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PREFAB is a political modernist project whose threefold purpose, through development of a theory- in-praxis framework, is to counter the naïve assertions of the realist aesthetic (the dominance of which serves to reproduce capitalist common sense), as well as the conformism of the 'art for art's sake' avant-garde. In the third place, PREFAB wishes to repudiate the hagiographic emphasis of liberal art history & theory in the evaluation of the arts. Contrariwise, in the world of work, no less than in the academy and culture, women and men 'make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.' (Marx, 1968, p.96).1 On this model of structured agency, focusing on real social and economic determinants, PREFAB instead features an 'author as producer'2 frame of analysis, where the object of study is the materialised memories of the life and times, or lived experience (through the decades, circa 1930-95), of a working-class Edinburgh family. Namely my own. The intellectual formation of PREFAB's integrative synthesis of making and writing was informed, signally, by Marx's profound insight that social being determines thought, by Antonio Gramsci's counter-hegemonic inventory of traces - a knowing oneself as a product of the historical process to date3 - and by the dialectical distanciation techniques, or 'the separation of the elements',4 of Bertolt Brecht's anti-illusionist 'epic' theatre (and by affiliated political modernists in the interwar era and since). The project's primary sources also include the demythologising semiology of Roland Barthes, the cultural materialist5 formulations of Raymond Williams, Janet Wolff's Marxist sociology of art, Avery Gordon's exploration of the hauntological imagination, and Lukacs's critique of the ideological reproduction of the capitalist commodity-scape. Determined therefore (in paraphrase of Godard's slogan) not to make political art but to make art politically, (Godard : MacCabe, 1980, p.19)6 the PREFAB how-is-what case studies address the Scottish nativism grounded in invented traditions of neo-tartanry,7 the ideological distortions of the 'thing-world' of finance-capitalism, with especial interest in the fetish forms of reification8 evocative of the proletarian popular culture of my grandfather's prefab-worldview. Reproduced from indexical signs of post-war capitalist consumer culture, the PREFAB ready-mades accompanying the written thesis, comprise a family history of redux commodities, parodic fetishes of nation-state, and Marxist signage: a laboratory of didactic experiments in what may also be called critical realist method (in complex unity with critical realist theory) against the dominant conventions of bourgeois ways of seeing, knowing, and telling. References: 1 Marx, K., 'The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte', Karl Marx and Frederick Engels Selected Works in One Volume, Lawrence & Wishart, 1968, p. 96. 2 Benjamin, W., Understanding Brecht, Verso, 1998. 3 Gramsci, A., Selections from Prison Notebooks, Lawrence & Wishart, 1971, p. 324. 4 Willet, J., ed., Brecht on Theatre, Methuen, 1978, p.37. 5 Bottomore defines materialism as: '(a) a denial of the autonomy, and then of the primacy, of ideas in social life; (b) a methodological commitment to concrete historiographical research, as opposed to abstract philosophical reflection; (c) a conception of the centrality of human praxis in the production and reproduction of social life and, flowing from this, (d) a stress on the significance of labour, as involving the transformation of nature and the mediation of social relations, in human history' (Bottomore, 1985, p.324). 6 'The problem is not to make political films but to make films politically.' MacCabe, C., Godard: Images, Sounds, Politics, BFI/Macmillan, 1980, p.19. 7 By coincidence, a key date in the emergence of Scottish neo-Romanticism as embodied in the invented traditions of tartanry, is marked by the visit of George IV to Scotland in August 1822. Stage-managed by Sir Walter Scott, the visit included a military review in which the British monarch, keen to improve his popularity after a series of personal scandals, appeared on Portobello beach in philabeg, sporran, and elaborate Glengarry, to inspect 3000 volunteer cavalrymen and honour the Highland clans. It is estimated that 50,000 people turned out to watch the spectacle. The event is recorded in a painting by William Turner de Lond titled George IV, 1762 - 1830. Reigned as Regent 1811 - 1820, as King 1820 - 1830 (At a military review on Portobello Sands 23 August 1822) (1828). 8 In A Dictionary of Marxist Thought (1983) Bottomore defines reification as: 'The act (or result of the act) of transforming human properties, relations and actions into properties, relations and actions of man-produced things which have become independent (and which are imagined as originally independent) of man and govern his life. Also transformation of human beings into thing-like beings which do not behave in a human way but according to the laws of the thing-world. Reification is a 'special' case of ALIENATION, its most radical and widespread form characteristic of modern capitalist society' (Bottomore, 1983, p. 411).

Audience research has become a central focus in UK arts institutions' policy and practice in the last two decades, often carried out to fulfil a variety of different agendas. This study focuses on the relationship between audiences and arts institutions against the backdrop of both the 'participatory turn' and of an increasing process of neoliberalisation of culture. Using the Barbican Centre's foyers as the primary lens of analysis, the thesis investigates how certain discursive conceptions of audiences are constructed, challenged and re-assessed in the specific setting of a large urban multi-arts centre. Notions and practices of audience development, engagement and participation have been widely discussed in the field of arts management and cultural policy, drawing upon disciplinary areas such as arts marketing, audience and reception studies, theatre and performing arts studies, and museum studies. However, whilst the work in this area is voluminous, very little scholarly research has focused on the intersection of discursive, spatial and programmatic conceptions of audiences in institutional contexts. Particularly, limited attention has been given to foyers and public spaces, except for recent contributions on museum thresholds. Taking a whole-institution approach, the study does not look at audiences in the conventional mode - as bums on seats in an auditorium. Instead, by bringing the foyers to the fore, the originality of this thesis is to look at expanded modes of 'audiencing', rebalancing the exclusive auditorium model. Combining critical discourse analysis and institutional ethnography, the study discusses shifting conceptions of audiences and spaces in the context of the Barbican Centre. The fieldwork draws primarily on institutional documents and interviews with staff members across the organisation, from senior management to front-of-house - the Audience experience hosts. The key finding of this study is that social spaces and non-ticketed audiences are becoming central in institutional agendas, yet there are conflicting understandings of how to manage both. In particular, there are tensions between ideas of inclusivity and participatory processes, and maximising income for the sake of financial sustainability. The thesis draws conclusions on alternative methods in visitor and audience studies, discussing the changing nature of public spaces in arts institutions, the role of mediators - such as front-of-house staff - in audience research, and the rise of public programming.

This practice-based PhD situates itself within the current global environmental crisis, considering a reorientation to land from queer feminist and decolonial perspectives. The project evolves around a series of visions which took place in July 2015, at the River Wyre in Pendle, Lancashire, the location of the infamous 1612 witch-hunts. The visions, as a central theory of the thesis, are engaged through relational embodied practices and performances to explore a mode of animacy emanating with and from the nonhuman and human ancestors. The thesis addresses ways of including the nonhuman ancestors (specifically river, stone) within the political, moving through and beyond biosemiotics, materialist approaches and politics of recognition, re-orienting to land as pedagogy and the emergence of a grounded ethics. The project works with Elizabeth Povinelli's articulation of geontopower, to question how collaborative processes of human-nonhuman witnessing might produce an emergent ethics necessary in the context of late liberal, colonial-capitalism's production of racial, gender, environmental and epistemological violence. Central to this investigation is the role of voice and language and its entangled animacy with land and the nonhuman, explored through critical thinking around the visions, settler-colonial dynamics, and site-specific research. The figure of the stone-womxn, a collective of human-nonhuman existents experienced through the visions, calls for an immaterial and spiritual labour which prioritises the generative potential of dissolution rather than (re)-production, representation, accumulation or inevitability of bringing the immaterial into materiality. The first phase of practice (2015-2017) is punctuated by choreographic work for stage, one-on-one durational performance and site-specific performance. The second phase (2018-2019) emerges an ongoing collaborative practice with the river stones I term the unearthings, and a series of land ceremonies at the river during summer 2019 held under the project name Ceremony House.

