Browsing by Subject "Video art"

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Bulimic bodies and “bearers of production” : representing bulimia in Todd Haynes’s Superstar: the Karen Carpenter story and Mika Rottenberg’s NoNoseKnows
(2018-08-03) Sparapani, Grace Mi; Reynolds, Ann Morris
The majority of literature on eating disorders has favored anorexia over bulimia, assuming self-starvation as the default mechanism of eating disorders, and placing bulimia in anorexia’s shadows, presuming that the the two disorders must have the same motives and reasons, despite being drastically disparate in process. This thesis asks: Must all eating disorders be placed in the realm of starvation? After Karen Carpenter’s untimely death in 1983 after an overuse of Ipecac, she has become known as the first public face of anorexia. Discussions of Carpenter are often tautological, with her diagnosis as anorexic turning the spotlight on her controlling mother and low weight, as they are two main components often found in theories of anorexia; this focus then makes anorexia seem to be the obvious— even only —diagnosis. The main process of her disorder—purging rather than fasting—is forgotten. Similarly, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987), a film by Todd Haynes which uses Barbie dolls to reenact Karen’s life and stardom leading up to her death, describes Carpenter as anorexic, even though images of Ex-Lax, Ipecac, and toilets populate the film. This thesis uses the visuals of Superstar and of the video NoNoseKnows (2015) by artist Mika Rottenberg, in which a 6’4” fetish performer repeatedly sneezes out plates of noodles after her sneeze reflex is triggered by a pulley-powered fan that blows pollen in her face, to examine bulimia in the context of waste and production. I argue that the bulimic body is not a deprived body, but a body that is too full; it is not a body defined by a lack of intake, but by an almost impossible excess of output. I then examine Carpenter’s life, her unfulfillments and alienations, to find what other aspects have fallen between the cracks of other anorexia-centered narratives, and reveal what other interpretations of her life can be made and what connections can be found using a new context for her disorder.
I am afraid this ship is on fire
(2021-08-13) Mininkova, Anna; Stoney, John
The purpose of this report is to examine core themes of my artistic practice: human relationships with nature and knowledge, trace influences of related ideas from the history of science and philosophy on my studio process, and a body of work I completed over the last two years. I examine the roots of my interest in metaphors of nature to analyze my approach to object- and video-making. I note and discuss the shift from formal ways of knowing and making towards an embodied practice grounded in hands-on knowledge of the landscape and history of the American West. I provide context for language and material references used in the work to hint at the danger of recurring expansionist narratives and reductionist views of the natural world throughout history. Additionally, I describe the epistemological approach I have adopted as an important part of my studio practice.
Looking beyond the visual: considering multi-sensory experience and education with video art in installation
(2010-05) Spont, Marya Helen; Bolin, Paul Erik, 1954-; Mayer, Melinda M.
This study problematizes how the history, theory, and practice of art education (as documented) have predominantly focused on visually-based artworks and on visual aspects of other, multi-sensory artworks. I posit that existing pedagogical approaches become particularly limiting when addressing contemporary artworks that engage multiple senses and question how art educators might adapt such paradigms to consider individual learners’ multi-sensory experiences—particularly, aural, bodily, and spatial, as well as visual, experiences—as they operate in relation to video art in installation. To offer a point of reference for subsequent discussion, I narrate and interpret my own multi-sensory experience of Krzysztof Wodiczko’s "...OUT OF HERE: The Veterans Project" (2009), and then situate both visual and non-visual aspects of my experience in relation to various possible experiences of time, still and changing images, sound, the static or mobile body, other bodies, and space. By synthesizing and building upon recent scholarly literature pertaining to interpretation, multi-sensory and bodily experience, and learner-centered pedagogy, I consider theoretical and practical implications for teaching and learning with video art in installation, and recommend art educators’ mediation through creating communities of questioning, listening, and “speaking with,” in addition to looking. Throughout this study, I argue that encouraging learners to interpret their individual bodily and sensory experiences of artworks should be considered an essential part of the process of making meaning of those artworks in art education environments and, more importantly, of the process of helping learners to become more critically aware of their own sensory experiences in the world.
