This thesis reveals a reflection on trauma in a personal photographic project and focuses on the relationship between photography and memory, and photography and trauma. It aims to answer the...Show moreThis thesis reveals a reflection on trauma in a personal photographic project and focuses on the relationship between photography and memory, and photography and trauma. It aims to answer the question how a visual project created in the format of a reconstructed family photo album can provide insights into issues addressed in theoretical debates on those relationships.Show less
This research explores the conflict that emerges when applying registration practices into performance art. As the ephemerality of performance art is perceived as essential for this art genre,...Show moreThis research explores the conflict that emerges when applying registration practices into performance art. As the ephemerality of performance art is perceived as essential for this art genre, professionals (and sometimes artists) are not always in favor of its total disappearance. Documentation processes have the purpose of partially archiving the memory of these artworks, however, the forms of producing this type of information are not standardized because of the various forms that this art manifestation can have. Some of the strategies museums have been applying were explored during this research to enable enquiring about their compatibility with the nature of performance art. While documentation processes preserve traces of performances’ poetic, the form of perceiving and collecting this artwork as manifestations should not be attached to temporality, but as concepts that can be reinterpreted and have several versions throughout time.Show less
The observation of evolutionary processes in cultural expression and art can be traced back to antiquity and has played an important role in historiography and the human sciences in general for...Show moreThe observation of evolutionary processes in cultural expression and art can be traced back to antiquity and has played an important role in historiography and the human sciences in general for centuries. However, over time the notion of directed cultural development towards a point of hypothetical perfection, as well as the corresponding belief in cultural developmental stages, came to be considered out-dated and suspect.The 20th-century abandonment of evolutionist art history is mainly due to the insight that one cannot establish what constitutes ‘improvement’ or ‘increasing complexity’ in the visual arts. Up until the Modern period a sense of directed progress was seen in the perceived improvement in mimetic quality of the artworks. The famous 20th-century art historian Ernst Gombrich in particular strongly believed in an ascending line towards ever-increasing realism. The present thesis concerns the uses of the metaphor of Darwinian evolution for the study of art history. How did evolutionism, before and after Darwin, develop in art historical writing? And how can a renewed analysis of the resemblances between biological evolution and art history resolve earlier problems with evolutionism and result in a reappraisal of the metaphor? The structure of the thesis is twofold. Firstly, we will look at the role of evolutionism in art history, both with respect to a pre-Darwinian, general sense of evolution and to a Darwinian, specifically biological sense. This historical overview will describe the general tendency to read art history as a process of gradual development towards ‘improvement’ and the role biological evolution has played in this perspective. Secondly, this thesis proposes a new role for the metaphor of biological evolution within the field of art history.Show less
This thesis investigates through terminological and historical research violence metaphors used in photography language, such as 'the camera as the gun' and 'the photographer as the hunter.'
The topic of this thesis is Richard Mosse’s colour infrared photography. He documents the ongoing conflict in the DR Congo, but in a way that confuses the spectator: his pictures are beautiful and...Show moreThe topic of this thesis is Richard Mosse’s colour infrared photography. He documents the ongoing conflict in the DR Congo, but in a way that confuses the spectator: his pictures are beautiful and pink. The main question is what the images in the projects Infra and The Enclave can address and what they can mean, and in more concrete terms how they relate to notions of truth and reality as used in photography at large and documentary, journalistic and art photography in specific, and what role the infrared film emulsion has in this relation. The first chapter explains that Mosse’s images turn pink because of using colour infrared, a film once designed for the US Air Forces to make the invisible enemy visible. Mosse uses it as a metaphor for making the invisible visible; the conflict in Congo is neglected, hard to grasp and invisible. Colour infrared also has a history of anti-military sentiments, because it was later appropriated by hippie musicians for album artwork. Mosse counters the seriousness and literalness of regular journalistic and documentary photography by using cross processed infrared film, which connotes kitsch and experiment. Mosse’s photography is a turn away from photojournalism as decisive moment and a dissociation from superficial videojournalism, technically by returning to an analogue, slow medium and conceptually by focusing on the aftermath rather than the event. The second chapter shows how Mosse’s images relate to the realism and truth claims of documentary and journalism, on the basis of indexicality and iconicity. Mosse counters the conventions of realism and supposed indexicality by taking the documentary subject out of its context of ‘truth’, both literally by taking it from the press into the museum, and figuratively by employing