Furtherfield is London's longest-running centre for art and technology. Its current mission is to disrupt and democratise art and tech through co-creation, in-depth exploration, open tools and free-thinking. Since 1996 Furtherfield has developed an international reputation for initiating experiments in artistic co-creation across digital networks. As a global hub that has grown up on the web, the time and energy of its team and participants have been focused on decentralised and distributed peer-to-peer practices, fostering new projects with artists, and seizing and challenging debates about the role of art and technology in society. Founded by Ruth Catlow and me, it is an international hub and community for artists, technologists, writers and cultural hackers. Furtherfield has two venues, the commons and the gallery, in the heart of London's 150-year-old, Finsbury Park. This research presents an autoethnographic study of Furtherfield's twenty-three-year history to date. The study focuses on the motives, strategies, and values of the Furtherfield community as expressed through its projects and debates which are often critical of UK art-market frameworks and belief systems. It examines the relationship between essential artistic practices and social, political, and cultural conditions associated with the emergence of planetary-scale network technologies. It presents and analyses the significant role played by artists in reshaping the narratives and uses of these technologies. Since its inception, Furtherfield has formed alliances with artists, technologists and activists, dedicating their lives to learning and updating their skills and practices, questioning the values, defaults, and structures of art-world systems that support and promote established norms in cultural production. This thesis draws on public documents, interviews, and private records for its autoethnographic research. In doing so, this thesis aims to present an objective analysis of the materials, while acknowledging the inevitable partiality of any study of community practice in the networked environment. Through an examination of people, platforms, places, campaigns, theoretical groundings, and public programmes this research traces key social themes of a dynamic organisation shaped by a plurality of voices from the margins and with the community at its heart.

Revising dominant stereotypes found in the feminisation of madness model, this thesis investigates the relationship between women, madness and spectacle in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century England. Taking a case study approach, it entangles visual, material, spatial and documentary methodologies to interrogate responses to and resonances of female madness between 1770 and 1833. The introduction sets out the methodological opportunities and challenges that a study of this nature faces, whilst the first chapter lays out the cultural, social and political backdrop of the project. Chapter two argues that the cultural power and profusion of Margaret Nicholson, the would-be assassin of King George III, was driven by her contravention of expectations surrounding gender, class and madness. Applying museological perspectives such as 'Freakery' to her spectacularisation, I argue that these subversions were managed through frameworks that perpetuated distance and containment. Chapter three analyses the spatial, material and emotional dynamics of the public asylum tour, positing that asylums navigated or commodified the pleasurable torment of spectatorial sympathy through the body of the incarcerated madwoman. Moving into the culturally loaded arena of the late eighteenth-century private madhouse, chapter four examines the lives of four confined women: Louisa, the 'Lady of the Haystack', Dorothea Fellowes, Euphemia Boswell and Mary Lamb. It identifies how slippage between cultural models and historical experience coloured responses towards and experiences of private female confinement. Connecting fashion, sensibility, emotions and mental illness, chapter five provides a reassessment of the sentimental love-mad trope. It situates the fictional character of 'Crazy Jane' within a wider narrative of material culture, presenting her as a far more complex cultural figure than previous scholarship has acknowledged. Together, these chapters demonstrate that both fictionalised and living mad women functioned as vehicles for evolving sexual, social and political anxieties, serving as potent prompts for a cocktail of paradoxical emotions. Offering a fresh reading of the feminisation of madness through the interrogation of various stereotypes, its tight focus on the blurring of art and life sets it apart from existing work in the field. The result is a more nuanced account of the ways that women and mental illness were represented, understood and culturally managed in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century England.

This thesis explores the environmental experiences of isolation and solitude in literary and visual representations of girlhood in the 1890s and the influence of both upon changing notions of childhood, family, and selfhood in the period. The fictional girl figures I propose demonstrate how the experiences of isolation (as either an imposed or chosen condition of retreat), and solitude (the resulting state of being alone), intrude upon childhood to manifest a radical new female experience within specific environmental contexts. I consider the places of the home, the rural world, and the urban cityscape as sites of performance, where the space of the environment produces prescriptive role-playing necessitated by an obligation to conform to societal and cultural expectation. Girlhood isolation within these sites, I argue, heightens perceptions, highlights conformities, and perpetuates a revaluation of personal needs and desires that results in self-determination and fulfilment. I contend in the thesis that particular fictional figures and narratives of isolated young girls emerge historically at precisely the time that understandings of fixed gendered places and performances are in a state of fluidity. In these circumstances such fictional girls acquire a liberating space in which to develop, and the agency with which to define themselves in contradistinction to their parents, their peers, and the expectations of late nineteenth-century society. Henry James, Sarah Grand, Stephen Crane, and the neglected British artist, Thomas Cooper Gotch, acutely observed such connections between girlhood and autonomous behaviours, and their creative responses to the emergence of what I read as a 'new childhood autonomy' are thus intrinsically linked to each other and with this defining period of change. The growth of child psychology as a specific branch of mental science and a newly-established academic discipline at the fin de siècle begins to explain the significance of the period's attempts to capture the 'voice' of the child, and the significance of such studies in articulating girlhood as an emancipatory force for radical change. The thesis also questions the connection between these fictional images and texts and the turn-of-the-century preoccupation with childhood development and experience expressed in a number of non-fiction works.

A cultural evaluation of the Isle of Wight has not been addressed in relation to mainland Britain. Strategically and economically significant, it was often disregarded; however, its unique situation offers a microcosm of social and cultural development, which so far appears to have received little attention. From an island subjected to the will of outsiders, to a cultivated venue, which attracted and fostered cultural tourism, the purpose of this regional study is to trace the evolution of this vulnerable part of England and identify influential factors, which contributed towards its cultural constructions. The hypothesis considers that the construction and consumption of the island was, throughout its history, driven by external forces. This theme is developed by relating cultural and social notions to island circumstances and identifying variables which contribute towards its unique situation. An interdisciplinary approach utilizes mainland Britain as a historical matrix to illustrate cultural development; emphasizing determining circumstances, geographic, social, economic and aesthetic, to establish how the island was used, abused and ignored. Research is island focussed, though with corresponding allusion to metropolitan influence and middle-class cultural aspirations, which contributed to the island becoming a popular tourist destination. By taking a broad historical overview it is apparent that due to location, the island was always an integral part of the British Isles, more significant than other outlying islands due to its relative proximity to the capital, the short distance to the mainland and its strategic importance both militarily and territorially. The progression of a connected narrative allows for an identification of features such as changing attitudes to the countryside and the sea which indicate an increasing consciousness, realized during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in cultural tourism, landscape art and relocation. This narrative structure is critical to establish the context for the primary focus of investigation, the period 1770- 1900 enabling an evaluation of the impact of visitors as consumers, landscape artists as interpreters, and the intertwining of these concepts to give an account of the evolution of cultural tourism on the Isle of Wight. This is central for an appreciation of the ideas, tastes, and affinities expressed aesthetically in prints and paintings, physically in mansions and marine villas and conceptually in cultural conventions such as the notions of travel. It is a significant area for research, since the dynamics of cultural forces are universally relevant for an appreciation of social, historical and economic influences in the cultural domain. On a local level the cultural constructions examined within this study are areas which can be appraised to determine and develop constructive tourism and respond to future cultural needs.

This thesis examines the way in which a specific kind of body-centred subversive arts and avant-garde movement developed in Taiwan from the 1980s to the mid-1990s, a period that spanned roughly five years before the lifting of martial law (1987) to five years after the Wild Lily Student Movement (1990). These two socio-political events formed a seminal backdrop for both avant-garde art and subversive arts practices. This was also the period that witnessed the institutionalisation of Taiwan's art world, the rise of 'Taiwan Consciousness' (Taiwan yishi), the Nativist Movement (bentuhua yungdong) and the emergence of a society moving towards neoliberal capitalism. In this period of transition, the subversive arts experienced complicated changes in terms of their objects and approaches, which shifted from explicit socio-political subjects to abstract institutions. Rather than undertaking a comprehensive historical investigation, what I present in this thesis is five interwoven narratives from the cultural and artistic landscape of this specific period. First, that of the Conceptual Performing Arts scene in the early 1980s, represented by the artists Chen Chieh-jen, Lee Ming-sheng, Hou Chun-ming and the River-Lo Concept Expression group. Second, that of the body politics-focused subversive arts practices derived from the Wild Lily Student Movement, as exemplified by the art group Taiwan Documenta, underground zines such as Toilet Paperand Da-bien News, and the left-wing cultural journal, Isle Margin. Third, the story of the engagement between fine art circles and underground scenes in the early 1990s, in particular the curator-orientated, environmental art-focused thematic exhibitions, as shown at the Taipei County Culture Centre and the revisions of the Taipei County Fine Arts Exhibition from 1993 to 1995. Fourth, the emergence of an 'underground noise scene' in the early 1990s, as represented by the noise bands LTK Commune and Z.S.L.O., and two editions of the Taipei Broken Life Festival. Fifth, an image narrative of roaming, drifting and floating presented in the works of Hou Chun-ming and Yao Jui-chung in the 1990s, which suggested a specific kind of frustrated and frustrating subject of rebellion that echoed the aesthetic gesture of the avant-garde and subversive arts at that time. By examining these five narratives and the way they were intertwined, this thesis argues that a specific kind of body-centred artistic practice shaped the overlapping history between the avant-garde and subversive arts in Taiwan from the 1980s to the mid-1990s.

