Browsing by Subject "Materiality"

Now showing 1 - 17 of 17

Communicative elements of fluid collective organizing
(2019-05) Smith, William Rothel, III; Treem, Jeffrey W.; Barbour, Joshua; Jarvis, Sharon; Love, Brad
Organizational communication research has traditionally focused on the organizing processes of firmly structured conventional organizations, such as workplaces, schools, and nonprofits. However, a growing line of research is beginning to investigate more fluid, ad-hoc, ephemeral, spontaneous, and loosely structured social collectives. This dissertation draws upon interview, observational, photographic, and social media data collected over a four-year time frame to investigate how a community of bicycle motocross (BMX) riders in the Southern United States communicate and organize to build and maintain public bicycle dirt jumps, despite lacking many of the elements commonly associated with formal organizing. The dissertation explores three key areas: (1) how communication gives rise to forms of authority in this fluid social collective, (2) how the materiality of the natural environment intersects with the group’s organizing, and (3) how intermingling social, material, and performative practices negotiate the tensions inherent to this organizational setting. Findings of the first study reveal that specific communicative interactions in the form of repetitive stories and assertives scale up to form a paradoxical “authoritative text” (Kuhn, 2008) that upholds a group ethos of contribution, but fails to specify the nature of how to carry out that contribution. The paradoxical nature of this authoritative text perpetuates conflict within the space. Study two conceptualizes environmental materiality as pure natural or (re)natural—depending upon the degree of alteration at human hands—and explains how a combination of these forms of nature contribute to the group’s organizationality. Finally, study three develops a model showing how the tensions of organic/civic, inclusion/consensus, and contributing/loafing are negotiated through communicative practices to sustain a version of the space that is both material and vision flexible. Theoretical contributions of this dissertation include extending our understanding of how authoritative texts emerge outside of formal organizing, providing a stronger analytical focus on the material, and explicating the importance of the space of practice in the tensions inherent to fluid organizing. The final section provides suggestions for how organic community recreation sites might be supported through official organizations, without bureaucratic or institutional influence undermining the core characteristics of the community.
Cuerpos resonantes : sonidos y voces en la poesía del Caribe y el Cono Sur 1930-1980
(2016-05) Staig Limidoro, James Christian; Cárcamo-Huechante, Luis E.; Arroyo, Jossianna; Borge, Jason; Robbins, Jill
In the present research I approach the sonic materiality in the works of poets of the 20th Century from Chile, Argentina, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. I analize the works of Gabriela Mistral (1889–1957), Nicolás Guillén (1902–1989), Néstor Perlongher (1949–1992) and Pedro Pietri (1944–2004); all of them presenting particular approaches to the production, consumption, and representation of sound through poetry. This research works with notions of sound studies, performance, animal, sex-gender, and cultural studies, to explore the different forms in which these authors use sound as part of a poetic-politic of the spoken word. I explore also how in their uses of sound they problematize notions of cultural identity, political revolution, nation building, censorship and belonging. In the present study I propose that these four poets—Mistral, Guillén, Perlongher, and Pietri—use their sound production as a tool for a political and aesthetic exercise that materializes notions of identity, agency, and belonging. Also, I claim that each poet presents a sonic conscience, bot in the production of sound and hearing.; that is, from their behalf there is a performatic notion of their work as sound and voice. This allows them to explore topics of gender, race, politics, diasporas, and aesthetics that amplify their “resonance” no only in writing but also in the sono-sphere of language and body. Thus, I explore the recording of their voices and performances as archives in which is possible to practice a critical, material, and bodily listening. Together with that, on methodological terms, I propose mi own reading as part of a escucha profunda, in dialog with the elaborations of close listening by Charles Bernstein and an attention to the effects of “resound” (Jean-Luc Nancy) that leads the poetic phenomenon in a sense level, physical experience and perception (Don Idhe).
