Defining Museum Intervention: An Analysis of James Putnam\u27s Time Machine

In his 2001 publication Art and Artifact: The Museum as Medium, independent curator James Putnam coins the term ‘museum intervention’ to describe a type of artwork created by some artists as a means to critique organizing principles of the museum. Putnam’s book analyzes examples of museum interventions, including his own 1994 exhibition, Time Machine: Ancient Egypt and Contemporary Art, but fails to offer a definition for the term. This thesis analyzes the trajectory of exhibition practices leading to the publication of the new term through an examination of historical changes in museum display. The paper then analyzes examples of museum intervention included in Putnam’s book in order to develop a definition for the term. The paper examines Time Machine in relation to the new definition and, contrary to Putnam’s assertions, concludes that the exhibition is not a museum intervention

DANCE IN THE ART GALLERY OF ONTARIO 1977 AND 2017

While the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) is renowned as a pre-eminent visual arts museum in Canada, it has also featured dance performances since the late 1970s. Historically, a first wave of dance in art museums took place in the 1920s when choreographers, in dialogue with artists, formulated a new vision for dance that broke from the standards of classical ballet. A second wave occurred in the 1960s–70s when sweeping and radical changes in society propelled experimental dance into alternative venues such as museums. A third wave, beginning in the 1990s, brought dance into museum spaces and stemmed from the perspective of institutional critique. This thesis examines two dance performances held at the AGO, exemplifying the second and third waves: Missing Associates’ Solo Improvisation (1977) and Tanya Lukin Linklater’s Sun Force (2017). I will draw on the literature and files at the AGO to analyze the institutional philosophies and exhibitionary practices that led to incorporating dance in these time periods. My core research shows how dance in museums evolved beyond an entertainment function of enhancing the visitor experience to playing a key role in an ongoing critique of the museum. Dance in the museum also expands curatorial practice beyond the visual sense; the movements of bodies transgresses the implicit hierarchies that have restricted both the display of objects and the activities of subjects. I argue that dance creates a more liberated museum experience and a deeper understanding of the visitor’s relationship to art and society. Incorporating dance offers an opportunity to reshape the institutional structure from within and provides a means for the art museum to re-vitalize its connection to the community it represents and serves

Toward a more accessible cultural heritage. Experiences, methodologies and tools.

L'abstract è presente nell'allegato / the abstract is in the attachmen

The transpositional art-object (Mezzone): countering restrictive modalities in art production