This thesis investigates the origin and evolution of the paper peepshow in nineteenth-century England. It focuses on the second quarter of the nineteenth century, from 1825, when the first known English paper peepshow was published, to 1851, when the popularity of this medium started to dwindle. Challenging the existing scholarship that considers the paper peepshow either as a predecessor of children's pop-up books or an unimportant element in the teleology leading to the invention of the cinema, this thesis argues that the paper peepshow is a medium in its own right. As an optical toy, but also an example of print culture, it had connections with various media that were also part of the visual culture in England in this period. This rich intermedial relationship constitutes one of the major aspects of investigation both in the first chapter that traces the genealogy of the paper peepshow and in the subsequent case studies that focus on its representation of specific subject matters. Through discussing the depiction of a diverse range of topics, this thesis highlights that the origin of the paper peepshow was heavily influenced by other forms of nineteenth-century visual representation or entertainment. At the same time, in the course of the development of the paper peepshow, publishers also often designed their products in response to or even by refashioning other media, in order to keep their products popular on the competitive market. Another focus is the consumption of the paper peepshow. While the visual is an essential part of the experience of using this medium, other sensory elements, especially the touch, played a crucial role too. Through analysing these sensations in combination with different subject matters depicted in paper peepshows, this thesis investigates issues such as the embodied spectatorship, affordances, and the material and materiality of a medium.

Through art practice this Ph.D. investigates the idea of value in relation to the rural as an indicator of socially constructed paradigms, which informs and affects people's behaviour towards the land, natural resources, other species and other knowledges. The thesis claims that art, in its openness and plasticity, plays an important role in the creation of spaces where values can emerge, be contemplated and transformed, because it works in ways that exceeds conventional knowledges and multiplies the possibility of creating other values. These spaces for transformation are explored through the lenses of photography and video as well as more ephemeral interventions such as conversations, walks and shared farm and shepherding work, which were approached as sympoietic activities of making-with others. The thesis consists of a body of artistic practice and practical research accompanied by written analysis, with each chapter built around a particular artistic project. The practice is conducted through two main strands: fieldwork in a rural area in southern Spain, used to explore the nexus between water, soil, animals and people, social and ecological justice and other forms of cognising and living in the world; and paper presentations and exhibitions through which the findings are put forward for the conversation to expand in academic and artistic realms. The thesis explores the idea that value and worth act as the emergent that highlights the traceability of more complex issues and examines the manner in which value is linked to the problematics of the Anthropocene. It positions the construction of value central to the idea that what is protected and nourished is defined by what is valued; and that art works and art practices can offer a space where these considerations can be contemplated anew. As humanity is faced with a global polycrisis of climate and ecological breakdown and a sixth mass extinction, this thesis proposes that there is a need for generating and protecting spaces where the continued existence of other species and their habitat can be guaranteed as well as a multiplicity of social forms as a means to prevent loss of diversity.

This practice-based PhD project encompasses a self-experiment in 'social sculpture' - a phrase coined by German artist Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) to designate an expanded concept of art. Emancipatory and transformative in nature, it involves developing the perceptive, imaginative, reflective, and communicative capacities associated with art in a more traditional sense and applying those to navigating life itself. To me, this implies living with the attitude of an affected, socially engaged researcher: one who, with curiosity and care, seeks to understand and, where possible, improve the world they find themselves in, confronting internalised and external forms of oppression. My interest in social sculpture intersects with questions around the scope of human agency, as well as what helps and hinders creativity and learning. Therefore, I have been drawing on a number of theoretical angles, from Transformative Learning theory, psychoanalysis, and pragmatism to feminism, queer theory, and systems theory, to inform my research. From September 2019 to September 2020, I took my own experience as a starting point for an auto/biographical investigation into how this expanded concept of art could work out in practice: How could I be a creative participant in shaping my own life and society - both full of challenges - as a work of art? What practices could support me on this quest? And how could my findings be of value to others? I documented the self-experiment in auto/biographical Thinking Pieces, exploring creative nonfiction as an approach to tracing my learning process in a way that does justice to the depth and complexity of lived experience. This resulted in a number of essays, letters, poems, and short films, which were published on my blog, artistsofsociety.com. The research outcomes manifest on two interconnected levels: as embodied in my personal learning and engagement with the world around me, and, drawing on the 'processing process' of working with presentational methods to make sense of my experiences and share them with others, as an emerging social sculpture-inspired approach to life-research as soul-work.

Gh0stSpace describes a life under the rule of capital in the capital. It defines the inter-relational and consuming spaces of the global city (Sassen, 2005) of the global north. These are spaces where work merges with life (Beck, 2014); the public and the private become indistinguishable (Minton, 2012); the collectivity of the city becomes a space of individualisation (Sennett, 2008); where place (Dean and Millar, 2005) and non-place (Augé, 2006) lose their distinction and where virtual space blurs with physical space (Bridle, 2018). I have given this space the brand name Gh0stSpace to highlight the haunting effects of a boundless form of consumption within an 'ideology of privatisation' (Bauman, 2008). Gh0stSpace defines the discourse between specific objects, external space and internalised behaviours. In a Gh0stSpace, the physical spaces and products of the global city meet a pervasive, implicating and controlling atmosphere that is 'carried within us' (Fraser, 2006) or exist within a 'pervasive atmosphere' (Fisher, 2009). Gh0stSpaces are therefore inter-relational spaces that are both absent, present and appear to have no outside. This thesis will ask, can art practice be used to explore and define this Gh0stSpace? Focusing on three contemporary art projects that I have initiated within Gh0stSpaces: Love/Work an exhibition in a live/work apartment, a space where work meets life; Things Ground Us a series of exhibitions in a privately hired self-storage unit acting as a proxy gallery space and Wet Unboxing a series of videos that primarily circulate through the privatised domains of online social media. In order to investigate the validity of these spaces as Gh0StSpaces each project employs a range of exploratory methods: collaborative/individual, anonymised/authored, virtual/physical which circulate through artistic and non-artistic networks. In each instance, I am working through life as an artist in contemporary London. An equivalent sense of boundlessness is explored in the writing which crosses academic, narrative, and personal styles, and which depict actual and speculative realities within the household, workspace, the city and wider cultural infrastructure. This range of writing styles mirrors the layered and reflexive character of the visual outcomes. The enveloping nature of a privatised context may seem to offer no clear edges or externality. Yet I want to ask, is there a possibility of an outside to Gh0stSpace? Could an understanding of the way Gh0stSpace consumes offer a space of artistic agency within the city's ideology of privatisation?

Bodycloth is a term coined to describe a third entity which emerges when the boundaries between body and cloth (as separate elements) collapse. This artistic research thesis analyses a variety of inter-relations between body and cloth, as well as various modes of adornment and utilisations in order to understand the performance, experience, and presence of bodycloth in performance art. Drawing upon a wide range of contemporary and historical examples of textiles represented in relation to the body in art history – including as sculpture, painting, dance, tableau vivant and performance art – the main method of this research investigation is the production and execution of live performance. That is, it is primarily through artworks that I choreograph myself that I investigate body and cloth (also referred to interchangeably as fabric or textile) as material and cultural phenomenon, excavating and reflecting upon the embodied knowledge and processes as a maker using textiles in search of bodycloth. Taking a feminist approach, I contextualise my research in relation to other artists such as Yoko Ono, ORLAN, Cindy Sherman, Ana Mendieta, and Marina Abramović alongside critical feminist theorists such as Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Laura Mulvey, Julia Kristeva, and Judith Butler. Early chapters examine semiotic processes, whereby textiles in relation to the body are staged and framed in terms of their meaning-making capabilities in performance art. The thesis then shifts from considering how cloth and body operate meaningfully in performance, to the cultural implications and revelations which arise as a result, especially those related to the re-presentation of identity and gendered religious practice. In later chapters, I discuss how my performance research attempts to destabilise binary assumptions which uphold and sit within the mechanics of patriarchal power. As a whole, the thesis demonstrates how body and cloth can form part of a resistant feminist methodology revolving around re-presentations of women and womanhood, offering a tool for fluid self-stylisation. In addition, the emergence of bodycloth realised through processes of 'indwelling' and 'sensorial play' opens up an emancipatory third space existing beside/beyond the realm of representation. Alongside this written element of the thesis, a live performance forms part of my submission as a whole. Details of this performance are shared in the conclusion.