Defining, transforming, and providing sacred presence : a sarcophagus reliquary in the Menil Collection
(2018-05-03) Mann, Jacqueline Elizabeth; Peers, Glenn
This thesis attempts a complete object biography of a fifth-century sarcophagus reliquary currently held by the Menil Collection in Houston. This thesis proposes that the Menil reliquary is a container with acute agency in its original context that continues into its modern museum context. This stone container has openings on its lid and front face, a pattern of carved birds and crosses, and is shaped like a Roman sarcophagus. The relics contained by this reliquary are completely concealed. This makes an analysis of their container even more vital, as the Menil reliquary carries the signifiers for the material inside. Without reliquaries surrounding them, relics would be unrecognizable fragments. Reliquaries define relics. Due to its iconographic program and complete circulation system for liquids, the Menil sarcophagus reliquary was displayed visibly in a late-antique pilgrimage church. A common belief in Late Antiquity was that sacred power could be transferred via touch. Liquids poured into the tops of sarcophagus reliquaries touched the relics, sources of sacred power, inside. When they exited the second opening in the reliquary, these substances had also become sacred material. Audiences of these reliquaries could then interact directly with the sacred power they desired by touching, tasting, and otherwise experiencing these sanctified fluids. Reliquaries with this ability, including the Menil reliquary, transformed and provided a means of contacting otherwise-inaccessible sacred presences. The Menil sarcophagus reliquary was a visible object that communicated the above abilities to its late-antique audience through its various physical features. The Menil reliquary continues to be a tangible point of recognition of and access to invisible, distant worlds in its modern location. As a museum object, the Menil sarcophagus reliquary has become a relic like those it once contained, while the institution of the Menil Collection acts a reliquary. This object has an ongoing vitality and, in both its late-antique and modern contexts, makes tangible the otherwise unattainable.
Distant intimacies : queer literature and the visual in the U.S. and Argentina
(2015-08) Francica, Cynthia Alicia; Cvetkovich, Ann, 1957-; Giunta, Andrea; Moore, Lisa; Richmond-Garza, Elizabeth; Carcamo-Huechante, Luis
This dissertation focuses on literary and visual works produced by queer/feminist Argentine press and art gallery ‘Belleza y Felicidad’ (1999-2007) and its encounter with ‘Belladonna*’ (1999-present), a U.S. reading series and publishing project. It seeks to describe the ways in which the precarious modes of production, circulation, and reception of the literary and visual artworks of ‘Belleza y Felicidad’ both enable and are enabled by local and hemispheric social networks grounded on embodied, affective approaches to aesthetic practices. I argue that those queer/feminist creative networks become embedded in works by authors such as Fernanda Laguna, Pablo Pérez, César Aira, and Roberto Jacoby. Bringing academic attention to the fragile materiality of the works produced by these authors, my research involves an effort to map, collect and register the ephemeral literary and visual archive of this crucial moment of Latin American queer cultural production. This dissertation crafts the notion of ‘distant intimacies’ to account for the formal, affective, and sensorial qualities of these works as well as for the local and hemispheric modes of queer relationality on which they are grounded. It shows that, through their investment in ‘distant intimacies,’ the literary and visual objects it studies consistently investigate experimental modes of community formation. That investigation of intimate bonds, in turn, grounds ‘Belleza y Felicidad’ chapbooks and visual artworks’ deployment of what I term ‘dystopian utopias’—queer imaginings, visuals, precarious materialities, and affectively charged performances which function to rethink radical politics at the moment of the Argentine neoliberal social crisis of the late 1990s and early 2000s. This dissertation claims that these works’ dys/utopian projections give account of the multiple ways in which recent and long histories of local and global economic, social, and political violence become enmeshed with queer affects and desires in the Argentine context.