a totally different, and overt style. His open, ambiguous images are overtly staged, larded with a seemingly constructed beautiful pinkness, and show a distanced, still world, with neutral looking, hard to typify subjects. Mosse forwards how subtly deceitful the ‘truth claim’ of photography is, and contrasts it by openly showing beautiful pink lies. No image, whether indexical and seemingly objective or not, cannot convey anything ‘truthful’ about the abstract nature of war and the complexity of human experience. He draws attention to the iconic elements openly, which may render his images more ‘truthful’. The pinkness of the photos looks iconic, but is inherently indexical. It appears that it is hard to define ‘truth’ on the basis of indexicality, because it is apparently hard to make a clear distinction between indexical and iconic elements. Chapter 3 discusses truth from a meta-perspective. As an answer to the crisis of representation in war photography Mosse opts for more conceptual modes of representation. He deconstructs the possibility to objectively and immediately represent reality by drawing attention to the constructedness of the photographic surface: he makes us aware of the fallacy of photographic representation. The ambiguous and indeterminate meaning of the photographs leaves room for the viewer’s imagination and complicates the possibility to understand. This way, he does justice to the idea of truth, while actually deconstructing it. Mosse’s images carry a risk of losing touch with reality. Their deconstruction and estrangement may destroy any link to the real world ‘out there’ in Congo. The reversal between surface and horrible subject may be amplified by the extreme beauty of the surface, but it may also cause the viewer trouble to see or imagine past it. The viewer’s sense of surprise and puzzledness when seeing Infra and The Enclave derives exactly from the function of a photograph as an ‘image of reality’. Mosse’s images amaze because they give such a new, beautiful, different image of war.Show less
Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
closed access
This thesis examines what insights the photography series Blue Sky Days (2012-) by Tomas Van Houtryve provides into concepts as vision, subjectivity and representation, which means that the series...Show moreThis thesis examines what insights the photography series Blue Sky Days (2012-) by Tomas Van Houtryve provides into concepts as vision, subjectivity and representation, which means that the series functions as a case study, a common thread. The drone as imaging technology challenges the traditional relation between image and vision. The remarkable visuality of the series, the vertical perspective, distorts our sense of spatial and temporal orientation. It differs from the visuality that long dominated our vision, the paradigm of the linear perspective. I argue that drone vision is a collaborative vision by a human-drone assemblage that should be understood as an embodied vision. Blue Sky Days problematizes the effect of the vertical perspective and the necropolitical logic to which it invites. In contemporary warfare, the digital drone image is no longer treated as a passive representation, but as an active entity, being part of a process. Blue Sky Days as a series of static photographic images emphasizes ambiguity and undecidibility, which contrasts the visuality of certainty employed by synthetic vision systems. Van Houtryve uses a strategy of anthropomorphism, a strategy that raises awareness for the fact that agency is distributed by human and nonhuman forces. His series humanizes the other, encourages empathy for the people living under the drone, which contrast the current of anthropophobia in synthetic imagery. In the last chapter, I discuss the series in relation to the debates around representation that troubled documentary photography, war photojournalism and art. Now hypermediacy and immediacy seem both a strategy by the military to create a civic weaponized eye, Van Houtryve’s drone photography is an interesting alternative gesture by emphasizing the process of remediation.Show less
Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
closed access
This thesis investigates the art movement Arte Povera through the lens of the Grotesque as an approach to openness. The Arte Povera movement is scrutinized first by a close-reading of the texts and...Show moreThis thesis investigates the art movement Arte Povera through the lens of the Grotesque as an approach to openness. The Arte Povera movement is scrutinized first by a close-reading of the texts and exhibitions by art critic and founding father of the movement Germano Celant, after which the thesis turns to the Grotesque as analytical tool to understand Arte Povera’s inherent contradictions as a form of social anarchy. The Grotesque is proposed as a way to openness, a notion taken from Umberto Eco’s study Opera Aperta. As such, this thesis presents new readings of Arte Povera; of the artworks and actions as well as the critical and curatorial endeavors of Celant that have informed these.Show less
Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
open access