Counter-scripting the body in pain, an artistic interrogation into pain as practice, site and subversive force conceptualises and enacts forms of resistance to the human tendency to negate pain, drawing on methods and sensibilities specific to artistic knowledge and practice. Through a series of text-based artworks, this project offers alternative modes for probing, perceiving, and understanding chronic pain, challenging dominant socio-cultural attitudes that regard pain as something to avoid or resist. The tripartite series: 'May and the Potentiality of Pain' (2014-2015); 'It's Always Three O'clock in the Morning' (2016); and 'Gibraltar, A Walk with Disturbance' (2017) are at the centre of an exploration into the motifs pain as practice, site, and subversive force. The artworks were created in tandem with an ethical strategy for art pursued through an experimental art-writing strategy I have labelled counter-scripting. Elaborating and engineering affect through performance, the art texts of the three artworks challenge dominant individual and cultural tendencies to explain, suppress, and ultimately annihilate pain. Looking at the body in long-term pain, it becomes particularly important to regard physical and mental processes as coextensive, intertwined attributes instead of relying solely on linguistic acts to address and understand out sensory and corporeal experiences. Contemporary arts practice has proven particularly effective in mediating embodied experience and knowledge, through its ability to extend beyond the conventional uses of accepted representational motifs to address inter-embodied life. Considering relations of pain as its material, this study directs attention to the significance of contemporary arts practice for reconceptualising common perceptions of the presumed meaninglessness of chronic pain. A change of perspective of long-term pain must be adopted, the study insists, not only by those who themselves suffer but also by societies within which all embodied beings are immersed and whose reality said beings share.

Art can help us to comprehend, through our sentient bodies and in our cognitive capacities, how to live well together at a time of increasing social isolation, climate crisis and growing alienation from our place in the ecological system. Art-related activities can be featured as ways of embedding knowledge that is deeply connected to everyday life precisely within and bound to our immediate environment. This transformative approach is achieved through art by drawing our attention to how we live together with each other, and our non-human companions, in our communities. At a time of crisis, this practice-led thesis presents how collaborative and co-creative eco-social art practices can contribute to ecological and social regeneration within communities. It addresses three specific questions: How can co-creative artistic approaches help to develop strategic promotion of eco-social sustainability? How can this knowledge be deployed for the benefit of the community and organisations concerned with climate change? How can a community’s embodied knowledge contribute to generating an environmentally sustainable future? This research considers the performative and participatory elements of artists practices that involve others (communities, as well as policy makers, community organisations, national bodies) in discourse and activity on eco-social regeneration. It begins by exploring the agency of ecological and social embeddedness and presents ways to develop the practice and identity of environmental artists who work in community settings. It goes on to show, through project design and activity, and through the development of a ‘listening paradigm’ that ‘island communities’ embodied knowledge’ can contribute a valuable legacy to community projects addressing climate change. Consequently, by shifting understanding of this under-valued knowledge, new approaches can be suggested to the work of organisations and practitioners tasked with delivering climate change initiatives that enable more effective eco-social engagements with their communities.

In order to create futures that are resilient and allow for the incorporation of a 'bottom-up' perspective, transition is dependent on citizen engagement. This thesis presents a study of this engagement during moments of disruption, past and future electrical blackouts. Today, citizens are designing and self-organising community resilience and emergency 'services', partly out of necessity in austerity economies and partly due to a new sense of emerging sociability and solidarity. This thesis explores how publics engage with the future, deal with complexity and use modes of infrastructuring to maintain and create practices and action. This thesis provides novel methodological tools for the study of futures and public engagement in our increasingly risky societies. A conceptual and methodological framework developed from empirical material; case studies of electrical blackouts in 1974 and 2015, alongside a co-creation workshop, pioneers a novel combination of disciplinary perspectives and insights. This methodological mix of orchestrating collaboration with diverse stakeholders and public engagement in research allows for new modes of futures literacy, not only for engaging with the challenges and opportunities of transition to low carbon energy systems but also how to approach other complex and potentially disruptive moments in the future. Bringing together multiple perspectives and timescales in the same thesis for thinking about Social Futures allows a way of engaging with post-disciplinary future forming research and begin to develop a futures toolkit.

This practice-based research project investigates relationships between artist and material, audience and artwork, through the production and exhibition of figurative ceramics. The research begins with a framing of how we view and respond to figurative artwork. Through analysing the 'conversation' between viewer, artwork and artist, I establish a critical context with its roots in the phenomenological theories of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean Baudrillard. This becomes the foundation for an assessment of the reception of artworks produced during the project. The primary aims of the research are: 1. To determine the potential for establishing a greater engagement between viewer and artwork through exploration of relationships between audience, artwork and artist. 2. To determine whether an emotive dynamic between audience and artwork might be enhanced by removing the figure. Can objects be 'charged' with a sense of absence? These aims are addressed through five case studies, in which I test the proposition that for a prolonged interaction to take place between viewer and artwork the former should not be confronted with a complex discourse between artist and artwork, but rather be actively involved in a three-way conversation. Methods that influence the relative importance of the voices of viewer, artwork and artist are established and these are assessed in the context of recent critical research, both within and beyond the field of ceramics. The research recognises the role played by emotion in extending dialogue between the viewer and artwork and proposes a series of mechanisms to increase the viewer's emotional engagement. The role of childhood memory in shaping how we respond to objects is explored, as well as the potential of the behavioural characteristics of a material to establish emotion through gesture. Further strategies for weakening the artist's voice emerged through the research process. The value of the play between exhibition site and artwork is explored, as is that of time-based media in enabling the viewer to transgress back and forth through time in order to engage more deeply and on a personal level.

Using an auto-ethnographical approach with an arts practice-based methodology I examine in what ways the overlap of home and personal faith impact identity with the purpose of coming to a new understanding of home. The intent is to examine notions of home and how it can be understood by using my personal history to examine what presuppositions I hold about home. I examine the extent to which home is fixed in a specific location. I question the ways in which artistic engagement with specific materials can inform understandings of home. I additionally question the extent to which ritual plays a role in a sense of home. This inquiry has primarily taken place in the studio where I used a combination of printmaking, drawing, and photography in order to generate a series of practice-based art works. My methodology includes use of specific materials to convey meaning, site-specific works, reflective journaling on intellectual, emotional and artistic discoveries, and an on-going dialogue and wrestle with my personal faith. Living in a time where people are more mobile than ever, with an unparalleled access to information and connection due to the internet has led to the loss of an understanding of home. There is an ongoing discussion of home occurring within the contemporary art world. There is simultaneously an increased engagement with religion and a redefining of the relationship between art and religion. I situate my inquiry at the intersection of these two discussions, by looking at my relationship with faith and the home. I discovered connections between my understandings of home and my relationship to religion, in that in both I engage in ritualistic behaviour that provides a sense of meaning. In addressing my own idealised notions of home, I was able to reconcile it with a more accurate portrayal, in which home, like artistic practice, requires time, labour, and intentionality. In this research, I explore ways in which home can be viewed as place, as fold (after Deleuze) and as ritual. I conclude that home is not tied to the specificity of a place but is a multifaceted combination of many places.

Posthumous star theory today, following scholar Gilbert B. Rodman (1996), continues a focus on a singular star's continued presence within a fan culture and/or a star's political resonance. This thesis, however, analyses the commercial exploitation of a posthumous star and exposes a hierarchical structure in the "after-market". Specifically, I examine the tropes and changes of four posthumous stars within advertising. I have chosen Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, and Audrey Hepburn to be the focus of this work due to their proven longevity in a consumer market. Advertising is a rich site for exploring star brands and consumer messaging, and is particularly important in reference to the preferred reading of a posthumous star as dictated and approved by a star's estate. Consumer behaviour and interests are identifiable through the highly controlled renditions of a posthumous star, and thus, further exposes stardom as a way in which to guide and encourage the construction of identity through consumer goods. Expanding on recent work on star brands, I analyse reoccurring methods which pervade these stars' images and which attempt to heighten relevancy and relatability. Comparison between these posthumous stars affords insight into what enables both continued legacy and marketability. The thesis also sheds light on the Fifties' prevalence in consumer culture and the nostalgia market, suggesting the success of these case study stars is in part due to a modern conception of a past era.

