PERFORMING A PRACTICE: NARRATIVE • TRANSLATION • LIVE INSTALLATION • URBAN INTERVENTION

Abstract

Abstract: This is a practice based PhD which follows several different lines of inquiry in order to pursue the ideas and territories which the practical works themselves lead to rather than imposing a question which the practical work had to speak to. The practical works ore as much a port of the submission as the text and each chapter includes a DVD with either the work, or if it was site specific, the documentation. The text never seeks to explain the work but to expand and contextualise it. Although each chapter of the document is specific to a particular inquiry - mistranslation through subtitling, representations of the self through performance, art in public space, and artist-run exhibition initiatives, there are also threads that run throughout. Questions of identity can be read into all the work whether it be in the costumed performance or through questions about the identity of on artist or on audience within particular systems of distribution and in education. Although some of the work has been shown in a traditional gallery setting there is a concern for alternative modalities for presenting art and much of the work is situational and responsive to opportunity. This PhD is really on examination of how an artist thinks through practice and in the end I hove sought to approach areas of interest and to open up questions without too much concern for finding closure in answers.