Media hacking
(2011-05) Stanley, Jeffrey Charles; Petersen, Bradley; Perzynski, Bogdan
Jeffrey Charles Stanley is an M.F.A. Candidate in Transmedia in the Department of Art and Art History. The Artist, Jeff Stanley, Works as a cultural “hacker” and critical “terrorist” with the aid of video and the internet. The character, Jeff Stanley, plays the role of a 2010 Max Headroom, the popular 80s anti-corporate TV personality/talking head and seller of Pepsi. Media delivers people. A few deliver media. The audience is the product. Media hacking is a technique that allows an artist, or anti-artist, to change the game and fight back. An artist practice can be open to technology, yet remain powerful, and culturally and socially relevant. Jeff Stanley is a virtual AI, a person, and a corporate entity. With this new holy trinity, the combined efforts as a person, a virtual AI, and a corporation will provide the enhancement an artist needs today. Art and its methods must evolve as the playing field evolves. Technology defines the 21st century artist.
Negotiating documentary space
(2012-05) Rudin, Daniel; Perzyński, Bogdan, 1954-; Lewis, Randolph
This essay attempts to propose an art practice based on an ethical and aesthetic relation of author, subject, and viewer. This relationship is productive of results that are seen as critical to a precise, useful, and ethical representation of social problems.
Off center : moments of collision
(2018-06-25) Laguardia, Marisa Sophia; Awai, Nicole; Stoney, Jack; Yancey, John; Canright, Sarah
There is something in the way the light breaks through clouds still dark with remnants of a storm. There is something in the way the wind moves through the trees. Bright light peeks through backlit cracks in a closed door, a moment missed if residing on the other side. What does it mean to try and look beyond something that blocks our sight? Our proximity dictates our viewing experience: it guides our perception, we shift in response. I am a permeable sieve that is trying to understand the nature of its vessel. My work does not include any images of the human form, yet it is entirely about navigating the world as a curious human being. I map the fluctuation between perceptual and psychological dips and crests along the way. The images I ingest reflect these reactions. On Earth, our mark is everywhere. I am constantly searching for connections that exist between external things nearby, or something much more distant. To reach out for something is to long to bring it closer to you, but you will never know how far you need to travel if you cannot see clearly. I want to understand the structure of space by confronting its absence as I work my way through dimensions.
Small town, incredible hell : visual arts, advertising, and mass media in the early democratic transition in Chile (1988-1994)
(2016-01-22) Vidal Valenzuela, Sebastian Andre; Flaherty, George F., 1978-; Giunta, Andrea; Shiff, Richard; Julia Guernsey; Carcamo-Huechante, Luis
Images and strategies from the world of advertising and the mass media had been deployed to critique the country’s socio-economic situation in the art of the 1960s and during the dictatorship (1973-1990). During the transition, however, those images and strategies began to acquire more complex and hybrid forms, and their respective boundaries became increasingly blurred. The cross-pollination between the artistic and mass media realms partly originated in the political and economic transformation from a socialist model to the neoliberal one consolidated by the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. In this scenario, a significant number of artists, particularly those linked to neo-avant-garde practices, found in the alliance between art and advertising a central motif to criticize the dictatorial regime’s economic policies (privatization, reduction of trade barriers, deregulation, etc.). I argue that, when democracy returned, that group of artists continued performing art actions that connected these areas, but they now did so in order to criticize the continuation and solidification of neoliberal policies in the transition. “Small Town, Incredible Hell” sets out to make visible the mechanisms through which commercial systems and languages are revisited, re-imagined and critically appropriated by the visual arts in the democratic transition. With this objective, I analyze three paradigmatic cases that enable me to reflect on the complex dynamics between art, advertising and the mass media at this crucial moment in the cultural history of Chile: "La Franja del NO / The NO TV Campaign" (1988), the Chilean Pavilion at the Universal Exposition in Seville in 1992, and “La Escuela de Santiago / The School of Santiago.” I propose that these three cases point towards a chronology of events that suggests three initial stages of the early transition, each of which operates on the basis of the proliferation of commercial images in society. The first moment (La Franja de NO) focused its visual and publicity strategies on the affective notions of "enthusiasm" and "happiness," giving way to a period in which technological experiments of video art were harmoniously combined with the political desires of democratic and cultural restoration. The second moment (Chile Expo 92) centered on the notions of "appearance" and "spectacle" of the newly democratic country’s international image. In this period, the political ambition to insert Chile into the global market was paramount. Finally, I identify a third moment of the early transition (La Escuela de Santiago) that can be defined through the concepts of "revelation" and "denunciation." At that time, the conservatism and authoritarianism prevalent during the transition were questioned by a mail art project that revealed the fractures and incoherencies of political and cultural institutions still subordinated to the dictatorship’s legacy.