Automatic image-making techniques, or techniques that agents use to assist or replace some aspect of image-making, have been used since ancient times. Yet, there has been little philosophical discussion on this kind of image-making except in contemporary aesthetics, where discussions have largely centred around photography. This thesis aims to rectify this situation. To this end, I explore the philosophical implications of the historic and contemporary use of automatic image-making techniques, including drawing devices and printing technologies, that agents use to create images. I define two distinct kinds of automatic image-making techniques: those that are "external object dependent" and those that are "intentional object dependent". The former have widely been conceived of as epistemically valuable, but not aesthetically valuable like the latter due to misconceptions about the nature of intentionality in art production. Consequently, I develop an original concept of "creative agency" to explain how agents employ external object dependent automatic techniques to produce particular aesthetic effects and modes of picturing. I elaborate on these findings and, by exploring hybrid art kinds, offer a classificatory framework to identify when it is aesthetically relevant to appreciate the use of automatic techniques in particular art practices. I consider whether viewers are changing any of their beliefs about art kinds in the digital age and what impact this has upon the kinds of epistemic value that viewers stand to gain from looking at images produced using automatic techniques. I examine how contextual factors in the digital age affect these and offer a set of criteria to determine when the beliefs formed about the representational contents of an image are warranted. I examine a related claim: images produced using external object dependent automatic techniques enable viewers to actually indirectly perceive the object. I reject this and construct a novel account of the "presence phenomenon" to explain the particular phenomenological responses that viewers may experience before such images. Altogether, this thesis provides a unified approach for explaining the aesthetic, epistemic, and phenomenological significance of images made using various automatic techniques.

This thesis is concerned with the involvement of artist David Hockney (b.1937) with theatre and theatricality. Interspersed with his studio artwork,Hockney's designs for opera, dance and drama have comprised a significant aspect of his illustrious career. They have stimulated change and exchange in his personal creativity; formed a bridge between fine art and the performing arts; and afforded interaction with music, text and theatre technology. Focusing on the period 1961 to 1978, this investigation assesses the nature and extent of these relationships and Hockney's broader engagement with 'the theatrical'. It is the first sustained critical study to address these precise areas of interdisciplinary research. Using textual, pictorial and audio-visual sources, including performance recordings and personal interviews, this analysis explores the dialogue between Hockney's stage designs and his work in other media; his theatrical engagement with the ventures of other artists and creators; and his response to the specific challenges of designing for the performing arts. Whilst often marginalised by curators and historians, Hockney's theatre involvement is shown to be an integral and motivational facet of his oeuvre and an expression of his wider commitment to 'theatricality' as an artistic ideal.

This thesis investigates the development of Beckett's early writing process through the impact of paintings and the techniques of painters on his practice during the 1930s. The chief contributions offered by my thesis are not only to be found in the topic and methodology themselves, but also in the argument for the centrality of the doodles in Beckett's Murphy Notebooks (UoR MS5517). The thesis explores the relationship between Beckett and paintings during the 1930s, using a triangular analysis to deepen the understanding of his Murphy Notebooks, the only surviving handwritten draft of work published in this period. This method allows the analysis to focus on a 10-year timeframe in the life of a writer by considering the development of Beckett's narrative and writing process during this early period. My analysis of the visual aspects of the manuscript enhances the critical landscape around Beckett's 1930s practice. It showcases how Beckett's imagery developed in three phases, influenced by painterly elements such as background and foreground. It also argues that the dark-light dichotomy of chiaroscuro allowed for the dual characterisation of Beckett's pairs to develop. In discussing Beckett's integration of elements found in paintings in his practice, this thesis also explores his personal interactions with painters, such as Jack B. Yeats, Bram van Velde and Karl Ballmer. It also explores the impact of the trip he undertook to Germany (1936-7) in relation to the the Murphy Notebooks and "Human Wishes" manuscript doodles by highlighting the impact of his exposure to Expressionist paintings, in particular Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's and Emil Nolde's paintings.

What are the implications of collaboration between practitioners of distinct creative disciplines, and what approaches can enhance such engagements? This inquiry is investigated through Practice Research with project-based and iterative methodology aiming towards developing a novel framework for organising collaborative environments. Presented here is the thesis that investigates modes of interaction between disciplines and practitioners in collaborative projects. They are nested under the rubric of polydisciplinarity, with a particular focus on the interaction between sound and movement through consumer digital tools. The conceptual basis of this investigation, distinguishing its contribution to thinking and making in its creative field, is informed by symbiosis, a phenomenon describing close and persistent relationships between organisms of different species, where the organisms establish a means to overcome the limitations posed by their environment through augmenting their biological traits. This research contends that symbiotic traits can be identified within practices between practitioners of distinct disciplines, and interprets these into a set of strategies and precepts that can facilitate effective synergies between collaborators. The practice conducted as part of this research concerns collaborations between the author's sonic arts approaches and practitioners using physical movement as their predominant expressive medium. The knowledge borne out of this practice, as well as existing models of interaction between disciplines and practitioners, are investigated through a conceptual debate with knowledge acquired from the field of biology. The research contributions combine practice and theory; the body of practice concerns performance works created as part of the collaborators' professional engagements, as well as a number of studio-based experiments testing and activating the theoretical underpinnings, concentrating on an adaptive approach in collaboration. Then these collaborative engagements and experiments lend pathways to findings, a theoretically describable set of efficient and distinctive modes of collaboration. The practice-led contribution focuses on a framework for collaborative engagement, arranged in respect to the three types of symbiotic relationships: mutualism, commensalism, and parasitism. Identifying distinct modes of hierarchy, stages in process, and direction of active influence between practitioners and expressive medium, the framework posits an adaptive approach in collaborative engagement, with the potential to facilitate collaborations within the wider field of performance practice.

This thesis breaks new ground in investigating the nature and practice of public interest citizen journalism (PICJ) in Saudi Arabia (KSA). It offers a deeper understanding of the role and relevance of Citizen Journalism (CJ) in Saudi Arabia by analysing the coverage by Saudi citizen journalists of key economic events as matters of public interest (PI). This thesis defines, and derives a model for the functioning of, the features of PICJ for economic issues. It identifies the stages of development of CJ in Saudi Arabia and investigates the impact of the Internet and social media (in particular, Twitter) on the production and consumption of journalistic content in the KSA. A mixed-methods approach combining qualitative and quantitative techniques was employed to achieve the objectives of the research. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with Saudi citizen journalists (columnists and public figures with Twitter accounts) and licensed professional Saudi journalists, for a total of 30 individuals. In addition, a thematic analysis of Saudi tweets relating to economic affairs that occurred in 2015-2016 (total number of tweets = 10.346, identified from their hashtags) and a quantitative analysis of tweet frequency on the hashtags considered were carried out. This research identifies the specific characteristics and behaviour of Twitter-based online citizen journalists in the KSA to produce a new model of Saudi PICJ for economic issues. The findings confirm that the traditional Saudi press increasingly depends on CJ on Twitter. Many citizen journalists who are specialists in their field provide high-quality information which is censored from the traditional press. There is also evidence that in certain instances CJ may adopt an agenda-setting function for traditional media by highlighting the concerns, questions, and views of the citizens. The analysis of the hashtags studied (i.e. those relating to Vision 2030, the so-called 'White Lands' tax, and Royal Decrees 2015/16) demonstrated that Saudi citizen journalists are able to make use of social media platforms to address economic issues they feel are in the public interest and contribute to creating a virtual interactive community for debating these issues. Data analysis results reveal that platforms like Twitter give citizen journalists more freedom of expression than traditional Saudi media and allow for an interactivity, both locally and globally, that helps to shape Saudi public interest in relation to economic issues and overcomes, albeit not fully, the limits imposed by state control of traditional media.