Figuration, abstraction, and materiality in the works of Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985)
(2016-10-05) Najafimoghaddamn, Roja; Shiff, Richard; Arens , Katherine; Clarke , John; Henderson , Linda D; Giunta, Andrea
My dissertation examines the nature of Jean Dubuffet's art with emphasis on the issue of materiality in relation to his figurative style and the abstracted objectivity of his works. Most art historians regard Dubuffet's materiality as an element of his individual style which functions as an alternative to conventional manners of painting. Dubuffet's materiality amounts to more, however, than an unconventional use of unusual material. Throughout his artistic career Dubuffet experimented with new materials; his curiosity in working with the mysteries of coarse, base substances, not associated with the fine arts, was a driving force in his aesthetic process. By focusing on attitudes toward figuration, abstraction, and materiality in Dubuffet's works -painting, and sculpture- my dissertation aims to situate Dubuffet in the postwar era as a Conceptual Artist in Reverse; from matter he aimed to produce ideas. On another note this dissertation explores the degree to which a sense of reality might depend on familiarity with and attitude toward things (thingness) in our worldly environment. In the context of existentialist thought during the postwar period in Europe and the United States, Dubuffet's art and writing present a suitable paradigm for investigating the consequences of the sociopolitical and philosophical conditions contributing to the formation of an alternative figurative art style after WWII. To speak about postwar art from the 1940s to the 1960s in terms of oppositional differences --the rise of abstraction in America contrasted against the simultaneous revival of figuration in Europe-- is to overlook the physical qualities that these works of art shared as objects. My research considers materiality and materialism not only as a philosophical endeavor that was reinvigorated after the Second World War, but also and more so, as the physical baseness prominent in Dubuffet's work. My project provides a new analysis on the critical points of aesthetic connection between the United States and Europe in the postwar era. My work not only contributes to the scholarship on Dubuffet, but also serves to reorient how art historians perceive the rise of seemingly divergent aesthetic styles across the Atlantic. Instead of dwelling on the ruptures between American abstraction and European figuration, this dissertation explores the fruitfulness of the continuities, especially of through the discursive link of materiality.
Found, fucked up, fixed
(2019-05-09) Kovitya, Mark Thongchai; Williams, Jeff, M.F.A.; Hauft, Amy, 1957-
Found, Fucked Up, Fixed is an overview of my sculptural work engaging with the arbitrary distinctions created between opposing sites and how those distinctions are used to alienate subjects in pursuit of maintaining order and in turn, a sense of stability. Boundaries are porous and permeable membranes through which shared meaning slips; they are a third space that is neither a site of complete inclusion nor total exclusion. Considering the boundary traversing the ideal and the failure of the ideal reveals seemingly distinct oppositions that are not at all distinct, but the same. The following report examines my artistic production within the context of other artists, critics, philosophers, and literary theorists who have observed the ambiguity inherent in boundary regions. Also considered here are the conceptual foundations for the use of abstracted and exaggerated anatomical fragments as a strategy for questioning boundaries, the application of entropic processes, the degradation of form and content, and the use of “filthy” materials
The languages of Nox : photographs, materiality, and translation in Anne Carson's epitaph
(2013-05) Macmillan, Rebecca Anne; Cvetkovich, Ann, 1957-
Looking primarily at the family photographs in Anne Carson’s epitaph in book form, this essay explores how Nox multiply exhibits translation as the approximation of an imperfect nearness. The replica of a testimonial object Carson created after her brother’s passing, Nox is a resolutely non- narrative work of poetry structured around a belabored translation of a Catullan elegy, prose poems, photographs, and other fragments of memorial matter. Examining Nox as an intimate archive made public through Carson’s act of curation, my project draws attention to how this work analogizes translation to the understanding of affective life. Inspired by Marianne Hirsch’s critical work on vernacular photography, I demonstrate that the exhibited family photographs in Nox not only thematize Carson’s focus on illumination and darkness, but also materially amplify the inaccessibility of the felt lives they encapsulate. I argue that Nox, like the photographs it houses, models a memorial practice insistent simultaneously on materiality and the incomplete proximity to what remains.