T0WARD CY83RGN0S1S
(2016-05) Stuckey, Rachel Meredith; Williams, Jeff, M.F.A.; Henderson, Linda
Can we experience enchantment with cyberspace as we can with outer space? Can late-night web browsing provide unexpected encounters equivalent to those had in the space between radio frequencies? These questions drive my art and research. What I am pursuing is cybergnosis, or intuitive experiences of mysterious spiritual realities on the cyberplane. My goal is to question traditionally held divisions between technology and the human, and to explore marginal views of technologies. My research involves embedding myself in outlier online communities, some composed of people who feel afflicted by computers, and others who are collaborating with them in unusually empowered ways, be they spiritual, psychological, political or otherwise. I use video based performance, net-based projects, and multimedia installations to evoke empathetic yet critical renderings of these experiences. In this report, I write about five of my artworks: Estrin Tide is Fresh, Everyone Else is Tired (2016), Hello Nebula? It’s me, Margaret. (2015), Innernet Addict (2015), T0WARD CY83RGN0S1S(2015), and Welcome to my Homepage! (2014).
This is also an elevator : compulsory assimilation in academia and choosing personal disclosure and anti-production art philosophies as an antidote
(2022-08-01) Gray, Bee (Melissa Bee Joy); Lucas, Kristin, 1968-; McMaster, R. Eric
This paper is an autobiographical account of the writer’s experience throughout her two years of graduate study. It is a chronological, prose-poetry retelling of the events that befell her, supplemented by art and cultural theories. Eight chapters include an introduction to Allan Kaprow’s theory of avant-guard life-like art, praise for art about mundane everyday experiences, an introduction to queer archiving, an overview of the writer’s multimedia artwork, and a critical analysis of the professional academic artist persona. Misogyny in the arts, academic jargon, technical proficiency in western art modalities, and impersonal material studies are problematized. There is a call for action to include the personal, specific, and odd parts of one’s life into the field of art in order to steer away from the mute and sterile impulses of western art historical traditions. This paper concludes that art is primarily a feeling; a psychic, emotional experience—and this way, it can exist outside of art materiality and art commodity markets.
Towards a queer ulteriority
(2017-06-29) Hawk, Ryan T.; Smith, Michael, 1951 March 8-; Garza, Evan; Reynolds, Ann; Lucas, Kristin; Awai, Nicole
This report outlines the evolution of three year's (2014-2017) of research and practice investigating the objectification and representation of queer sexuality, while tracing the conceptual development and framework supporting my most current work included in "Trouble", the 2017 MFA Thesis Exhibition. I discuss three major projects "GAK Portraits", "Director/Subject (or foreplay"), as well as my recent MFA Thesis work, "Untitled (big toe)" and "Ulterior Subjects 1&2" as I attempt to lay-out the discursive methodological approaches and art-historical and/or theoretical significance employed in them all. The purpose of this report is twofold: to map the evolution of my graduate studies and research while at the University of Texas at Austin, and to position the work within a trajectory stemming from the history and narrative of pedagogical and/or research-based art practices.
Visitor interaction with video art
(2012-12) Neumann, Sara Tess; Mayer, Melinda M.; Bolin, Paul E
The purpose of this study was to see how visitors to the Landmarks Video media station in the Art Building at The University of Texas at Austin described how they make meaning while watching video art and what learning models those visitors drew on in their responses. I conducted a qualitative case study using semi-structured interviews to see how visitors described their meaning making process. I used discourse analysis to compare the visitor’s responses to art and film theories to see where the responses and the existing theories overlapped. I applied the results of the discourse analysis to determine how visual literacy and media literacy could be used in museum education surrounding video art. Visitors drew on a variety of background experiences in their responses to the videos Sigalit Landau’s DeadSee (2005) and Dara Birnbaum’s Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (1978-1979) including past experiences with art and film as well as experiences with feminism, pop culture, and politics. Their responses also related to a variety of areas within art and film theory. While background knowledge helped the participants begin to make meaning with the videos, it also blocked them when the video touched on something beyond their comfort level. I researched current uses of visual literacy, including uses in the museum, and current trends in media literacy. Due to the fact that the visitors’ reactions related to art and film theory, but they were finding themselves blocked in their meaning making, I conclude that a museum education program that uses current museum education practices in visual literacy, but incorporates techniques from media literacy, would be successful in helping visitors articulate their interpretations of a piece of video art and move past what is limiting them.