The practical part of the project includes the creation and presentation of original creative work, consisting of three exercises spanning painting, creative writing and graphics. The practical part of the project consists of original creative work drawn from three practice agencies across the creative spheres of painting, creative writing and graphics.
INTRODUCTION
Background
The initial work on each project has inspired me to take each project in new directions during my creative PhD project. Both the analytical and practical parts of the broader project engage with the connections and differences between creative projects.
Practice as Research
As Carter points out, the experience of creation and the dialogic nature of such practice are not necessarily overtly or even usually visible in the artifact (painting or novel) itself. Through my creative practices of painting, printmaking and writing, through making, I examine during this doctoral study both the process of creation and the reasons for my engagement in these practical forms.
Research Objectives – My Key Questions
I reflect on the relationship of the novella to the illustrative works that arise from it. I also consider how the processes and images in each of the three works are informed by or inflected in the theoretical imperative that underpins the works.
Research Objectives – Broader Issues under Consideration
I think about whether the artist's views on 'making' are reflected in the work in any way. I ask how these views support or counter my own views on the potential (actual or realized) of narrative in the arena of contemporary art.
Theoretical Framework
The cathartic function and the 'call to' or motive for writing (and other creative acts) constitute a central question in my work, and therefore ideas proposed by Cixous about the relationship between writing and death and catharsis are of particular interest to me. The application of this concept (and the accompanying notion of heteroglossia) to my research is discussed in more detail in the methods section of this introduction.
Methodology
The performative aspect of the work is about the feeling or experience of the process. It is a consideration of the in situ thinking and the physical experience of the practitioner in the moment of creation.
Literature Review
In my thesis, I rely on Smith's reading of Bauman, as it provides support for my thinking about the role of the intellectual and the artist in the context of postmodernity. Both Robeson and Caruth present the definitions of psychological trauma that I refer to in my dissertation, specifically in relation to the Indian Yellow Project.
Structure of the Thesis
Chapter five includes an examination of the Wish List project in which I reflect on the origins and transformation of the project. I also reflect on the relationship of project to narrative, referring to some ideas on community and narrative from Hannah Arendt.
Summary
CHAPTER ONE
Introduction
In the second part of this chapter I reflect on thinking about postmodernity, meaninglessness and meaning. In the third part I consider these ideas about postmodernity, postmodern space and meaning in the light of my creative practice and experience.
Modernity, Modernism, Postmodernity and Postmodernism
Given this, it is no surprise that in the postmodern environment people flee the "desert of the real" and the "ecstasies of hyper-reality" (Baudrillard in Bertens 2002:53) and the new realm of computer, media and technological experience. He presents a vision of the present in which art has penetrated all spheres of existence.
Reflections on Postmodernity, Meaningfulness and Meaninglessness
My practice serves as an effort to simultaneously engage with and, as I will show, question and challenge these concepts of the present age. While it is not the responsibility of intellectuals and educators to adopt or direct the moral choices of others, it is their responsibility (and imperative) to “provide interpretations and interpretations of the world that relate to experience, needs, and desires. of his audience” (21).
Ideas on Postmodernity and Meaningfulness in Relation to my Creative Practice
It was with consideration of the four key ideas, summarized above, that many of the works in the Office Politics series were created. In the painting, a large malnourished, Boxer-type dog (matched with a corporate blue-black collar) stares incomprehension at the object placed before him. Thus, while speaking with inertia, they testify simultaneously to the power of the creative act, and to presence in the face of disruption.
Chapter Conclusion
CHAPTER TWO
Narrative and the Mobility of Language
Beginnings – Some Thoughts on Narrative
I pose questions about, and reflections on, what the text entails in the context of the Indian Yellow Project: what is the text. Is the text the same in the novella (writing) and in the images that come from it. However often it has been repeated, this is a key feature of the recent change in narratology: a massive expansion in the narratological assignment, in the scope of objects for narratological analysis (1).
Mobility of Language – Multivocality, Mutability and Ambivalence
- Multivocality
- Mutability
Poststructuralism, on the other hand, posits an ambiguity of signs and the active role of the reader in the construction of meaning. These are conventional and friendly in the largely warm and nurturing responses of the grandmother who. It appears on the cover and is the main image in the first chapter of the novella.
