Wings, gender and architecture : remembering Bath, England

This thesis is a cultural study of the city of Bath, England. Bath's tourist industry currently uses Neo-classical architectural heritage to foster an incomplete vision of the past, void of working-class women's history. As a feminist analysis of Bath's architecture, this study takes examples of medieval and Georgian building and Gothic revival in Bath to reveal the gendered underpinnings of architectural discourse at large. At the symbolic core of this discourse in Bath is a mythical figure, the winged male architect, which suggests that architectural achievement is a form of transcendence unavailable to women, both historically and, by extension, in the present. The "feminine" equivalents of the winged male architect--the angel in the house and the fallen woman--are subject to critique here for the ways in which their construction denies historical women the capacity for both creativity and agency. This study therefore presents and analyses archival evidence of women's history in Bath in relation to Bath's architectural history. Based on the assumption that feminist scholarship is a heuristic activity, this doctoral project also documents performance art projects and collective, public art strategies involving the author and other women artists, in Bath and Montréal, Canada. These artistic interventions into the "public" sphere of the city are an attempt to bring the practice of feminist ethics to bear on history, architecture and public memor

Rétrofictions

"Rétrofictions is a collaborative artist publication that juxtaposes six photograpic artworks alongside six works of fiction by as many authors." -- p. [3]

The Industry of Motherhood: Spring Hurlbut’s “L’ascension” and Julia Margaret Cameron’s Wings

Les rapports entre le travail, la maternité et la reproduction trouvent des expressions remarquablement diversifiées dans la production de l’artiste canadienne contemporaine Spring Hurlbut et de la photographe anglaise du XIXe siècle Julia Margaret Cameron. Dans cette étude, j’essayerai de montrer comment le travail des deux artistes se retrouve à l’intersection du poétique et du politique. Contrairement aux artéfacts d’Hurlbut, les images de Cameron sont des lieux d’inscription de sa propre créativité artistique au-delà des normes particulières de la féminité de la deuxième moitié du XIXe siècle. La photographe a choisi de résister au style pictorialiste alors en vogue, et aussi de s’opposer à l’idéal de la classe moyenne victorienne représenté par « l’ange à la maison ». Sa production n’échappe pourtant pas à son moment historique et elle n’essaie même pas de le faire. Issues de temporatilés fort différentes, Cameron et Hurlbut se seront toutes deux intéressées à définir conceptuellement la maternité dans leur art, la déconstruisant et reconstruisant pour mieux la représenter. Dans le travail d’Hurlbut, cette représentation revêt une forme artistique qui reste à la fois éphémère et douloureuse comme un mauvais souvenir. L’Ascension rappelle la profonde douleur des femmes de l’époque victorienne face à la mort de leurs enfants. Dans l’exposition, l’expérience du deuil est exacerbée par des références presque cliniques à ces instruments industriels d’aide à l’allaitement qui contribuèrent au haut pourcentage de la mortalité infantile. De leur côté, les images d’enfants ailés de Cameron expriment une grande tendresse pour l’enfant qui était – ou pourrait déjà être – perdu.Les activités culturelles de Spring Hurlbut et Julia Margaret Cameron, lorsque considérées à l’aulne du paradigme victorien de la féminité domestique de la classe moyenne, créent une tension entre les concepts de travail et de maternité. Cette étude tente d’explorer l’art d’une femme par celui d’une autre et crée un lien féministe entre des époques, tout en conservant une approche matérialiste

Eco-didacticism in art and architecture: Design as means for raising

The aim of this paper is to assess a distinctive form of environmentally-driven architecture and public art practice that has emerged in urban contexts over the last two decades. It appears that these environmental practices have been developing a distinctive, didactic discourse in recent decades. We formulate the hypothesis that this form of creative intervention, which we provisionally name the “eco-art installation,” is part of an “ecodidactic turn” that crosses disciplines, specifically art, sustainable design, and architecture. This type of intervention further mobilizes different publics within various urban landscapes, and engages new forms of collaboration with municipal authorities. In this sense, the urban eco-art installation does not simply demonstrate its alignment with pressing ecological issues; rather, it is driven by an urgent need to explain. This new form of explanatory discourse places the “eco-message” squarely in the public realm. After differentiating between didacticism and dialecticism, we present specific approaches to assess the installations' communicative properties. Preliminary results show that these eco-art installations exist for the sake of communicating their message. The adoption of the public realm is key, since it may foster human encounters and engagement with the issues collectively, contributing to the potential of ‘public space as political forum

Photogenic Montreal : Activisms and Archives in a Post-industrial City

"Beginning in the 1960s, community-minded and heritage groups responded to the tensions arising from urban reconstruction, gentrification, and the erasure of neighbourhoods; this activism also left its photographic traces. Attentive to the still-changing face of the city's architecture, neighbourhoods, and street life, Photogenic Montreal participates in debates about who the city belongs to, who speaks on its behalf, and how to picture its past and present." --Dust jacket of document