By acknowledging the characterization of my research and practice as a “complexly-woven artistic-existential positionality”1; which whilst activating my interests about place, mobility and identity; it has nevertheless been conditioned by my adoption of an altogether transient lifestyle. The perpetual cycle of certain restrictive modalities that accompany it – variously experienced as economic and spatial flux – has nurtured in me perceptible sensations of artistic constraint; in terms of both limiting my practice outputs and access to the wider art-establishment. In order to counter these problems; and intertwined with issues about ‘belonging’ and ‘place-making’ (Markiewicz); the aim of this practice-led research is to assuage my paradoxical desire to remain personally in-transit whilst simultaneously ‘becoming’ artistically situated. Since I cannot extricate my everyday life from my practice concerns; and in order to unravel and subsequently resolve the perceived connections between them; the initial strategy was to deploy a critical reflexivity about my lived experiences with various spatialities and mobilities. Thereafter, my objective is to establish a new potentiality for my practice; my ‘axis-mundi’ (Lippard); one which will expand my exposure to scholarly and creative opportunities across the entire art-institutional framework. Central to this investigation is the idea of an essential connection existing between a-priori elements already within the current (restricted) status of my practice and the potential trajectory desired for it. In the first instance, my aim was to formulate an experimental methodology which recognizes and fosters the co-dependent relationship between how I have historically acquired knowledge and its generative potential for my practice. My research identifies a significant gap in knowledge that adequately accounts for an approach to art practice that is based on my lifelong inclination towards grazing on and gleaning from anecdotal and theoretical information. In arguing for a continued expansion in the scope of art-research methodologies, the concept of Pragmatic Selection has evolved which adopts those very same processes for the acquisition of knowledge and; when applied to art-production; constitutes an original contribution to the ongoing debate about practice-led research. Following this development; and in order to better comprehend my perceived marginalized existential positionality (Madison); I necessarily undertake an interrelated examination of critical spatial theory and critical mobility theory. Although noting that notions of space and time appear beyond our full comprehension, there is however a general consensus that a fluid interconnectedness exists between them; which, when enacted through discreet applications, enables multivalent place-making. Importantly for me here, are the emerging personal affiliations with living in perceptible hybrid (Bhahba), liminal (van Gennep, Turner) and/or heterotopic places (Foucault); as well ‘cognitive’ landscapes (Daniels, Biggs). These include: the idea of a hybrid-liminal space experienced as the ‘insider-outsider paradox’, where the individual is contextually both the insider and the outsider at the same time; the idea of the trans-national subject whose position is grounded in a specific spatial-temporal liminal register; and furthermore; the idea of the contemporary nomad whose position is without fixity to a specific place (Kebshull, Braidotti, et. al.). Concluding that all kinds of spaces are potentially made transitory through the intervening processes of (de/re-) construction – as a type of mobility (Cresswell) – it becomes apparent that the triangulation of those very same ideas could be applied in the creation of sculptures that embody and/or represent a similar trans-positional state. Concurrently, I am constantly recording, reflecting and responding to the above theories by both creating and analysing a number of preparatory studies for a potential future application of them. By interrogating the tendency of using the language of binary referents within my work (here-there; this-that; etc.), which; alongside a corresponding investigation into hyphenated living (Bruno, van Dyk); I have conceived the physical manipulation of the hyphen as a type of ‘structural’ middle-zone. To that end; and rather than acquiescing to the normative expectation to exhibit work; I have met another of my objectives here with the purposeful creation and display of an original ‘idea’, which; latterly termed the Trans-positional Art-object (Mezzone); constitutes another significant contribution to the contemporary artistic-academic discourse. Furthermore; as a three-dimensional expansion of the compressed two-dimensional written form of the hyphen symbol itself (–), it has generated a space in which to ‘house’ my artistic responses to theory and anecdote. As an original approach to art practice, it challenges art-institutional authority by subverting the traditional hierarchy of art-object categorization in the model-maquette-sculpture relationship. In conceiving a new unified position for them, a (liminal) middle-zone emerges which acts as a type of compressed space and an expanded place at the same time. It advocates for the trans-positionality of the art-object as subject, in a form which is fluid, hybrid and ambivalent; yet it is fully grounded in its own potentiality. Inspired by observing certain forms of resilience and subversion used to counter restrictive modalities experienced in both the carceral context (Moran, Fiddler) as well as more commonplace situations (Flynn, de Certeau), I have successfully co-opted a similarly creative tactic herein. This in turn, has provided me with a point of focus around which a sense of becoming has been formulated. That is; whilst beginning this research with some reservations about my place as an artist (belonging) and the trajectory of my practice (becoming), I can now claim to have fully entered into that apparently negotiable in-between space of the liminal threshold. By having contested it and ventured through it, I have emerged into a new place by firmly establishing my current position within the historic art-academic timeline. Whilst articulating contemporary experiences about mobility, my proposition also draws upon both historic and current artistic and philosophical theories. These include ideas about: simultaneity (Bergman, Foucault and Bauman); motility (Kaufmann); thinking material (Cragg); and also the subjectile (Artaud, Derrida and Long). Correspondingly; the conceptual premise of the Trans-positional Art-object (Mezzone) is very much grounded within the precedent of Institutional Critique. As a subversive tactic; frequently involving the manipulation of a-priori elements to expose the often concealed hierarchies of power and mechanisms of control within the art-institutional framework; it has been successfully employed by Metzger, Ali Uysal and Asher to register their own counter-positions within it. Altogether, these artists have effectively enacted perceptible types of simultaneous trans-positionality; they have similarly entered a perceived liminal space; a middle-zone; a perceived space in-between their practice and the art-institution itself. They have fully engaged with and subverted the (art-contextualized) insider-outsider paradox and, in having ventured outside of the institution’s authority, they have necessarily had to – as I have done also –simultaneously return to the inside of it. By claiming an original approach to research methodologies (Pragmatic Selection) and also art-production; my aim has been to trans-form my practice by establishing new potentialities for it; thus enhancing my motility and exposure to both scholarly and creative opportunities across the entire art-institutional framework. To that end, I have met my objective in the creation and display of an original ‘idea’: the Trans-positional Art-object (Mezzone) constitutes a new and original development in contemporary artistic-academic discourse

