Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
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This thesis analyzes the art performance The Modern Procession, organized by the Museum of Modern Art in collaboration with Belgium-Mexican artist Francis Alÿs (1959), and performed on June 23,...Show moreThis thesis analyzes the art performance The Modern Procession, organized by the Museum of Modern Art in collaboration with Belgium-Mexican artist Francis Alÿs (1959), and performed on June 23, 2002, in New York City. By using interdisciplinary literary research and comparative media research, this unique performance is first studied from an art performance perspective, with a focus on art performances held on the streets. Secondly the performance is placed in the context of definitions of religious processions, and in the third chapter, the Modern Procession is analyzed from an anthropological and social-geographical standpoint. This thorough analysis does not only reveal the many layers of the Modern Procession, but also what happens when art is taken out of the museum and presented in a new context. By presenting the collection of the MoMA on the streets of New York, the connection between collections and museums is made clear: it is namely art that forms the real heart of a museum, not the building where it is displayed.Show less
Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
open access
In the age of the Anthropocene, we are faced with unprecedented challenges; we have realized we are exploiting the Earth’s resources, society is becoming more complex, and urbanization is...Show moreIn the age of the Anthropocene, we are faced with unprecedented challenges; we have realized we are exploiting the Earth’s resources, society is becoming more complex, and urbanization is increasing at a rate never before witnessed. Understanding these challenges is loaded with uncertainty, both in defining the problems and how humanity should respond. One response is that of urban sustainability. Primarily addressed from the perspective of urban planning, urban sustainability focuses on infrastructural and technological solutions. This thesis posits that questions of sustainability in cities however cannot be disconnected from the cultural dimension. Using a comparative case study of two festivals – Burning Man and DGTL Amsterdam – the relationship between humans and their surroundings is explored. The analysis of the festivals focuses on the manifestation of ‘sustainability’ as a set of values through the artworks presented on the festival terrain and the framing of the festival experience. Political ecology theories are used as tools to explore the relationship between humans and their environment. Urban experimentation acts as a theoretical lens to understand the festival as a ‘microcosm’, a breeding ground for creativity and culture, and likening it to the city. The thesis presents a reading of urban festivals that outlines how culture can be introduced to urban sustainability research in response to questions to test political ecology in practice. In doing so, the thesis brings together the once disparate categories of human and nature.Show less
Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
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This thesis explores the exhibition-tryptic Crisis of History held at the gallery space Framer Framed in Amsterdam in 2014-2015. It investigates how its practices can be regarded as innovative in...Show moreThis thesis explores the exhibition-tryptic Crisis of History held at the gallery space Framer Framed in Amsterdam in 2014-2015. It investigates how its practices can be regarded as innovative in shaping discourses on contemporary art. The exhibition looks critically at how ‘non-Western’ art has been dealt with in exhibition practices as well as in academic discourses and aims to present alternative visions. I have used the notions minor curating by Cotter and histoire croisée by Werner and Zimmermann, as well as Keshmirshekan’s critical history of contemporary art of Iran to conceptualise the exhibition practices of Crisis of History’s curators Robert Kluijver and Elham Puriyamehr. I have particularly zoomed-in on part #3 of the triptych as the layering of perspectives is most clearly visible here. The exhibition practices include strategies of self-representation, intellectual artistic positioning and open-endedness due to the equal importance of exhibition display and public programming. The use of the artworks, the offering of multiple and layered voices deployed in the exhibition practice shows how the interaction between theory, curatorial visions and artistic imagining of alternative pasts and futures brings the field of contemporary art forward in articulating visions towards the development of an inclusive art history.Show less
Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
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This research looks at two parallel theoretical approaches. The first deals with contemporary exhibitions and the curatorial procedures that are introduced in the 1960s, while the other focuses...Show moreThis research looks at two parallel theoretical approaches. The first deals with contemporary exhibitions and the curatorial procedures that are introduced in the 1960s, while the other focuses more on Conceptual Art and its emergence during the same period. After 1960s, many artists introduced a more experimental and conceptual dimension in their work therefore, art started altering. More specifically, the integration of postwar sculpture into Conceptual Art and vice versa, brought about a transition in the curatorial procedures that were developed during the 1960s in the Netherlands and beyond. The main objective of this thesis is to examine the ways in which this progression occurred, by analyzing the innovative approach of Wim Beeren in the exhibition ‘Op Losse Schroeven’ and 40 years later Cherix’s prudent idea in the exhibition ‘In and Out of Amsterdam’. Through this critical investigation, an adequate and appropriate assessment of the emergent ‘new art’ is offered in combination with the alteration of art production. Through this research I intended to examine the roles of both international and Dutch artists along with international and Dutch galleries and museums, in the emergence of the abovementioned 'new art'.Show less
Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
open access
This thesis concerns the Afro-Brazilian cult of Candomblé, focusing on the work of Pierre Verger. The research presents Candomblé as a cultural-religious practice, which is the result of a cross...Show moreThis thesis concerns the Afro-Brazilian cult of Candomblé, focusing on the work of Pierre Verger. The research presents Candomblé as a cultural-religious practice, which is the result of a cross-cultural exchange, referring to the photography and discourse of Pierre Verger and other authors, such as Reginaldo Prandi, Roger Bastide and Babatunde Lawal. This work introduces Pierre Verger’s intimate relationship with Candomblé and the north-eastern Brazilian state of Bahia. The thesis reviews the history and constitution of Candomblé in the slave trade context of colonialism, its Yoruba roots, mythology, public ritual and initiation rite. Finally, the thesis attempts to frame Candomblé in an art historical perspective through the Yoruba metaphor of artistic creativity and the concept of orí.Show less
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