At the beginning of the early twentieth century, various photographic societies were established such as the Brotherhood of the Linked Ring in England and de Nederlandse Club voor FotoKunst in the...Show moreAt the beginning of the early twentieth century, various photographic societies were established such as the Brotherhood of the Linked Ring in England and de Nederlandse Club voor FotoKunst in the Netherlands, who profiled themselves as artists and promoted photography as a fine art. It is often argued that they solely produced images to evoke emotions or atmosphere, and that they exclusively looked back at painting styles to reach for the ultimate goal of including photography as a fine art. Moreover, the photographs are mainly described on the basis of art historical categories, techniques, or the biographies of the photographers. I argue that these perspectives neglect the crucial fact that the photographs are photographs, and that new perspectives are needed. Therefore, this research will take a more theoretical approach, by focussing on early Dutch photography from 1913-1927, the medium of photography, and the photo-theoretical concepts of light, straight and composed photography, and time. In this research, the focus will specifically be on two seemingly different photographs: a photograph which looks like a seventeenth-century genre painting by Richard Polak and a cameraless photogram by Henri Berssenbrugge. In this analysis, the attention will be aimed on the fact that these photographs are photographs, by moving to the heart of the medium, and eventually highlighting that within this core, the boundaries are blurred. By combining the earliest theories of photography, with more modern and contemporary arguments considering the medium, new perspectives on the two photographs will be provided, which gives revived attention to the neglected or forgotten early Dutch photography. By taking a different perspective, it is shown that the photographs are more than the reproduction of paintings, or more than just another painterly technique for creating figurative and abstract painting.Show less
This thesis focuses on vernacular photographs that have been altered by artists stitching various forms of embroidery directly into the photographic paper, creating an interplay of thread, paper,...Show moreThis thesis focuses on vernacular photographs that have been altered by artists stitching various forms of embroidery directly into the photographic paper, creating an interplay of thread, paper, and image. The combination of these opposing traits into a single work subverts the viewer’s assumptions about both mediums, and constitutes a specific spectator experience. I utilise theories from film, photography, painting, and digital media that deal with materiality and embodiment in order to examine what is at work in an embodied spectator experience with specific works from four artists using varied approaches. My hope is to provide insight into potential avenues and outcomes for embodiment with both these objects in particular and embroidered photographs more broadly.Show less
Begin jaren '90 ondergaat kunstenares ORLAN een serie platisch chirurgische operaties. Ze beschouwt haar lichaam als kunst en verwordt tot een kunstwerk zelf. In 'ORLAN - Het lichaam als kunstwerk'...Show moreBegin jaren '90 ondergaat kunstenares ORLAN een serie platisch chirurgische operaties. Ze beschouwt haar lichaam als kunst en verwordt tot een kunstwerk zelf. In 'ORLAN - Het lichaam als kunstwerk' wordt met name de zevende operatie onder het voetlicht gehouden. Op de vraag op welke wijze ORLAN de grens tussen kunst en maker herdefinieert wordt door middel van drie theoretische kaders van Arthur Danto, Peggy Zeglin Brand en Parveen Adams gezocht naar een antwoord. Hierin wordt ook het perspectief van de toeschouwer en de rol van de technologie besproken.Show less
Ever since the foundation of the online video platform YouTube in 2006 and the online social media platforms Facebook (2004) and Twitter (2006), the mass spreading of the animal rights...Show moreEver since the foundation of the online video platform YouTube in 2006 and the online social media platforms Facebook (2004) and Twitter (2006), the mass spreading of the animal rights organisations’ undercover footage over the Internet has caused a lot of controversy and has resulted in for example the dismissal of certain animal products by major companies under the pressure of the media. Evidently, these photographs and videos do affect people. This observation was the starting point of my research and lead me to the main research question: Which characteristics of the media photography and film are exploited in three approaches to footage shot in factory farms by undercover investigators of animal rights organisations?Show less
This thesis intends to follow Walker in her quest of opening up discussions toward a renegotiation of history; its pasts and presents; ambiguities and openendedness. The main question of this...Show moreThis thesis intends to follow Walker in her quest of opening up discussions toward a renegotiation of history; its pasts and presents; ambiguities and openendedness. The main question of this thesis is how Walker's book rendition of After the Deluge connects discussions on racial inequalities and the visualization of narratives with a reworking of the divide between the socio-cultural and natural realm through the use of 'muck'. One of the most important aspects of Walker’s work is an interrogation - through art - of the ways in which we tell and visualize our histories; stories which are entanglements of fact and fiction, of desire and shame. In After the Deluge specifically, this is combined with a renegotiation of how we look at the divide between the socio-cultural and the natural realm. In witnessing a disaster like Hurricane Katrina, it becomes apparent that there is no such divide. The messiness of life as both social, cultural and natural, is explored in Kara Walker’s work in ways that also rematerialize notions such as race, sexuality and history.Show less
The shy and mysterious YouTube-star Magibon provides unsettling perspectives on the social- and visual impact of reality television. Being subjected to the gaze of the unknown viewer, Magibon’s...Show moreThe shy and mysterious YouTube-star Magibon provides unsettling perspectives on the social- and visual impact of reality television. Being subjected to the gaze of the unknown viewer, Magibon’s case serves to investigate concepts of representation and consequently visual appropriation linked to the contemporary phenomena of online voyeurism.Show less
