Matching Items (24)
Description
Simultaneously culture heroes and stumbling buffoons, Tricksters bring cultural tools to the people and make the world more habitable. There are common themes in these figures that remain fruitful for the advancement of culture, theory, and critical praxis. This dissertation develops a method for opening a dialogue with Trickster figures. It draws from established literature to present a newly conceived and more flexible Trickster archetype. This archetype is more than a collection of traits; it builds on itself processually to form a method for analysis. The critical Trickster archetype includes the fundamental act of crossing borders; the twin ontologies of ambiguity and liminality; the particular tactics of humor, duplicity, and shape shifting; and the overarching cultural roles of culture hero and stumbling buffoon. Running parallel to each archetypal element, though, are Trickster's overarching critical spirit of Quixotic utopianism and underlying telos of manipulating human relationships. The character 'Q' from Star Trek: The Next Generation is used to demonstrate the critical Trickster archetype. To be more useful for critical cultural studies, Trickster figures must also be connected to their socio-cultural and historical contexts. Thus, this dissertation offers a second set of analytics, a dialogical method that connects Tricksters to the worlds they make more habitable. This dialogical method, developed from the work of M. M. Bakhtin and others, consists of three analytical tools: utterance, intertextuality, and chronotope. Utterance bounds the text for analysis. Intertextuality connects the utterance, the text, to its context. Chronotope suggests particular spatio-temporal relationships that help reveal the cultural significance of a dialogical performance. Performance artists Andre Stitt, Ann Liv Young, and Steven Leyba are used to demonstrate the method of Trickster dialogics. A concluding discussion of Trickster's unique chronotope reveals its contributions to conceptions of utopia and futurity. This dissertation offers theoretical advancements about the significance and tactics of subversive communication practices. It offers a new and unique method for cultural and performative analyses that can be expanded into different kinds of dialogics. Trickster dialogics can also be used generatively to direct and guide the further development of performative praxis.
ContributorsSalinas, Chema (Author) / de la Garza, Amira (Thesis advisor) / Carlson, Cheree (Committee member) / Olson, Clark (Committee member) / Ellsworth, Angela (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Waiting for a Passenger / Ship to Go to Sea is a performance made by In Kyung Lee and performed by five dancers. It premiered in Americas Gallery at ASU Art Museum on January 20, January 24, and Jan 27, 2015. The work existed in a container of geometric spatial structure and cyclical rhythmic cycles, which were filled with repetition, accumulation, and minimalistic durational movement vocabulary. The dancers courageously ventured through the rigorous and exacting structure, transforming individual and collective struggles and vulnerabilities into the beauty of being human. This document looks into the background and creation process of the work.
ContributorsYi, In-gyŏng (Author) / Standley, Eileen (Thesis advisor) / Ellsworth, Angela (Committee member) / Fitzgerald, Mary (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
The purpose of this study is to explore the shifting cultural norms of copyright law, and that concept’s impact on the performance and practice of artists producing original works of authorship. Although related concepts predate it, and today it exists as a subset of a broader category known as intellectual property, the purpose of copyright beginning with the United States Constitution was to allow for a temporary economic monopoly to an author of a fixed creative work. This monopoly was meant to incentivize authors to contribute to the public good with works that promote progress in science and art. However, increases over time in the scope and duration of copyright terms grant broader protections and controls for copyright owners today, while advances in technology have provided the public with the potential for near-limitless low-cost access to information. This creates a conflict between proprietary interest in creative works and the public’s right and ability to access and build on those works. The history of copyright law in America is rife with efforts to balance these competing interests.
The methodology for this study consisted of flexible strategies for collecting and analyzing data, primarily elite, semi-structured interviews with professional artists, attorneys, and others who engage with the cultural and legal norms of intellectual property regimes on a regular basis. Constant comparative analysis was used to maintain an emic perspective, prioritizing the subjective experience of individuals interviewed for this research project. Additional methods for qualitative analysis were also employed here to code and categorize gathered data, including the use of RQDA, a software package for Qualitative Data Analysis that runs within the R statistical software program. Various patterns and behaviors relevant to intellectual property reforms as they relate to artist practices were discussed in detail following the analysis of findings, in an effort to describe how cultural norms of copyright intersect with the creation of original works of authorship, and towards the development of the theory that the semiotic sign systems subject to intellectual property laws are not themselves forms of real property, as they do not meet the categorical requirements of scarce resources.
