The screen as a site of division and encounter

This study is a practice-based exploration of the screen as a border site, where the concepts of division and encounter are performatively examined. My research strategy is shaped by applying autoethnographic performance strategies to the mediated space of the screen. Media materials (photos, videos and blog entries) are created with mobile media devices used in performative situations, offering a theoretical framework originating in practice. The main argument is that the screen is an assemblage site, where the notions of division and encounter can be artistically explored. Furthermore, the screen is explored as an object, as a metaphor and as an idea. By linking the Latour notion of “assemblage” with Colley’s exploration of the personal use of mobile screens (“autobiometry”), and Ettinger’s notion of “borderspace” as site of artistic encounter, the practices presented in this thesis are located in a field that blurs the boundary between the personal and art; autobiography and autoethnography; technology and identity. In so doing, this thesis expands on previous explorations such as “boundary event” (Trinh T. Minh-ha 1999); “soft mastery” (Turkle 1995); and “screen-reliant art” (Moldoch 2010;). In the performative media materials created for this thesis, the screen is explored through a “processual approach” (Bacon, 2006). This enabled me to examine the nature of interaction with the screen through embodied reflexive practice. This approach firmly places the work in the experiential or performative realm. Key practices that are discussed in this thesis include among others, an earth body performative project by Ana Mendieta (Cuba/USA) entitled Silueta series (1973-1980), a live art work by Tanja Ostojic (Serbia/Germany) called Looking for a husband with EU passport (2000-2005) and my own performative media pieces, Valid until… (2010) and The place where we were last together (2011)

Creative acts of citizenship: Performance of activist citizenship by migrant artists

in this chapter, I am looking at how migrant artists tell stories about their precarious experience of border crossing and their life after this act. I am interested in what strategies migrant artists use to claim agency and to act as citizens of their host countries. I will apply Shahram Khosravi’s argument that auto-ethnograhic approach to studying borders and migrant lives is useful and enables research that can “explore abstract concepts of policy and law and translate them into cultural terms grounded in everyday life” (p. 5). The artwork that I will analyse is created by artists who are first generation migrants, and who use their personal journey as a starting point to create a story for their audience

Performing Everyday Maternal Practice: Activist Structures in Creative Work

There is a gradual, yet sustained increase in creative practices, which explore maternal everyday experience in various mediums and formats. In this article, I am focusing on a contemporary trend of innovative performative strategies explored by creative practitioners in order to stage the spheres of maternal invisibility. This trend is in a intergenerational dialogue with artwork created almost four decades ago, as an early response to female objectification by art institutions. Current artistic consciousness-raising maternal projects similarly share personal experiences within a more public space, to provide focus on personal and social injustice