Pragmatics of attachment and detachment: medium (un)specificity as material agency in contemporary art
type: CreativeWork
description: This research arises out of my situated experience and the subsequent indeterminate positioning of my practice in-between the traditional disciplinary fields of textiles and fine art. Through a body of studio enquiry and accompanying theoretical and reflective commentary, the research questions whether a practice and knowledge base that is historically grounded in the interrogation of medium specific conventions can continue to be viable within a post medium/ postmodern contemporary art context. Implicit within this are two further considerations concerning the relationship between aesthetic and extra-aesthetic contexts and the tensions between subjective and material agency that arise in negotiating these positions. Through a sculptural and installational practice I propose a constellatory opening up of textile in conjunction with other materials, in terms of material agency and ‘productive indeterminacy’, where boundaries become blurred, meaning is unable to settle and fundamental categorical divisions between subject and object are destabilised. The processual inter-relational model of ‘attachment/detachment’ is offered as a conceptual framework and overarching practice methodology that maintains these productive tensions and opens up a complexity through which the medium specific can be mapped in a fluid and fragmentary way. Three interdisciplinary concepts; ‘camouflage’ (Neal Leach/architecture), mimetic comportment (Theodor Adorno/philosophy) and ‘complicity’ (Johanna Drucker/contemporary art) provide theoretical models which allow for assimilation and differentiation and embodied adaptive behaviour. Drawing particular reference from Adorno’s notion of mimetic comportment, the research involves a mode of behaviour that actively opens up to alterity and returns authority to the indeterminacy of the aesthetic encounter in a way that overturns the centrality of the subject. This is manifest through a range of practice strategies - ‘thingness’, ‘staging’ and the c…
abstract: This research arises out of my situated experience and the subsequent indeterminate positioning of my practice in-between the traditional disciplinary fields of textiles and fine art. Through a body of studio enquiry and accompanying theoretical and reflective commentary, the research questions whether a practice and knowledge base that is historically grounded in the interrogation of medium specific conventions can continue to be viable within a post medium/ postmodern contemporary art context. Implicit within this are two further considerations concerning the relationship between aesthetic and extra-aesthetic contexts and the tensions between subjective and material agency that arise in negotiating these positions. Through a sculptural and installational practice I propose a constellatory opening up of textile in conjunction with other materials, in terms of material agency and ‘productive indeterminacy’, where boundaries become blurred, meaning is unable to settle and fundamental categorical divisions between subject and object are destabilised. The processual inter-relational model of ‘attachment/detachment’ is offered as a conceptual framework and overarching practice methodology that maintains these productive tensions and opens up a complexity through which the medium specific can be mapped in a fluid and fragmentary way. Three interdisciplinary concepts; ‘camouflage’ (Neal Leach/architecture), mimetic comportment (Theodor Adorno/philosophy) and ‘complicity’ (Johanna Drucker/contemporary art) provide theoretical models which allow for assimilation and differentiation and embodied adaptive behaviour. Drawing particular reference from Adorno’s notion of mimetic comportment, the research involves a mode of behaviour that actively opens up to alterity and returns authority to the indeterminacy of the aesthetic encounter in a way that overturns the centrality of the subject. This is manifest through a range of practice strategies - ‘thingness’, ‘staging’ and the c…
author: Bristow, Maxine
language: en
keywords: History of Art, Sculpture
identifier: Bristow, Maxine <https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/view/creators/Bristow=3AMaxine=3A=3A.html> (2016) Pragmatics of attachment and detachment: medium (un)specificity as material agency in contemporary art. PhD thesis, Norwich University of the Arts.
date published: 2016-03
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:00:39Z
provider: University of the Arts London
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of the Arts London