This study investigates why non-representational photographs are accepted as abstract art even though they remain tight to reality. By analysing this acceptance, this thesis also examines the...Show moreThis study investigates why non-representational photographs are accepted as abstract art even though they remain tight to reality. By analysing this acceptance, this thesis also examines the purpose of non-figurative photographs and asks why the genre has become more prevalent in our contemporary environment. The first part of this investigation analysed photography and abstraction conceptually. Neither term can be given an all-round ontological definition, as they are too diverse and change over time. In today’s surroundings, technological advances have great influence: photography has become an embedded tool that is over-used. The viewer is overwhelmed and needs to be motivated to engage with the work. In our Internet- driven, data-sharing environment, abstraction has also become part of everyday living. Therefore, abstract art as a model of reduction has lost its function. Today, abstract art is based on the paradigm of complexity. The second part of this thesis studies the work of photographers Wolfgang Tillmans, James Welling and Thomas Ruff. These artists show how non-figurative photographs can generate engagement from the audience. By offering unclear representations, the artists have underlined the inherently abstract nature of the medium. The result of my study suggests that contemporary abstract art is perceived from a new perspective. It is irrelevant to acknowledge abstraction and representation as paradoxical, as they have become the same. Ironically, photography thereby became an impeccable tool for producing abstract art. The results may never be fully disconnected from the world; nonetheless, the medium is located in an abstract position, which in our contemporary surroundings feels right at place.Show less
In the first part the base of my research will be the landscape and more specifically the nuclear radiated landscape as visualized in the artistic medium of film and video. The post human landscape...Show moreIn the first part the base of my research will be the landscape and more specifically the nuclear radiated landscape as visualized in the artistic medium of film and video. The post human landscape caused by nuclear radiation has alienated man from nature will be discussed by framing this landscape in the ecological rethinking of T.J Demos and Timothy Morton. Their focus is on the eco-critical debates by Felix Guattari, Bruno Latour and Michel Serres who started these debates in the 90s. I will content that these debates are able to contribute to a changing perspective, a better understanding of our relation with the Earth and the value of sustainability. Art is able to offer innovative ways to communicate important insights into human relationships with the radiated landscape. I will analyse the object-subject relationship between the observed landscape and the observer. How consciousness is attained by the construction and deconstruction of subjectivity in cultural practices that enables awareness and provokes action. In the first part I will analyse two critical art practices, realized by Diana Thater and the Otolith Group, that research the consequences of the radiated landscape of Chernobyl and Fukushima. As such, I will contend that the medium of film as used in the analysed artworks has the ability to construct and deconstruct subjectivity, overcoming the gap between object and subject, whilst creating consciousness and awareness that makes an appeal to activism. In the second part of this thesis, the artistic statement of my film installation will be expressed elucidating the decontaminating activities of the landscape in Fukushima three years after the nuclear disaster struck this area in Japan. As a visual artist I realized the film installation aware/哀れ consisting of a short experimental film with a composed soundscape that illustrates the subjective experience of the landscape and an interview film in which the relation of the Japanese cleaners with the contaminated landscape is expressed. The installation researches and questions the complex mutual engagement between the man-made landscape and a sustainable future. Next to the film installation two photographs are exhibited, cyanotypes portraying a landscape that is inflicted by the nuclear now. My theoretical research as described in the first part of this thesis is at the base of this installation. The film installation was shown in an exhibition in the Japan museum SieboldHuis in Leiden, The Netherlands from 10 till 22 February 2015 as part of this thesis.Show less