The beginning of the twenty-first century can be viewed as a critical period for the UK's local and regional press. Many newspapers, faced with falling circulations and increasing competition due to the emergence of the internet, began converging their print and digital news operations in an attempt to halt the long-term decline by exploring new ways of growing their readership and attracting more income. This thesis examines the Published Outputs of a senior journalist who played a leading role in managing the transition to a convergent newsroom at the Lancashire Evening Post, a regional newspaper in Lancashire. The innovative content produced by the author, and the new editorial processes which he and fellow managers implemented, are critically analysed through the application of key insights from academic literature on media management and multimedia. It is argued that editorial innovation can help boost website traffic and increase audience engagement, while not necessarily damaging newspaper circulation figures; in fact, there is evidence to suggest they can even slow down the fall in sales. However, this research also demonstrates that these alone are unlikely to generate sufficient digital advertising revenue to help reverse the steep decline being experienced by the industry.

Distinct from the increasing interest in Research on L2 creative writing in a pedagogical context, this practice-based PhD research attempts to situate the process of writing poetry in a second language as a creative practice in its own right. This enquiry focuses not only on the outcome of my creative practice, which is memory poetry: poetry of remembrance, in a second language, but also reaches through the process and methodology towards opening the way to developing artistic practice, of writing poetry in a second language as the production of knowledge in action and as a genre, of finding my voices, of my transformation from a reader, a language learner into a writer and of contributing insights toward the definition of a second language poetry. Self-reflection and critical investigation of Women poets of Asian background, namely: Kamala Das, Eunice De Souza, and Jennifer Wong, facilitate cultural learning; a valuable source of authentic materials that makes me able to reflect my own identities and to write my own memory poetry. By combining autobiography, memory and second language creative writing, I develop a collection of poetry consisting of 70 poems within five thematic issues: Memories of Mother and Daughter in an Islamic and Matrilineal Society, Memories of Diabetes Heritage, Study Abroad Setting, Motherhood PhD and The Making of a Second Language Poetry. The poems narrate my personal history, exploring the religious-cultural convergence of being a mother as well as a daughter and investigating the different aspects of being a student mother in learning a language and pursuing a degree in a study abroad setting. 10 of the 70 pieces are self-translated poems signifying the creativity in the translational process of "self" while handling the meaning both in my first and second language.

This thesis explores the relationships between performance art, poetry, sound poetry and page-based scores in order to develop 'action poetry' as a new transdisciplinary field that foregrounds the 'vocal-body' in performance art. Driven by my own creative practice -through the artworks and performances Nape (2014), Scaw (2015), Mean (2016), Condensations (2017), Cope (2018) and Low (White Stones) (2018) - I have proposed here a revival and redefinition of the term 'action poetry' that considers the role of the voice to produce actions in live work. More specifically I have, through practice, developed my own techniques for vocalization that embody language and sound. When artists use their voice as sound they are communicating differently within language. In order to vocalise, the artist must perform a kind of embodiment that transforms language, sound and meaning into a body-based and sensorial activity. When I use the term 'embodiment' in this thesis I am referring to a corporeal awareness, specifically a vocal awareness, and lived experience that is necessary to produce the voice in action poetry. This thesis asks how the voice can produce actions in performance art. I consider actions to be an event that attempts to exceed boundaries. Actions occur due to the tension, movement and relation between interior voice and exterior vocal sound. I consider the specific use of the voice in performance art as a significantly under-theorised area of experimental performance and poetry. In order to explore this I have coined new terms in relation to my work - textual-volume, vocal-body, action-oriented performance art - these terms provide a vocabulary for approach, methods and practices in action poetry. I discuss my own practice alongside examples of performance artists whose work is not usually considered as voice-led such as Carolee Schneemann, Boris Nieslony and Marina Abramović. I also consider the role of prepared notational devices like non-linguistic scores and how poets are able to generate vocal-sound by embodying marks on the page. This thesis charts a new history of performance art and poetry in order to discover how language and the voice can generate actions.

This thesis is a creative literary biography, or historiographic metafiction, of the life and works of writer and composer Anthony Burgess (1917-1993). The text consists of two synchronous narratives: a fictionalised account of Burgess' life as a writer, charting his time as a struggling would-be composer in 1940s Britain through to his celebrity as a writer in 1970s America; and an academic exploration of literary biography, historiographic metafiction, the spill between these two genres, and Burgess' engagements with these forms, through the lens of Bakhtinian literary theory. These narratives run concurrently, interrupting, informing and influencing the other, in dialogic engagement. This text synthesises academic and biographical research with speculative fiction, much like Burgess' own works of historiographic metafiction, including Nothing Like the Sun (1964), which shares a similar fiction/academic lecture form: Abba Abba (1977); and A Dead Man in Deptford (1993). The thesis also seeks to respond to Burgess' Confessions - Little Wilson and Big God (1986) and You've Had Your Time (1990), and other writers' biographies published after his death - Roger Lewis's Anthony Burgess (2002) and Andrew Biswell's The Real Life Anthony Burgess (2005). Burgess' life as a husband, son and father is dramatised, alongside his prodigious output as a writer of over thirty novels. In his critical text, Shakespeare (1970), which came six years after his creative biography of the Bard, Burgess claimed that 'every Shakespeare-lover who has ever lived' has the right 'to paint his own portrait of the man'. In this manner, this thesis presents not a 'definitive' Anthony Burgess but a 'possible' or 'partial' Burgess, in dialogue with the many other 'Burgesses' already in existence and those that may follow.

Dementia is emerging as a major public health concern. Nevertheless, it is still very challenging to the families of people who are diagnosed with dementia - especially the main carers, as the stereotype of dementia in society remains negative. Games for family carers of patients at pre- and early-stages of dementia are designed to engage people, and are valued for their educational benefits, health benefits and community enhancing merits. A conceptual framework is proposed in this thesis to help develop these types of games to support family carers of patients at pre- and early-stages of dementia. The aim of the research is to increase knowledge of health issues in order to help maintain the relationship between patients and carers, since the quality of this relationship will have an effect on both of them. By playing the games, carers can understand more about their patients to change their behaviour and thoughts so they can better support them. The game-based methods for dementia carers include social marketing, knowledge transfer, social media connections and game involvement. The research methods used to test this hypothesis include expert interviews and games analysis. Expert interviews were conducted with a sample of professionals, including organisations and academia, to address the two main areas: carers and digital technologies. The games analysis involved using measures of the effectiveness of the game's purpose, such as games for health, games for education and social games. Metric instruments were developed to measure the game's purpose. Exploratory experiments were performed on a selection of games using experienced gaming professionals. The game Make a cup of tea was designed and developed based on the framework and the exploratory experiments results. The use of Make a cup of tea showed improvements to the quality of life of family carers of patients at pre- and early-stages of dementia. This thesis will contribute to the research on dementia family carers through several aspects: the proposed framework will serve as a proven theoretical concept for future research; the metric instruments provide benchmarking measures for health-based games; Make a cup of tea educates and enlightens dementia family carers through in-game experiences. The aim of the project is to help maintain the relationship between dementia patients and their carers which heavily influences the quality of life for both parties. From the design aspect, this project aims to explore ways to design games for dementia research purposes.

This thesis examines key features and particularities of women's fashion, specifically the cheongsam, which is frequently taken as representative clothing in present-day China. In locating fashion within the contemporary cultural and political context, i.e. understanding the sartorial as situating a set of visible codes and structures of meaning, the thesis characterizes various complexities of Chinese female identity, as well as broader social, economic and political complexities, the significance of the Chinese fashion market in the global economy is analyzed, demonstrating how global brands and styles heavily influence Chinese consumer trends, and yet, equally, how the Chinese fashion system is itself formed of its own internal logics and emergent trends. Adopting the theoretical term 'altermodern', China is positioned in terms of its rapid modernization, which presents its own rhythms and logics that cannot be wholly understood in terms of a Western discourse of modernity, postmodernity and the global. As part of its analytical method, the thesis makes reference to Roland Barthes' The Fashion System. While this work is now arguably out of date, its underlying thesis of fashion as a 'system of signification' retains pertinence, and crucially, in this thesis is updated in two important ways. Firstly, in outlining the contemporary, altermodern context of China, the notion of a fashion 'system' is greatly expanded, here taking on board new trends in global trade, new technologies (with social media presenting whole new systems of signification and exchange), and the hybridity of designs and consumption of fashion. Secondly, in looking to Barthes' later work, and in particular his interest in the 'Neutral', a key argument of this thesis is of a certain 'neutrality' of fashion. This is by no means to suggest of anything banal or insipid. Barthes' interest in the Neutral radically expands his understanding of signification, breaking away from binary oppositions to instead pay attention to more fluid gradients or intensities of difference and exchange. Notably, he is also heavily influenced by Asian philosophies, including a keen interest in Taoism, which provides an important bridge for this thesis in taking on a specific Chinese perspective. While accepting much of the arguments that show how global-local contexts lead to identifiably postmodern and hybrid aesthetics, this thesis also makes a specific argument that for women in contemporary China the flux and mix of available clothing and designs is experienced in a neutral manner. In other words, rather than position new production and consumption trends in China only in terms of 'hybridity' (which leans towards a Western bias and a binary logic of host-recipient), there are more fluid ways in which we need to understand how women engage in fashion in China today. As a key 'figure' running through this study is a complex notion of 'uniform'. A literal uniform, the Mao suit, is examined, and shown to represent a specific 'dream' of social freedom. This is set in contrast to the Cheongsam (banned under Mao's leadership), which has gone through multiple evolutions. As a cultural device it represents a rich set of connections, linked to a new, modern China, which offers a more complex 'dream' of both a collective and individualized freedom. The cheongsam is the central example of the thesis. It is shown to be infused within the dominant, largely homogenized fashions of globalization, characterized here as a kind of 'uni-form' (i.e. the univeralisation of trending styles). Yet, equally, the 'fluidity' of the cheongsam, being both flexible and distinctive, presents its own fashion system of more subtle gradients. It is presented, then, in this thesis as both a highly visible example of contemporary, hybridized fashion in China, and as a tool for understanding the more general, everyday 'neutralities' of how women - in choosing what to wear - articulate new identities in contemporary China.