The lost meaning of things : Edith Wharton, materiality, and modernity
(2010-05) Miller, Ashley Elizabeth; Barrish, Phillip; Cohen, Matt
Critics of Edith Wharton frequently discuss the material culture that pervades her work, but the trend in doing so has been to rush past the things themselves and engage in abstracted conversations of theory. I would like to suggest that a closer scrutiny of the individual objects being presented in Wharton’s novels can highlight Wharton’s own theoretical approaches to material culture. Working from Bill Brown's distinction between objects and things, I want to argue that Wharton firmly situates the material culture in The Age of Innocence in the background of her characters' lives as objects which they utilize as extensions of the self; but she brings the thingness of material culture to the forefront in Twilight Sleep, where the material culture in the novel alternately stands out and malfunctions, as characters attempt—and fail—to construct coherent and livable identities for themselves in the face of a 1920s New York that Wharton depicts as a paradoxically over-furnished wasteland. I will ultimately argue that things, problematic as they are, become a matter of survival strategy for her characters in Twilight Sleep when they utilize them to reconstruct the social relations that have become increasingly threatened from the world of The Age of Innocence.
Manipulate : release
(2006) Bayer, Michelle; Olsen, Daniel M., 1963-
How does the creation of an object shift from a process of manipulation to one of release? My work investigates the space between design, materiality and the process of making. To understand this space, it is crucial to for me to become familiar with the actual materials and processes of the objects I seek to create. This requires knowledge of the way materials behave in their specific environment, as well as how they respond to the different stimuli of making. In the process of intaglio printing, the plate not only transfers ink to the paper, but also transfers a ridge where the paper is forced into the crevasses of the plate. By not interpreting this as a printing process, but rather as a die-forming process, I am able to manipulate the paper in a way that facilitates the folding process. Once cut out and assembled, the outcome is a three-dimensional object created from the information transferred from the plate to the paper, instead of merely a two-dimensional print. My current work challenges this notion of manipulating a surface. Instead of cutting out and assembling the object, a material process is constructed that embeds the instructions for fabrication within an object using the material’s inherent qualities. In this way, instead of relying on an outside source of manipulation to force the material into a shape, I am releasing the material to become the object it was designed to be.
Materiality as spectrum and interface
(2017-06-28) Kohl, Kathleen Anne; Sawyer, Margo, 1958-; Shiff, Richard
Within my studio practice, I study the impact of technology on our shifting relationship with space to address the future of materiality; acknowledging where it has been and speculating where it is headed. Through hybrid builds of light and contorted space, I investigate breakages of spatial logic that rupture the white cube, our point zero of XYZ space. In this report, I compare my works, Portal 3D/4D and Of Order and Delineation, to position materiality as a spectrum ranging from object to light while re-framing our present-day interfacing with the haptic.
Momentary spectacle : timber's altered agency in late-Republican Rome
(2021-05-07) Adkins, Amanda C.; Davies, Penelope J. E., 1964-
Built spaces, and the materials they are comprised of, manipulate movement and evoke responses amongst people engaging with them. During the second and first centuries BCE in Rome, the relationship between the ancients and the city’s architecture grew more complex as new building materials, as well as new uses for familiar materials, were introduced. In this context, society began to heavily rely on the meanings and associations with which materials were imbued to infuse architectural projects with distinct messages. While the concept of materiality in ancient Rome has been prominent in discussions of concrete and stone, timber, a ubiquitous building material, has yet to receive such analysis. This thesis will consider the agency of timber throughout the Republic and its potential to change near the Republic’s end. Due to the scant evidence for timber in the archaeological record, my research is conducted through investigations of ancient sources, most notably Pliny and Cicero among others, and applications of materiality studies and sensory theory. The use of timber in the second and first centuries varied from everyday activities to industrial necessities. Although timber was arguably the most critical material for the creation of Roman architecture, its visibility was, in most cases, short-lived. However, between the second and first centuries, an increased desire for spectacles among the Roman populace increased the use of timber and led to innovations in temporary structures built for ludi. In contrast with the newly-introduced Greek marble and Roman concrete, a previously understated quality of timber – its pliability – came to the forefront and began to be overtly exploited in the forms of entertainment structures. In this thesis, I propose that the use of timber was challenged by new materials and the increased presence of ludi in Rome and gained traction in public projects through enticing momentary spectacles. This fascination, in turn, sparked a change in people’s perceptions of a material they had long considered mundane. With architectural and political changes in Rome providing a novel approach to timber construction, people began to create associations between the material and sensationalism.
