Massey Documents by Type

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    A story in the telling. . . : an exegesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree, a Masters in Fine Arts, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2018) Cook, Damon
    This exegesis contains a laying out of the ground that is our contemporary moment of environmental and social crisis,. This includes the approaches and attitudes that have brought that crisis into being. These are approaches and attitudes that seek to control and master the world. The ‘body’— that is, our own bodies and the body of that world— is where this drama is seen to play out. Art and contemplative practices are understood as offering counter modes to control and exploitation. These counter modes of practice and understanding are examined and critiqued. An attempt is made to perform this problem by offering points of clarity and orientation, while, at the same time avoiding too much clarity and control. Which is to say that this exegesis is also a literary text, in part and whole. Finally, in keeping with this performance of clarity and control, and possible counter modes, the concluding section —‘Where to Next’— offers two suggestive, rather than explicitly directive ways forward.
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    [r{e]volving} apparatus : the [r]evolution of a bodily, technological, spatio-temporal practice : an exegesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Fine Arts at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2018) Lewis, Joshua
    This text is one of many apparatuses, produced whilst in motion of turning - a particularly acute turn of which has reconfigured my performance and writing practice indefinitely. The performing apparatus, in ever [r]evolving configuration, forms the foundation for a selection of personal artistic works spanning live spatio-temporal performances, ‘live’ installations, and discursive experimentations. Within this, the presence of human and non-human bodies - in virtual, mechanical and fleshy form - activate, enact, comprise, and pass through these apparatuses. The evolution of three major works guide the research through several interpretations of Karen Barad’s theory of Agential Realism. Through these turns the practice of apparatus transforms from technical means, to the locus of performance, and finally to a means of performatively entangling with the world. The culmination of this thesis has encode in myself and my practice a commitment to [r]evolving or perpetual falling. This momentum signals towards a future practice which is resistant to certainty or definitive conclusion, seeking ground only momentarily before continuing to [r]evolve.
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    The Southern Cross cable : a tour : art, the internet and national identity in Aotearoa-New Zealand : an exegesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Fine Arts, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2018) Holloway-Smith, Bronwyn
    This exegesis is the written analytical component of a studio-based Doctor of Philosophy that, as a whole, investigates the influence of international hegemony and power structures on popular notions of Aotearoa-New Zealand’s national identity. Selected histories and locations of New Zealand’s primary international internet connection, the Southern Cross Cable, have been taken and applied within a body of conceptually driven artworks that function as an effective metonymic vehicle to reveal unseen processes, conveyed over a specific infrastructural system, that are influential upon New Zealand’s national identity. The creative works in this thesis comprise the suite of artworks The Southern Cross Cable: A Tour, a multi-platform art project comprising two moving image works, a sculptural work, a published tour guide and its associated web-based work. These sit alongside, and in response to, a historic mid-twentieth century New Zealand mural: Te Ika-a-Maui [sic] by the artist E. Mervyn Taylor. Together, these works encourage public awareness of the jurisdictional limits of the internet, and illustrate ways in which an individual member of the public can respond to the supposedly ‘intangible’ internet in a physical manner. By strategically subverting popular nationalist symbolism, the works raise questions about the relevance of nationalism in an era of expanding globalisation and suggest the internet is increasingly becoming a tool of digital colonialism. By distributing this knowledge in the public sphere, this study challenges and tests the assumption—often asserted and implied by those who control this infrastructure and obscure it from public awareness—that public knowledge is a threat to the cable. Instead, viewers are encouraged to explore what individual agency they do, or do not, have as New Zealand citizens in shaping this dominant influence on contemporary New Zealand culture.
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    Running-room in the mangle of practice : contemporary art in the thick of things : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2011) Shepherd, Richard; Shepherd, Richard
    This document and the exhibited artwork it accompanies aims to perform a positive aesthetic of exile that enacts the dislocating and shattering strategies of spatial, temporal and imagistic montage but also attempts to open a caesura in today’s relentless flow of images and thickening temporality. It joins with particular currents in engaged contemporary art to re-imagine what documentary form might be as an act of revelation not reduction. I have advocated in word and deed a structure of desire that is promiscuous without being possessive and accounts for a mode of subjectivity that temporally emerges from its material conditions in the thick of things. The corpus of experimental work has traversed a wide range of media and intentions but always with these issues in mind. I have produced small, tentative gestures in the city and ambitious proposals for affective maps in a mixed-media installation. I have gathered together an ambitious chorus of voices from across disciplines to share in common in a dialectical movement of resistance and accommodation that seeks to expand the realms of conceptual and corporeal possibility.