Chapter Conclusion
CHAPTER THREE
Correspondence: Imagery and Loss in Multiple Registers
- Character
- Location/Point of View
- Labour
- Layering: Presence, Absence
- Chapter Conclusion
The idea of work – of work – in writing, in printing, and in building the book is a significant idea. The same shoes, printed in the same red, are on the last page of the first chapter of the novella (Plate 10). References to memory and the passage of time occur in the flow and fading of ink.
CHAPTER FOUR
Writing: Conceptions, Preconceptions and Catharsis
- Conceptions and Preconceptions Regarding my Experience of Writing
- Trauma, Catharsis and Writing
- The Spur to Writing/Making
- Examining Repair
- Chapter Conclusion
However, I also see that the ambivalence in the story (which existed in the story before my awareness of post-structural thinking) can speak to this as well. My experience highlights the idea of the healing function of writing, but only up to a point. In our dialogues, Mitchell and I came to the idea that the profound loss of the triplets was an essential part of my life's journey that contributed to my thinking and my worldview.
CHAPTER FIVE
Making, Community and the Wish List Project
Origins
On the next page is a view of 12 of the 18 small works in the series, as shown at ArtSPACE Durban in 2009. In each of the Smaller Wish List series, the circular window through which the images are viewed is surrounded by a decorative painting frame. The paintings from the Bigger Wish List series are hung next to the smaller series in the gallery space.
Development
Connections: Teaching and Making Practice
- Participants
- Transformation from Single Author to Multiple Creators
Shan Jacobs, art teacher at Epworth Girls' School, felt that her 2016 Matric class group would be suitable participants in the project. In the slide presentation and following group discussions, I emphasized that the similar format, decorative environments, and common media would bring coherence to the project. The class's participation in the Wish List Project will strengthen these aspects of the curriculum.
Transformation: Making and Unpredictability
Visual literacy and interpretation of metaphors are of course aspects of the existing school curriculum. Each of the surrounds creators, it was decided, would design a unique 'exterior' for three or four of the circular inserts. Including the contribution of the cutters, we felt, was appropriate in relation to the collaborative nature of the work and the idea of community participation driving the project.
Interconnectivity, Community and Narrative
- Interconnectivity
- Community and Narrative
The generative nature of the Wish List project is something that appeals to me a lot. The image of the sailing ship, in the print depicted on the next page, may remind a viewer of adventure or freedom (the vastness of sailing) or refer to the ability to harness and utilize the resources (in this case the wind). In this chapter I have centered my investigation on the origin and development of the Wish List Project.
CHAPTER SIX
Connections, Departures and Conclusions
Connections and Territory
- Overview of the Doctoral Project
- The Project’s Original Practical and Intellectual Contribution
Metaphor and storytelling play an important role in each of the projects, and I consider their use as mechanisms for dialogue. I believe my thesis, and the related creative work analyzed in it, makes a unique contribution to the academy precisely because of the extensive, multi-disciplinary nature of my research enterprise which, as mentioned, spans disciplines in the visual arts. printing and painting) and creative writing. My turn to writing has opened up new approaches and possibilities for the aspects of the projects I previously struggled with.
Future Possibilities: Departures Again
In my experience, there is a perception that artists in South Africa either see themselves as followers or imitators of trends in Europe and the West, or consider themselves to be on a completely different terrain to those in the West. It seems ironic, but my experiences working with younger artists (such as the Wish List Project) have convinced me that my future teaching life lies outside of academia and working with younger artists in schools and the local community. . Fourth, while there is a nice solitude and satisfaction in producing work entirely by myself, I've always enjoyed the collaborative practice of the graphic artists who are part of the Wish List project, and projects like this that come out of collaborative efforts seem more in line with my feeling. , that creating art should contribute more to the community than works created solely by myself.
Conclusions: Making and Writing – An Expanded Terrain
In particular, my commitment to writing the thesis has brought home to me emphatically that my creative art practice is deeply rooted in the world as I experience it, and that I have a. My creative practice is linked to the mundane (public, ordinary, hegemonic world of work) and to inelegant and frustrating, pervasive struggles for power and meaning experienced in the world of work, where there is nothing exalted or romantic. I have come to discover through the course of this undertaking that my practice is in the world and of it, not separate from it.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Primary Resources
Relevant Unpublished Research
Relevant Published Research
Art and trauma in Africa; Representations of reconciliation in music, visual arts, literature and film. In The Aspern Papers, Louisa Pallant, The Modern Warning (2 volumes) London & New York: Macmillan & Co. Report on the Ministerial Committee for the Review of Student Housing at South African Universities.