Performing touch in the Frick Self-portrait (1658) : an examination of the ruwe manier in late Rembrandt
(2013-05) Zeldin, Natalie; Smith, Jeffrey Chipps, 1951-
Ruwe manier describes loose painting, characterized by visible brushwork that is casually or even crudely exposed. Although Rembrandt did not invent ruwe manier, his late style is practically synonymous with highly developed surface texture. The goal of this study is to help develop historical context for understanding Rembrandt’s characteristic approach to thick paint, as well as to attempt to locate what is so distinctive about Rembrandt’s expressive brushwork. The ruwe manier is particularly prominent in Rembrandt’s 1658 Self-Portrait housed in the Frick Collection in New York City. The Frick Self-Portrait thus operates as a case study and as a point of departure from which to discuss notions of the rough manner in this period. Through detailed formal analysis and primary texts, I propose how the emotional impact of impasto, as understood in Rembrandt’s time, might have served as motivation for Rembrandt’s painting approach in his later years. In the last section, I apply these discussions about Rembrandt’s ruwe manier to a current neuroscience research about visual and tactile perception. This final, exploratory chapter is more of an inquiry of neuroaesthetic methodology than of Rembrandt’s painting. I ultimately suggest that the assertion of self is manifest not only in the Rembrandt’s presentation of himself as a subject, but also as it is imbued on a conscious and fundamental level—in the very tactility of the paint itself.
Rocks and rainbows
(2011-05) Moore, Olivia Martin; Stoney, John; Miller, Melissa
Covering the topics of my conceptual interests overlapping with the production of several bodies of work over the three years of my academic curriculum, this report addresses how my theoretical ideas and commitment to materials have shaped and informed my work. The work produced at my time in the Studio Arts Program at the University of Texas at Austin has indeed come full circle, with subjects and themes growing out of and eventually returning to some of the first work that I produced here. This work discussed is organized in a non-chronological order to expose similarities in approach over the course of time. Coming into the program I wanted to focus on developing the content in my work. Reshaping the way I thought and approached sculpture, I have adapted my previous investment in materials and incorporated my greater interests in the human condition as expressed through the cultural relics of society.
T
(2013-05) Vu, Bich N.; Mickey, Susan E.; Isackes, Richard; Stoney, John
T is a thesis installation that explores the semiotics of public dress through the fundamentals of sculpture: mass and form, material and process, site and context. This exhibition consists of four T-shirt shaped objects made out of steel, aluminum, talcum, and sugar . A T-shirt is arguably a universally recognizable article of clothing, but its familiarity when juxtaposed with everyday material challenges the social identity of dress. As a theatrical designer experimenting with sculpture, Bich Vu investigates the ways clothing and space facilitates a narrative. The different arrangements of the objects within the installation are performances created in collaboration with guest directors and choreographers from the Department of Theatre & Dance.
The landscapes of transatlantic contacts and slavery at Peki in eastern Ghana, c.1600-1900
(2021-12) Nutor, Benjamin Kofi; Denbow, James R. (James Raymond), 1946-; Franklin, Maria; Gavua, Kodzo; Covey, Ronald; Falola, Oloruntoyin
This dissertation examines how the Atlantic slave trade and European missionization in the 17th to 19th centuries intersected with local state formation processes to shape the social identities of the people of Peki. In doing so, it explores the complex and sometimes contradictory intersections between the local and global factors that underlay the social disruptions and economic, political, and religious transformations brought about by the Atlantic slave trade in the forested interior of West Africa. Methodologically, the dissertation highlights the shifting situational relationships between oral histories, traditions, and archival records of the recent African past. Simultaneously, it underscores the value of archaeological data, material culture and cultural landscapes in resuscitating lost or even intentionally repressed memories of past sordid events. It recognizes that studying such difficult histories requires community-led approaches that foreground indigenous voices in the process of learning with the community rather than learning about them. The dissertation reveals that the Peki were both the victims and the beneficiaries of the Atlantic slave trade - a difficult conclusion contrary to the strict dichotomy between victims and perpetrators usually found in the historiography of the Atlantic slave trade in West Africa. Arriving in the Volta Basin in the 17th century, the Peki become the head of a mercurial Krepi state comprised of several semi-autonomous central Ewe