Surface tension: permeability, the body, and installation

Surface Tension – Permeability, the Body, and Installation, is comprised of a multimedia installation and an accompanying minor thesis. The concurrent points of departure for both are the body and the medium of installation itself, exploring their sympathies with the lens of permeability. The installation presents sculptures and video montage works that make use of medical, religious, and pathological renderings of the body, drawing attention to its varied portrayal as reliant on parallel visual technologies. The navigable and immersive nature of installation is used to suggest a reading of the body as permeable, constructed, and fluid. In the document, these portrayals are discussed via an arthistorical case-study approach, each suggested as varying depictions of bodily permeability. In particular, the Cartesian body as the product of Judeo-Christian morality, the Descartes mind-body split, Enlightenment secularization, and Western medical representation that renders the body as a discrete organism ending at the skin is tracked. The project attempts to unsettle this paradigm by focusing on the dialectic of porosity, which aims to situate the body in dialogue with systems beyond itself via consumption, excretion, and infection. The second aspect of the research is an extrapolation of this porous dialectic to modes of representation and their consequent ways of seeing. The Cartesian bodily paradigm is suggested as parallel to the rise of ocularcentrism. Whilst acknowledging the strengths of various mediums, attention is called to the capacity of static, 2D media to emphasize ocularcentric disembodiment. In contrast, installation is explored as a medium that demonstrates a porous capacity via the viewer's occupation of an immersive environment designed to activate multiple senses, thus aligning message and medium.

Grantor

Michaelis School of Fine Art

Year dc:date.issued

2023

Author dc:creator

• Ducray, Luke

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Alexander, Jane
• Campbell, Kurt

• fine art

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/37942

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/37942