The methodology for this study consisted of flexible strategies for collecting and analyzing data, primarily elite, semi-structured interviews with professional artists, attorneys, and others who engage with the cultural and legal norms of intellectual property regimes on a regular basis. Constant comparative analysis was used to maintain an emic perspective, prioritizing the subjective experience of individuals interviewed for this research project. Additional methods for qualitative analysis were also employed here to code and categorize gathered data, including the use of RQDA, a software package for Qualitative Data Analysis that runs within the R statistical software program. Various patterns and behaviors relevant to intellectual property reforms as they relate to artist practices were discussed in detail following the analysis of findings, in an effort to describe how cultural norms of copyright intersect with the creation of original works of authorship, and towards the development of the theory that the semiotic sign systems subject to intellectual property laws are not themselves forms of real property, as they do not meet the categorical requirements of scarce resources.
ContributorsBillingsley, Evan (Author) / Russomanno, Joseph (Thesis advisor) / Anderson, Douglas (Committee member) / de la Garza, Amira (Committee member) / Thornton, Leslie-Jean (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
This paper examines creative process and performance as a method of research for understanding self-in-context through the lens of my own artistic research for “Dress in Something Plain and Dark,” a project exploring my relationship as a woman to Mennonite religious and cultural identity, spirituality, and dance. Situating my artistic work in relationship to the fields of creative autoethnography, queer and transborder performance art, and somatic dance practice, I discuss the distinctions and commonalities of approach, methods, and practice of artists working in these fields, and the shared challenges of marginalization, translation, and contextualization. In response to these challenges, and the inadequacy of linear, Western, individualistic and mechanistic frameworks to address them, I draw from the ethnographic work of de la Garza, (formerly González, 2000) to seek a “creation-centered” ontological framework that the artist-researcher-performer may use to understand and contextualize their work. I offer the tree as an ontology to understand the organic, emergent nature of creative process, the stages of growth and seasonal cycles, and the structural parts that make up the creative and performative processes, and illustrate this model through a discussion of the growth of “Dress in Something Plain and Dark,” as it has emerged over two cyclical “seasons” of maturation.
Note: This work of creative scholarship is rooted in collaboration between three female artist-scholars: Carly Bates, Raji Ganesan, and Allyson Yoder. Working from a common intersectional, feminist framework, we served as artistic co-directors of each other’s solo pieces and co-producers of Negotiations, in which we share these pieces alongside each other. Negotiations is not a showcase of three individual works, but a conversation among three voices. As collaborators, we have been uncompromising in the pursuit of our own unique inquiries and voices and each of our works of creative scholarship stand alone. However, we believe that all of the parts are best understood in relationship to each other and to the whole. For this reason, we have chosen to cross-reference our thesis documents here, and we encourage readers to view the performance of Negotiations in its entirety.
Thesis documents cross-referenced:
French Vanilla: An Exploration of Biracial Identity Through Narrative Performance, by Carly Bates
Bhairavi: A Performance-Investigation of Belonging and Dis-Belonging in Diaspora Communities, by Raji Ganesan
Deep roots, shared fruits: Emergent creative process and the ecology of solo performance through “Dress in Something Plain and Dark,” by Allyson Yoder
Note: This work of creative scholarship is rooted in collaboration between three female artist-scholars: Carly Bates, Raji Ganesan, and Allyson Yoder. Working from a common intersectional, feminist framework, we served as artistic co-directors of each other’s solo pieces and co-producers of Negotiations, in which we share these pieces alongside each other. Negotiations is not a showcase of three individual works, but a conversation among three voices. As collaborators, we have been uncompromising in the pursuit of our own unique inquiries and voices and each of our works of creative scholarship stand alone. However, we believe that all of the parts are best understood in relationship to each other and to the whole. For this reason, we have chosen to cross-reference our thesis documents here, and we encourage readers to view the performance of Negotiations in its entirety.
Thesis documents cross-referenced:
French Vanilla: An Exploration of Biracial Identity Through Narrative Performance, by Carly Bates
Bhairavi: A Performance-Investigation of Belonging and Dis-Belonging in Diaspora Communities, by Raji Ganesan
Deep roots, shared fruits: Emergent creative process and the ecology of solo performance through “Dress in Something Plain and Dark,” by Allyson Yoder
ContributorsYoder, Allyson Joy (Author) / de la Garza, Sarah Amira (Thesis director) / Ellsworth, Angela (Committee member) / DeWitt, Inertia Q. E. D. (Committee member) / School of Film, Dance and Theatre (Contributor) / Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Hugh Downs School of Human Communication (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
‘why we bend' a Bachelor of Fine Arts honors thesis exhibition by Ximenna Hofsetz and Tiernan Warner brings together installation, digital, sculptural, and printed artwork. The main focus concerns memory; and its vague, formless, and hazy nature. The work also examines what would happen if cognitive space could be physically mapped? What would it look like in sculptural form? Memory erodes and distorts with time. We influence our memories as much as they affect us. Thus, just as relationships are ever-changing, and our memories of those we interact with constantly shifting, our relationships with our own memories are malleable and evolve through time. This transient nature of memory is depicted in the various stylistic means of this exhibition by referencing time and space as well as personal memories and ephemera in both concrete and abstract ways. ‘why we bend’ implements a variety of multimedia techniques to examine recollection and its hold on us.