communities. The Krepi state soon came under the suzerainty of the neighboring Akwamu state until the mid-18th century when they fought to regain their freedom and later repelled attacks by the Asante and Anlo-Ewe. By the middle of the 19th century, the British anti-slavery campaigns that followed their abolition of the trade in 1807 led to a decline in the Atlantic trade on the west side of the Volta Basin controlled by the Asante. The focus of British and German colonial territorial disputes, the Peki area on the eastern Volta Basin became a major hub for post-abolition trade in enslaved people in the Gold Coast and German Togoland. In order to take firmer control of the Atlantic mercantile economy, the Peki invited German missionaries into their community in 1847, with the aim of using them to gain direct access to European merchants on the coast. From the 1870s onward, the Peki established in their community a franchise of the influential Krachi-Dente deity that had controlled the Atlantic slave trade in the Northern Territories. Control of the Dente shrine at Dzake-Peki facilitated the growth of Peki’s religious, political, and economic power and wealth in the 19th century. This dissertation examines how these entangled histories continue to be expressed materially in cultural landscapes, monuments, artifacts, collective memories, and social identities. Its multi-dimensionality expands on current understandings of the entangled histories of the Atlantic slave trade in less structured polities in the forested interior that operated at the interstices of more centralized states in West Africa.
The materiality of Tejano identity
(2016-12) Hanson, Casey; Wade, Maria Fátima, 1948-; Creel, Darrell; Franklin, Maria; Doolittle, William; Menchaca, Martha
Scholars have examined Tejano identity through various theoretical and methodological lenses, but in general, all are interested in highlighting Tejano agency in the development of Texas. As diachronic examinations of identity, these investigations are often situated in terms of shifting ethnic identities, where a broad range of backgrounds came to share common concepts of Tejano identity through shared experiences and the dynamic context of the frontier. This dissertation builds upon this research and comprehensively evaluates Tejano identity through an examination of the archaeological record from a perspective based in theories of materiality. Like previous investigations, my dissertation is a diachronic study that conceptualizes Tejano identity as a changing ethnic identity, but as an examination rooted in material culture studies, my dissertation provides a new perspective into the role of Tejano agency in the development of region. My dissertation asks what objects and what material practices were integral to the formation of Tejano identity and how did those practices change over time? To answer these questions, I compared the material worlds of various Tejano families and individuals from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and explored how objects were enmeshed in the work of subject formation over time. In my dissertation, I present the archaeological and archival data from three case study sites, the eighteenth century deposits at Spanish Governor’s Palace (41BX179), the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century deposits at and the Delgado Cistern (41BX1753) and the Mexican Period Padrón-Cháves Midden and Siege of Béxar entrenchment (41BX1752) as well as a number of other related sites. The comparative analyses reveal that local traditions, technologies, and practices contributed to the establishment of a distinct regional identity in the early eighteenth century. Many aspects of this identity endured into the nineteenth century, although other aspects of identification began to shift due to the introduction of new material practices through an illicit trade network that helped to forge a unified Tejano identity across frontier communities. Finally, the unprecedented amount of goods introduced to the frontier along with Anglo-American colonists during the Mexican Period exposed Tejanos to an array of new practices that fractured Tejano identity and reshaped the frontier.
Uniformly speaking : how rhetoric and clothing addresses materiality at work
(2022-12-05) O'Connor, Erin Ann; Brummett, Barry, 1951-; Gunn, Josh; Ballard, Dawna; Davis, Diane
The question guiding this dissertation is: what do we manage with uniformity of clothing? More specifically, how does uniformity of clothing (including actual uniforms) manage our sensing, feeling bodies, our sense of self (subjectivity), and social interaction (intersubjectivity)? Through theory, method, and analysis, my work here collapses dualities of mind and matter, object and subject, body and clothing, not merely as an intellectual exercise but as a development of a potential site of negotiating ethical action. I examine fast food worker uniforms at three restaurants and contrast those to various forms of self-adopted uniformity of dress. The analyses conducted in both case studies highlight the power of style as a experience of materiality of thinking.