A Seeing Place – Connecting Physical and Virtual Spaces

In the experience and design of spaces today, we meet both reality and virtuality. But how is the relation between real and virtual construed? How can we as researchers and designers contribute to resolving the physical-virtual divide regarding spaces? This thesis explores the relations between the physical and the virtual and investigates ways of connecting physical and virtual space, both in theory and practice.\ua0The basic concepts of the thesis are Space, Place, and Stage. The central idea is that the stage is a strong conceptual metaphor that has the capacity to work as a unifying concept relating physical and virtual spaces and forming a place for attention, agreements, and experience – A Seeing Place. The concept of seeing place comes from the Greek word theatre, meaning a “place for seeing”, both in the sense of looking at and understanding.\ua0In certain situations, the relations between physical and virtual spaces become important for users’ experience and understanding of these situations. This thesis presents seven cases of physical-virtual spaces, in the field of architectural and exhibition design. The method of these studies is research by design. The discussion then focuses on how each setting works as a stage, and how conceptual metaphors can contribute to the connection between physical and virtual spaces.\ua0Building upon the explorations and experiments in different domains, the thesis contains a collection of seven papers concerning the relations between physical and virtual space in different contexts outside the world of theatre. These papers range from more technical about Virtual Reality (design of networked collaborative spaces) to more conceptual about staging (methods in interaction design) and virtual space (using a transdisciplinary approach).\ua0The results of those studies suggest that the Stage metaphor of a physical-virtual space can contribute to the elucidating of relations between physical and virtual spaces in number of ways. Conceptually, the stage metaphor links together the semiotic and the hermeneutic views of space and place. And, from a practice-based perspective, A Seeing Place view opens up the way to creating contemporary spaces and resolving the physical-virtual divide

Janine Antoni: Finding a Room of Her Own

Janine Antoni\u27s object- and performance-based works draw from multiple influences including feminism and conceptualism, and in these works the artist has fashioned an investigation of the self through the examination of the mother/child dyad, creating a more than fourteen-year body of work about these relationships that explore the implications of feminine imagery. Antoni’s works are an effort to distinguish her body as a feminine subject-object, but also to identify with as well as separate herself from the mother. While she is a conceptual artist, Antoni puts great emphasis on materiality. For her, the concept defines itself within the materials, and it is the process of the making that interests her most, empowering what is traditionally overlooked, forgotten, or disempowered. As she alternately separates from and connects with the mother and the foremothers of the artistic heritage that have surely contributed to establishing this identity, Antoni allows new images of the female to be made visible in a culture where they have traditionally been lacking

Exhibition design + contemporary encounters

This research is practice-based and explores the role of exhibition designer, the parameters of exhibition design and the exhibition design techniques that affect the experience of art in an institutional setting. Investigating the design methodology of current standard institutional practice in contemporary art display and audience engagement, techniques and strategies are researched, tested and developed to activate gallery space as medium. The research investigates techniques that can be constructed and implemented in exhibition design that provide engaging experiences for the viewer that are manifold in an institutional context