Art, Androgyny, and the Femme Fatale in Decadent Fictions of the Nineteenth Century

This thesis offers a reappraisal of the recurring figure of the femme fatale within Decadent art and literature of the nineteenth century. Despite the ubiquity of studies concerning the femme fatale, most notably within genres such as Film Noir and Romanticism, the Decadent femme fatale has often been relegated to a single chapter or footnote within these studies. It is here the purpose of this thesis to rectify this critical disregard. Combining multiple disciplines (literature, aesthetics, history, mythology and psychology) each of the four chapters of this thesis will locate the femme fatale within nineteenth-century European Decadent texts as represented as a specific objet d’art: the haunted portrait, the corpse-doll, the fragmented sculpture, and the mutilated and/or sculpted body of the androgyne. Invoking Harold Bloom’s theory of the anxiety of influence, the influence and trajectory of each chapter’s respective femme fatale will be traced from the midnineteenth century through to the fin de siècle. By tracing the lineage of the aesthetic impression made by French Decadent writers of the mid-nineteenth century (such as Théophile Gautier and Charles Baudelaire) upon subsequent French and British writers and artists of the latenineteenth century (such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Walter Pater, Rachilde, and Vernon Lee), this thesis interrogates how the re/construction and usage of the Decadent femme fatale was utilized as a means of exploring ulterior philosophies of classical beauty and a fluid range of forbidden sexualities, including androgyny and homoeroticism. Offering interdisciplinary readings of the nineteenth-century Decadent femme fatale, this thesis shows the different ways in which nineteenth-century Decadent writers and artists move beyond the femme fatale’s malevolence, though without losing sight of it, to explore the mysterious relationships between life and death, art and artifice, pleasure and pain, and the seen and unseen

Creative interventions : an integrated arts based pedagogical approach in the workplace preparation classroom of the extended access programme at the University of Johannesburg

Abstract: This study evaluates how the integrating of arts based approaches in my teaching practice can be used to both expand my practice and to utilise the capability of the Workplace Preparation Programme (WPP) to achieve a more equitable and accessible curriculum. I am concerned with promoting appropriate changes in the classroom in order to foster a more egalitarian and democratic value system in the teacher/learner relationship which promotes individual and collective freedoms. I integrate arts based methods in my pedagogical practice in order to expand the modes for communication and meaning-making in the classroom: these methods include visual, performative, indirect, non-verbal and symbolic techniques. I contend that these teaching approaches are relevant for the contemporary multilingual classroom and more especially for teaching first-year students. Arts based methods can foster opportunities for multimodal learning and for developing the kinds of student capacities and relationships that can contribute to positive learning experiences...M.Tech. (Fine Art

ICS Materials. Towards a re-Interpretation of material qualities through interactive, connected, and smart materials.

The domain of materials for design is changing under the influence of an increased technological advancement, miniaturization and democratization. Materials are becoming connected, augmented, computational, interactive, active, responsive, and dynamic. These are ICS Materials, an acronym that stands for Interactive, Connected and Smart. While labs around the world are experimenting with these new materials, there is the need to reflect on their potentials and impact on design. This paper is a first step in this direction: to interpret and describe the qualities of ICS materials, considering their experiential pattern, their expressive sensorial dimension, and their aesthetic of interaction. Through case studies, we analyse and classify these emerging ICS Materials and identified common characteristics, and challenges, e.g. the ability to change over time or their programmability by the designers and users. On that basis, we argue there is the need to reframe and redesign existing models to describe ICS materials, making their qualities emerge

Proceed with Care:Reimagining Home IoT Through a Care Perspective

As the internet is increasingly embedded in the everyday things in our homes, we notice a need for greater focus on the role care plays in those relationships—and therefore an opportunity to realize un- seen potential in reimagining home Internet of Things (IoT). In this paper we report on our inquiry of home dwellers’ relationships to caring for their everyday things and homes (referred to as thing- care). Findings from our design ethnography reveal four thematic qualities of their relationships to thingcare: Care Spectacle, Care Liminality, Ontological Binding, and Care Condition. Using these themes as touchstones, we co-speculated to produce four specula- tive IoT concepts to explore what care as a design ethic might look like for IoT and reflect on nascent opportunities and challenges for domestic IoT design. We conclude by considering structures of power and privilege embedded within care practices that critically open new design imaginaries for IoT

Good enough sculptures : what happens when sculptures are made to be filmed?

This PhD proposes the camera as a tool in the creation of sculpture. Exploring the ways in which the sculptural process is transformed by its relationship to the moment of filming, it aligns itself with artistic practices and theories which foreground material exploration, uncertainty and improvisation, and draws on a number of key artists who have used film and video to extend and explore sculptural practice. It situates fine art practice as a vehicle for exploratory and open-ended research, forging strong links with contemporary art educational theory which sees the creative process as heuristic and immersed within a social context. Using Winnicott’s theory of transitional objects and conception of psychoanalytic practice as a specialised form of play, the PhD forges strong connections between the engaged, responsive and explorative work done by the artist, analyst, teacher and student. The research presents a form of artistic research which facilitates encounters between objects and cameras, through which learning can take place and knowledge can be created - knowledge, which is not discrete or abstracted, but contextualised and embodied. The aim is to involve people in its processes and methods, as opposed to presenting finished works and findings, inscribing the reception of the work into the making process thereby producing active viewers and participants who are thoughtfully and practically involved within the making process. The artistic research method revolves around a collection of objects made to prompt physical, material and imaginative exploration in front of the camera. The camera’s field of vision is re-considered as an arena or situation structured in order to facilitate exploratory activity. ‘Filming sculpture’ becomes the situation/set-up which organises the production of objects-as-sculpture in ways that open up questions around sculpture as a particular category of object, the nature of film experience, and objects more generally. The PhD submission comprises a series of films and gifs, documentation of exhibitions, screenings and discussions undertaken during the research, experimental workshops, and photographs of each of the sculptures. The main written element consists of a series of aphoristic texts and a contextual document, which both draw on ideas and concepts from art and film theory, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, object-oriented ontology and anthropology, outlining the development of the research and situating it within a wider network of practices

A Catalyst Toward Caring: Middle School Art Lessons that Embrace the Value of Compassion

This study discusses the importance of theories of care that are especially relevant to students in middle school art classes. Middle school students are going through an increasing number of changes emotionally, mentally, and cognitively that can be explored through an art curriculum that teaches them the value of caring for themselves and others, while also meeting their developmental needs. In this thesis research, teaching strategies are discussed that will cultivate an environment of care in the middle school classroom. This information will be used in the construction of developmentally sequenced art lessons that put these caring attitudes, strategies, and practices into action through art studio and criticism lessons incorporating the national art education standards