating classroom work, I aim to expand the discourse on technology from a focus on devices to encompass the techniques that organize both information and bodies. To counteract these automated methods, my project proposes a double-voiced practice, “Double I/Eye Mapping,” to decenter the reductive rules of analysis through the assembling techniques of artistic expression. By exploring “artists as teachers”—such as Josef Albers and Tim Rollins—I demonstrate how artists use negotiation strategies to interconnect language and imagery. Furthermore, I show how the voice, as a metaphor, is evident in the artist\u27s work, offering students the flexibility to understand the function of organization in different kinds of work.https://digitalmaine.com/academic/1068/thumbnail.jp

Artistic Gestures: Contemporary Art Practices That Decolonize SpaceTimeMatter

This dissertation examines the transformative potential of artmaking practices to decolonize structures of knowledge and oppression. While artists in the United States have engaged with colonization, gender, and racial oppression across different historical periods, contemporary artists such as Ana Mendieta, Kara Walker, Adriana Corral, and Rebecca Belmore critique the enduring systems of oppression that continue to shape current socio-political conditions. How do such artmaking practices challenge the production of the “other” and decolonize pre-established social and political boundaries to cultivate a deeper understanding of responsibility and the world’s interactive becoming? To expose art’s potential as a material-discursive practice that intervenes in power configurations, I argue that rethinking art as a gesture is essential to understanding how it responsibly reimagines and intra-actively reconfigures spacetimematter. Weaving together insights from philosophy, epistemology, ethics, art, and politics illuminates subversive and restorative ways of knowing, thinking, making, and being that emerge in defiance of dominant Western European traditions. A Posthuman Feminist perspective of art as a gesture underscores the entanglement of mind and body in artistic practices that actively reshape materiality and ideas. In a world persistently defined by boundaries, art, viewed as an intra-active gesture, becomes an active force in reshaping our reality and revealing critical areas requiring intervention. This project employs a theoretical-practical approach that emphasizes artistic gestures can serve as material-epistemic interventions, renegotiating the interplay among ethics, knowledge, power, and the material world.https://digitalmaine.com/academic/1063/thumbnail.jp

Surficial geology and materials of the Norridgewock quadrangle, Maine

Maine Geological Survey, Open-File Map 25-18.https://digitalmaine.com/mgs_maps/3878/thumbnail.jp