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Transitional Acts: Suspension and Materiality in the Event

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Thesis(20.5 MB)

Date

2023

Authors

Supervisor

Boberg, Ingrid
Douglas, Carl

Item type

Thesis

Degree name

Doctor of Philosophy

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Publisher

Auckland University of Technology

Abstract

The making of a new artwork emerges through potential and process within the ‘event.’ It results from a trajectory that may be interrupted or delayed, but continues moving and varying perpetually.1 Particulate and fluid matter move continuously and permeate our world. Rain falls and flows into streams; streams become rivers and run into the sea; seawater evaporates and descends again as rain. This rain nourishes trees that grow in the earth and eventually decay, feeding new seedlings. Matter has what Jane Bennett calls “vitality,”—an energy that ruptures from an event opening new possibilities and new relationships.2 Vitality and agency in material allow for complex and fluid changes in art making and this energy reveals potential, affect relations, sensation, and duration. Art is both time as it moves and time as it is held. In working with particulate matter and fluidity in this project—specifically carbon and water—I consider how continual emergent events are experienced through material change and how the suspension of material through duration and inevitability unfolds with shuddering newness. At the time of making, there is a hiatus or moment of uncertainty that is experienced as suspended movement. I conceptually map this experience onto the suspension of particles floating in a medium. As the artist immersed in the perception of this suspension, my thoughts and sensations are left hanging, unable to find stable ground, and are led by the quality of darkness and intensity of affect. By lingering in this indeterminate material state, I evoke time, change and the transience of our world. This practice-led research centres on the experiential, conceptual, and material state of suspension—on the floating, transferring, and binding of saturated material. This project finds simultaneous occurrences that are significant in relation to the practices of artists Tania Kovats, Roni Horn, Nina Canell, and Tue Greenfort in their use of elemental materials—particulate matter, water, light, and air—and their exploration of the relational interconnection with our threatened planet. Enfolded in the research are the artworks of Marie Shannon, Ralph Hotere, Lydia Ourahmane, Agnieszka Kurant and Francis Alÿs who reflect on memory, intimacy, darkness, space and continuous events in the temporality of our lives. This research is non-linear where multiple logics of reasoning and reality exist simultaneously. My methodologies of shifting and suspension respond to sensation, events, and semblance. They are situated within post-structural and post-qualitative methodologies, by exploring the complexities and the opening of questions in approaching art practice. 1 Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation, (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002), 6. 2 Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010), viii.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10292/17225

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Doctoral Theses