This is a submission for the Award of PhD by Published Works. The commentary on three published submissions organises a programme of work focussed on reframing traditional textile craft skills within the context of innovation and knowledge exchange policies. This overarching problem is presented through expanding spheres of activity, from personal textile art practice, to collaborative projects, to social and public policy thinking. The research outputs include a textile based video work, case studies completed for a three year EU funded project, and selected chapters from an academic book. The consistent aim of the research has been to engage audiences with valorising and recovering textile skills, the shared cultural significance of making cloth and the renewal of industry informed by heritage and social values. My research journey addressed these through critical challenges to prevailing practices of the period, new representational formats and theoretical investigations on the social purpose of making textiles. The following questions have guided my project: is technology a way to challenge narrative development and revaluing of textiles? Is textile production a narrative of collecting and expanded authorship? Can this view enable innovation and competitive advantage in artisanal manufacture? The research methods engaged textile based work with fine art practices, psychoanalytic and cultural theory frameworks. Methods from one discipline were used to inform another, developing visual solutions informed by textile related vocabularies and methodologies. For example, quilting is used to discuss the layering of identities, separation and fragmentary experiences, temporality and recurrence, as well as an economy of cultural and emotional exchange. In later outputs this interdisciplinary knowledge enriches the qualitative case study findings on creative industry models and entrepreneurial innovation. The research findings indicate that textile making can be understood as a social and progressive process of identity creation, inflected by the clustering of diverse narratives. Leveraging the difference in social and cultural capital in textile production clusters can be a model of renewal, bringing about innovation as a consequence of familiar, manual contexts. Further research could be undertaken to identify how new textile enterprises might gain from and sustain heterogeneous communities, for example brought about through migration, to the benefit of social inclusion and industry renewal.

This practice-based research employs sculptural and sound practices, and their mediation through representation, notation, technologies and performance, to develop an innovative compositional process named co-composition, in which physical and sonic material can be concurrently produced, rearranged and transformed.\nAt the core of this thesis is a multi-layered mode of thinking, informed by an understanding of emerging morphologies and the relationships formed between and across the two modalities of sound and sculpture. Taking as starting point materials and their qualities, while engaging with aesthetics and theories of minimalism and sound studies, this research seeks to introduce a co-compositional mode of creative and critical engagement, as the main research tool. Central themes are action, process, trace and time.\nMoving beyond an approach of forming analogies between modalities, this research explores a mode of navigating\nacross dimensions of sculpture and sound through a dialogue between theory and practice. The methodological approach is reflective and generative, borrowing from both traditions to develop new methods through practical exploration which emerge as part of the research process. Furthermore, analytical tools and technological mediation are employed to inform and expand how co-composition takes place in a solo environment and how this process is experienced by both the artist-performer and audience.\nThe thesis comprises a series of practical works and experimentations on co-composition, and a written text, which is critically engaging with the concepts and the progression of the research.

This thesis is concerned with cultural articulations of space, from the point of view of philosophy and from the perspective of artists responding to museums as key sites of cultural heritage. My central research question is how the concept of heterotopia can be useful in exploring postcolonial artistic responses to museum spaces that tackle questions of personal and cultural identity, arising from key aspects of my own artistic and curatorial practice. My methodology takes the heterotopia concept as proposed by Michel Foucault in his (1967) Des Espace Autres, as its point of departure and I subject it to a critical analysis. I progress through conceptualisations relating to architectural space and end with delineations of postcolonial cultural domains that are both real and imaginary and relational between one space and another, an understanding of space that is rooted in oppositions that are both geographical and cultural. The heterotopia concept is used to elucidate these themes through artistic responses to museum spaces and with pictorial representations that are both real and imagined. A number of museums have been chosen as sites for analysis, from the Foundling and Sir John Soane's Museums in London to the Walters Art Museum, George Peabody Library and National Great Blacks in Wax Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, in the USA. I engage with the works of old master artists Fra Carnavale, El Greco, William Hogarth, J A D Ingres, the Regency architect Sir John Soane and with works of contemporary artists Mat Collishaw and Isaac Julien to tackle questions about the relationship between the postcolonial subject, heritage spaces and cultural identity. To elucidate these questions of the real and imagined articulation of space the thesis contains a detailed analysis of two of Julien's works that deal with museums: Vagabondia (2000) and Baltimore (2002).

The aim of this thesis is to demonstrate that the sacred silver objects from the sixth-century Sion treasure had different biographies and multivalences in different contexts. By this I mean that these objects had different conceptual dimensions in their production and usage in sixth-century Byzantium. These different meanings were a result of the changing interrelationships between people and the objects, depending on the intention and functionality of the objects and the contexts in which they were used. I will highlight three main aspects, all closely related. The first is the question of the changing function of the silver treasure: as commodity for sale; as a gift to God; as used inside the church for liturgical performances or as decorative church revetments. Tied to this is the intention of its users, something developed through ritual and knowledge, which gave the treasure its intended function - which relates to its functionality and the contexts in which it was used. These contexts enabled the users of the silverware to perceive these objects in different ways and give them meanings and life-stories, or biographies. For example, when a worshipper inside the church engaged with a paten, say, their reading and valuing of that object was not that which the donors perceived when they gave it as a gift. My examination is carried out with a focus on the fifty-two silver objects from the Sion treasure which I have examined in Antalya Museum in Turkey and the Dumbarton Oaks Collection in Washington DC. Relying on my examinations in these two collections, the arguments in this thesis will be based on the forms, inscriptions, decorations, stamps and monograms on the objects. My thesis will discuss both what the value of the silverware was to its producers, donors and what its value might have been to those using these objects inside the church, not only to clergy but also to lay worshippers.

This thesis demonstrates the importance of the collecting partnership of George and Florence Blumenthal while contributing to the growing body of knowledge on twentieth-century collecting in America. I argue that through their collaboration, the Blumenthals used their homes and collection to fulfill a public educational role. The method of investigation includes an in-depth biography of George and Florence Blumenthal, including family origins, Jewish identity, and philanthropic activities in order to illustrate how their different family backgrounds helped shape and influence their collecting and philanthropic partnership as a married couple. The thesis also examines the Blumenthal's residences in New York and in France, including the architects, designers, and dealers involved, in order to argue Florence's leadership role in their design and orchestration and the houses' public function. Finally, the thesis will assess the Blumenthal's legacy today and the bequest to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1941.

