The Art Of Reconstruction

The objective of this thesis paper is to highlight my artistic process, current projects, and research strategies emerging from my studio practice. First, this thesis describes and elaborates my practice of “reconstruction,” the reasons I find it effective, and the personal history behind it. I also discuss the goals of my work and how I intend to carry it forward into the future. Throughout my work I seek to tell a story that resonates with my personal history, communicating to audiences both the vulnerabilities and transitions of life experience. My work invites the viewer into a collective space where the larger narratives about our human experience are shared. I excavate story through parallel tracks of written and visual responses exposing the vulnerabilities of truth-telling. From the rending and fragmentation of surface contexts, I construct wholeness. The intersection of fracture and collision creates relevant moments of access for each viewer. The results provide a kaleidoscopic lens through which my own anecdotal and contemplative moments become a means for reconnecting the audience to their own stories and images

Jung at the Foot of Mount Kailash: A Transpersonal Synthesis of Depth Psychology, Tibetan Tantra, and the Sacred Mythic Imagery of East and West

Tibetan Buddhist Tantra and Jungian depth psychology represent two of the world’s more dynamic psycho-spiritual traditions. This comparative study explores their respective insights, cosmologies, and often striking similarities, with particular emphasis on the manner in which mythic imagery is employed in both disciplines as a powerful agent of healing and transformation. The ontological status of Tibetan deities and archetypal entities is also given careful consideration, especially in relation to the phenomena of psychic projection and autonomous spiritual dimensions

Reframing the Horizon within the Algorithmic Landscape of Northern Britain

Emerging from the artist’s constructed photographs and walking projects in the north, this paper considers the tension between the photograph as a fixed composition of the world and the dynamic image constructed from data. Whereas arguably, the traditional photograph exhibits a stable relationship between the world and the image, the constructed photograph shifts the focus onto the underlying algorithmic processes of production. This focus on the relational nature of the constructed photograph shifts our gaze from the horizon to the underlying systems in operation as we consider the relational nature of data as a photograph

The Parallax Gap

In post-conflict Northern Ireland, the artist Willie Doherty has been active in showing how the memory trace of the Troubles lingers on as a spectral presence. Doherty’s work has been influential to a number of visual artists working in response to this context, whose work can be characterized by a heightened sense of in-betweenness and representational, spatial, or temporal instability (Long, 2019). Such work is concerned with an oscillation between the past and the present in order to convey the sense of an uncertain future. Although filmic, photographic, and sculptural works have been deployed by such artists to harness these conditions of uncertainty, it is the medium of drawing that remains relatively under-explored as a way of showing how the specters of violent pasts remain in this fragile context. This paper is an examination in the use of drawing to show the spectral presence that continues to haunt spaces marred by histories of violence in Northern Ireland’s post-conflict context. The study is underpinned by theories that relate to haunting, but also to psychoanalysis, as read through Slavoj Žižek’s theory of the Parallax Gap. Theoretical concerns are applied to the filmic techniques of the artist Willie Doherty (2007), and to Richard Hamilton’s painting Trainsition IIII (1954). The resultant drawing and textual analysis responds to the spectral-turn in post-conflict art in Northern Ireland, making a case for drawing as a practice of haunting

Towards a Holistic Approach: Last Word on Fractal Commentaries

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Conservation architecture and the narrative imperative: Birmingham back to backs

The paper uses a case study to explore how the opposing logics of conservation architecture and interpretive exhibition design were played out in the shaping of a narrative museum space. The former concerns itself with an archaeological conception of physical space, which is defined through the decipherability of traces and their layering over time. The latter concerns itself with a theatrical notion of event space defined through the mapping and programming of performances and information flows. The contingencies of the Birmingham Back to Backs project – its incep¬tion, the in¬volvement of the National Trust, the foregrounding of community interests and the interpretive design process – gave rise to a novel resolution of contrasting interests. A particular idea of narrative was able to frame the use of, on the one hand, physical evidence to interpret what may have existed and, on the other, a combination of lived and documentary evidence to reconstruct the patterns of daily life. This can be understood as a process of recovering ordinary lives. The research addresses the following conference themes: sites overlaid with narrative, the role of visitor-centred design in the production of museum space, and the emergence of new approaches that cut across disciplines. Analysis of interpretive design and heritage management documentation is informed by Samuel’s theorization of the shaping power of memory (1994). However, overall, the approach is pragmatic, in that it engages in critical conversations, resists reductionism, and tries to point up what may be useful in helping us cope together in the world. The principal conclusions concern the role that a focus on narrative (re)construction can play in framing cross-disciplinary collaboration and the potential of embracing radically different conceptions of space in museum design

The Use of Image in Conflict Resolution: Presentation of the Ελouroboros Model: El Uso de la Imagen en la Resolución de Conflictos: Presentación del Modelo Ελouroboros

The present paper discusses the importance of creative and visual methods of communication in conflict resolution. It is argued that through the use of photography in multicultural environments, the emergence of certain emotions and existential issues occur, which lead to new insights. The proposed model, named Ελouroboros, aims at resolving personal and interpersonal conflicts through the use of image. In this case we explore the potential of resolving interpersonal conflicts, through the creative processing of certain issues. The data produced is based on seven high schools visited, in the center of Athens, in Greece

Creativity in the primary curriculum

Abstract not available