ContributorsHofsetz, Ximenna Cedella (Author) / Gutierrez, Rogelio (Thesis director) / Hood, Mary (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / School of Art (Contributor)
Created2014-12
Description
Language is powerful. The words we use define our perceptions. They label what we see and paint a picture for those with whom we are communicating. Words serve as heuristic when assigning value to an object, experience, or person. My thesis, Eye of the BeholdHer, focuses on the language used in American pop-culture to describe women. I comment on the dehumanization of women through the use of animal names used to describe personality, appearance, and genitalia, as well as the way the English language implies domestication and inferiority of women through the use of the certain words. Examples include, but are not limited to: bitch , chick, pussy, beaver, cougar, catty, heifer, old bat, mousy, foxy, and vixen. Eye of the Behold(her) reflects upon my observations and calls for social change. Eye of the BeholdHer is a call for action. It is time to make conscious word choices and realize the impact words have on shaping our society. It is time for us to empowHer through words.
ContributorsGibly, Sophia (Author) / Maxwell, Kathryn (Thesis director) / Ellsworth, Angela (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of Art (Contributor)
Created2014-05
DescriptionDeus Ex Machina was a group exhibition of works by honors candidate Kenosha Drucker and her Herberger institute colleagues Nicholas Gutierrez and Alyssa Burke. The show was a mixed media installation featuring video, printmaking, sculpture, painting, and drawing.
ContributorsDrucker, Kenosha Quinn (Author) / Pessler, Anthony (Thesis director) / Gutierrez, Rogelio (Committee member) / Pittsley, Janice (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Art (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
In Arizona, people flock the streets of Tombstone in droves, chatting in period costume while gunshots ring down the street. Others in Bisbee walk in the Queen Mine, listening to the tour guide discuss how the miners extracted ore. Still others drive up the precarious road to Jerome, passing through the famed Grand Hotel. As former Arizona mining towns, Tombstone, Jerome and Bisbee have a shared identity as former mining boomtowns, all of which experienced subsequent economic and population decline. Left with the need to reinvent themselves in order to survive, the past takes on a different role in each city. In Jerome, visitors seem content to "kill a day" against the backdrop of the historic town. In Bisbee, time seems stuck in the 1970s, the focus having shifted from the mining to the "hippies" who are considered to have resuscitated the town from near-extinction. Tombstone seem to inspire devotion, rooted in the influence of the 1993 film titled after the town. By memorializing portions of their past, these three towns have carved out new lives for themselves in the twenty-first century. As visitors are informed by the narrative of the "Old West," as shaped by the Western movie and television genre, they in turn impact how the towns present themselves in order to attract tourists. In all these sites, the past is present and like a kaleidoscope, continually recreated into new formations. While the designation of Jerome, Bisbee and Tombstone as "ghost towns" is disputed by individuals in each site, these stories of visitors and residents reveal the intricate ways in which these towns have acquired new life.
ContributorsLemme, Nicole Lee (Author) / de la Garza, Amira (Thesis director) / Paulesc, Marie Louise (Committee member) / Department of English (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Hugh Downs School of Human Communication (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
You Are Here is a mixed-media installation, featuring the thesis work of BFA: Intermedia senior, Carissa Kalia Heinrichs. The installation consists of a hanging fabric structure, in which gallery visitors may interact with by both circumambulating and entering the form, walking alongside ever transforming horizons. The exhibition addresses the re-contextualization of "here", challenging its containment, and inviting viewers to study diverse definitions of home encompassed in a single shared space. The exhibition will encompass the conceptual and technical growth fostered by the artist's academic career at both the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, as well as the Barrett Honors College at Arizona State University.
ContributorsHeinrichs, Carissa Kalia (Author) / Ellsworth, Angela (Thesis director) / Gutierrez, Rogelio (Committee member) / Danh, Binh (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Art (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
How Was I to Know You Wouldn't Let Me Forget? is a art installation created by Christine Adams showcasing printmaking media, including lithography and etching. This installation was based on Adams' childhood bedroom and featured small bedroom shrines, a common motif throughout girlhood. The portraits of the people in the show are all individuals who Adams met between the ages of 13 and 21 and who have left her life, commenting on whether or not someone can ever really leave you.
ContributorsAdams, Christine Ruth (Author) / Gutierrez, Rogelio (Thesis director) / Hood, Mary (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Art (Contributor)
Created2014-05