Date of Award

Spring 5-1-2014

Author's School

Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

Author's Department/Program

Art (Photography)

Degree Name

Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA)

Abstract

My thesis work presents a meditation on what it means to be contemporary. There are many ideas that prefigure this work but are not included in this written investigation.These notions come from Nietzsche’s Untimely Meditations and Walter Benjamin’s Illuminations. In these texts, the authors state that the contemporary is the one who turns her or his back from her or his time and looks at the past. For my purposes, to be contemporary, one has to revolutionize the notion of histories in order to make past materials relevant. Therefore, my videos and photographic works do not invite the viewer into an activity of time travel but into a gaze of looking forward by making histories of the oppressed tangible in a radical form. In this thesis, I have combined Michael Fried’s notion of present with different theories of historicity. Among the theories of historicity are Jean François Lyotard, Edmund Husserl, and Giorgio Agamben.

Language

English (en)

Advisor/Committee Chair

Lisa Bulawsky

Advisor/Committee Chair's Department

Capstone

Second Advisor

Heather Bennett

Second Advisor's Department

Photography

Third Advisor

Monika Weiss

Third Advisor's Department

Time Based Media

Fourth Advisor

Gina Grafos

Fourth Advisor's Department

Photography

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