Browsing by Author "Barlow, Tim"

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    Caring deception : community art in the suburbs of Aotearoa (New Zealand) : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Fine Arts at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2016) Barlow, Tim
    In Aotearoa (New Zealand), community art practice has a disadvantaged status and a poorly documented national history. This thesis reinvigorates the theory and practice of community art and cultural democracy using adaptable and context-specific analyses of the ways that aesthetics and ethics can usefully co-exist in practices of social change. The community art projects in this thesis were based in four suburbs lying on the economic and spatial fringes of Aotearoa. Over 4 years, I generated a comparative and iterative methodology challenging major binaries of the field, including: ameliorative vs. disruptive; coloniser vs. colonised; instrumental vs. instrumentalised; and long term vs. short term. This thesis asserts that these binaries create a series of impasses that drive the practice towards two new artistic categories, which I define as caring deception and the facade. All the projects I undertook were situated in contested space, where artists working with communities overlapped with local and national governments aiming for CBD and suburban re-vitalisation, creative city style initiatives, community development, grassroots creative projects, and curated public-art festivals. I worked within and around these structures, by practicing a methodology of caring deception. I applied a selection of artistic terms of engagement to vernacular structures such as public fountains, festival marquees, popup venues and community centres to negotiate deceit, resentment and care in the making of the art work. This thesis asserts that the methodology of caring deception creates a social ethics in action that can become embodied in the form of the art work.
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    Mobile labour beyond the film-set : an exegesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters in Fine Arts at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2011) Barlow, Tim; Barlow, Tim
    This exegesis follows a trajectory that starts with Jonathan Beller’s observation that the contemporary spectator now ‘labours in the image’. Essentially, Beller suggests that vision and perception of the screen image is the fundamental value-productive labour for the modern spectator. The central argument of this exegesis is to refute Beller’s concept of the ‘looking as labour’. I suggest that sensual, corporeal and phenomenological perception, as embodied in a range of labour practices surrounding the physical film-set, has the potential to offer slippages and ruptures in the homogenising cinematic mode of production of the ‘screen image’. This is developed through analysis of how my own, and some other artists’ practices explore unexpected areas: marginalised and forgotten histories, new narratives, material realities and imaginings. Therefore the narratives that unfold in the exegesis range across film extras’ personal stories, reports of communities’ interactions with filmsets, artists’ re-creation of classic film-sets, archival research and my own industrial film production experience and exploration of abandoned sets. Starting with the ‘looking as labour’, the exegesis moves to a consideration of ‘labour in the film-set’ to a concept of ‘mobile labour beyond the film-set’ . Notions discussed include forms of the underground, film noirs, the world fair, crazy house and film-set ruin. Through discussion of my own work and that of other artists and theorists, this exegesis illustrates the ways in which the cross-fertilisation of these concepts can lead to far more variegated, and dynamic, uses of ‘labour’ than Beller suggests. Artist’s brought into the discussion include Peter Brosnan, Krassimir Terziev, Sean Lynch, Goshka Macuga, Abbas Kiarostami and Pierre Huyghé, while critics and theorists mentioned include Susan Stewart, Michel de Certeau, Vivian Sobchack, Martin Heidegger, Paul Virilio, David Pike and Henri Lefebvré.