Liquid repellency is a key textile function for outdoor apparel. Chemistry based on long side-chain fluorinated polymers has been used for repellent textile finishing since the 1950s but in the last two decades has been significantly highlighted for its toxicological potential. This study addresses the move to shorter side-chain fluorinated polymers and non-fluorinated chemistries for repellent finishing specifically addressing the requirements in technical outdoor apparel. In light of the complexities between functionality, legislation and corporate social responsibility, this research has investigated consumer practises and requirements in relation to, and comparison of, the technical performance of long side-chain fluorinated Durable Water Repellents (DWRs), shorter side-chain fluorinated DWRs and non-fluorinated DWRs. A comparative study on initial repellency functionality showed non-fluorinated DWRs to be inferior in terms of oil repellency but offering similar water repellency. The impact of consumer laundering was studied with a comparison on the influence of differing drying/heat applications. Differences in maintaining liquid repellency functionality of fluorinated and non-fluorinated DWRs, during consumer laundering, have been discussed with surface mechanisms influencing this explained. This work has identified limitations with the standard spray test method and given modifications to quantify between similar performing repellent fabrics. Calculation of mass increase, calculated after the spray test shower, has been used throughout this work to quantify the wetting of samples. In addition, the use of analytical evaluation by determining the roll-off angle during dynamic wetting has been considered. A comparative study between the spray test and the Bundesmann ran-shower test was carried out but water repellency data differed between the two methods. An extended spray test has been developed to aid discrimination between similarly performing water repellent samples, with a shower time of 60 and 120 minutes recommended. Adaptations to the Martindale test method simulated abrasion to terrain and adjacent apparel replicating rubbing of the face fabric during consumer end-use. The repeated rubbing created roughness of the fabric face decreasing the repellent functionality. The relationship between DWRs and thermoregulation has been explored and greater heat loss during rain conditions determined with a build-up of moisture vapour due to a decreased driving force across the outer shell. Further work in this area is strongly recommended. The main conclusions from this work are to reconsider the use of DWRs and the level of functionality necessary for end-use, the importance of laundering to maintain functionality and the necessity to develop knowledge and communication between brands and consumers. It is hoped that this work has contributed to the ongoing dialogue surrounding chemistry use for liquid repellent textile finishing and will be useful to testing and adoption as, in line with legislation, the move to non-fluorinated DWRs increases.

This thesis uses ideas of the male gaze, as defined in the feminist film theory of Laura Mulvey, and dance theory to explore the representation of women and the use of dance in Kuwaiti cinema. The male gaze theory was coined by Mulvey in her 1975 essay 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema', in which she focused on the various situations where females are asymmetrically and unequally portrayed in film. Erin Brannigan's dance theory, as used here, focuses on the communicative, emotional, physical and artistic aspects of the medium of dance in film as a forum for human interaction and expression within specific oeuvres. The interrelationship of film and dance theories is paramount to this study as these theories help to identify and understand the representation of women and the use of dance in Kuwaiti cinema. This thesis argues that the correlation between the male gaze theory and dance theories provides a significant strategy for highlighting the portrayal of women and the use of dance in Kuwaiti cinema. This thesis consists of a written and a practice component. The first acts as a guide to the latter. The written component maps the historical background of Kuwaiti cinema in relation to the representation of women and their dances. It also offers an outline of the feminist film and dance theories of Mulvey and Brannigan that I have used with the aim of investigating how women are represented and how dance by women functions in Kuwaiti cinema. The practical component is a documentary film about dance in Kuwaiti cinema. The film comprises archives, commentary and interviews that state the point of view of the interviewees as they discuss the reality of female representation and dance in Kuwaiti cinema. Furthermore, the documentary also establishes how Kuwaiti film censorship policy affects these elements. The argument discussed in this thesis is that the Kuwaiti films analysed here deploy the male gaze, as defined by Laura Mulvey and other feminist film theorists, but, because of the strict film censorship policy in Kuwait and the country's traditional and religious outlook, this male gaze has been adjusted to historically specific parameters so as to ensure that the representation of women and dance in Kuwaiti cinema is appropriate to Islamic culture and the customs and traditions of Kuwaiti society.

Dutch Afro-awareness today is coinciding with the development of minority subjectivities redefining themselves against dominant culture. It is in line with this moment that this thesis works towards deciphering how Dutch Afro artists carve out a space in today's Dutch artistic landscape. The main challenge for the artists is dealing with the dominance of an art narrative that is heavily informed by American, British and World Art conceptions, which aligns their Afro-ness with foreignness and (political) Blackness. This means that even though Dutch Afro-ness is constructed differently than in the rest of the Diaspora, from the early 1980s to the late 2000s, the artist had to define their practices in relation to art critique, cultural policies and curatorial strategies that were developed on the basis of the aforementioned. Coming from this background, this thesis adds to a Diaspora understanding of how Afroness can work differently in a particular (Dutch) context. Through interviews, archive research, private conversations, and my personal experience as a Dutch Afro artist I work through these historical developments and their outcome today. As a result, the thesis questions the usefulness of the cultural notion of Black in the Dutch art world and in a broader context proposes using local concepts and words to describe the particularities of this artistic condition. A condition that harbours entitlement when it comes to being culturally native and reflection in the national self-image of non-racial equivalence. Looking at exhibition histories, curatorial approaches and Dutch Afro artistic agency, my approach is a conscious 'spiral retelling' that provokes Diaspora and Dutch understandings of Afro subjectivity in the visual arts. The research argues around the paradox of simultaneously becoming and refusing to be Black as it is understood in 20th century Diaspora. Researched, this artistic condition complements contemporary investigations and theorization on what it means to be European. This dissertation is a harbinger of research into the visual arts that challenges the existing (internal) borders of the union in this age of migration.

This dissertation examines the artistic practices of Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Rabih Mroué, Walid Raad and Akram Zaatari, Lebanese artists of the so-called jil al-harb, or the war generation, whose work is characterised by a conspicuous engagement with questions of history writing, mostly, although not exclusively, in relation to the events and the continuing legacy of the Lebanese civil wars (1975-1990). In this dissertation I consider how the works produced by this group of artists attempt to critically problematise and deconstruct the structures and conventions of dominant forms of historiography, and how the foregrounding of such epistemological concerns in their works, rather than signalling an escape into postmodern relativism, is crucially connected to a politics of truth. The dismantling of historicist and positivistic models of history writing by such artists, as I argue, does not seek to destroy the truth-claims of history or the possibility of historical knowledge as such, but to reconfigure the task of historical inquiry as a process of critical reconstruction and interpretative disclosure. Accordingly, this dissertation considers how the above artists' "radical historiographical practices" attempt to articulate a dynamic understanding of history and the archive as an incomplete and open-ended project, wherein our understanding of the past is always made and re-made from the standpoint and urgencies of a specific historical present. A primary point of focus is the way in which such practices interrogate and reassess conceptions of the referential and testimonial power of the document, especially the photographic image, analysing the technological forms and media through which the past is recorded and accessed. The introduction provides a critical survey of the major debates on artists coming out of post-civil war Beirut, addressing issues around the politics of memory in a society characterised by "state-sponsored amnesia" and sectarian fragmentation; the problematisation of historical representation and the re-invention of documentary forms; and the destabilisation of established boundaries between "fact" and "fiction". Chapter 1 looks at the production and unearthing of photographic documentation in the aftermath of the civil wars. Examining Hadjithomas and Joreige's Wonder Beirut (1997-2006) and Lasting Images (2002), and a number of selected files from Raad's Atlas Group archive, I consider how these works attempt to re-conceptualise the indexical referentiality of the photographic document in order to address the latent traumas and violence that afflict the post-conflict reality of Beirut; specifically, the suspended ontological status of the forcibly disappeared, and the violent processes of war and spatial abstraction that underlie the reconstruction of Beirut city centre. Chapter 2 explores the place of the archive as a mobile and living space from which, history - animated by the urgencies of the present - can be written and re-written. Focusing on Zaatari's work with photographic and other archival material drawn from the collections of the Arab Image Foundation, the chapter reflects on issues of preservation, media transfer and the semantic instability of the photo-document, as well as Zaatari's critical relation to the AIF as an institution. Chapter 3 investigates the narrativity of historical knowledge in the age of information, analysing Mroué's and Raad's performative re-invention of the seemingly obsolete tradition of storytelling. In particular, I focus on the re-narrativization of the informational forms of news media and the deconstruction of the chronicle as a form of history writing in Mroué's multi-media plays and non-academic lectures, and the emergence of a mode of analytical storytelling in Raad's lecture-performances. Chapter 4 turns to the topic of art history as a specialised field of historical research. Examining Raad's multi-volume project Scratching on Things I Could Disavow. A History of Art in the Arab World (2007 - ongoing), the chapter interrogates the complex historiographic problems that have arisen as a result of the burgeoning retrospective interest in art in the Arab world, as well as how these problems intersect with an emerging field of global art history.

This thesis argues that artists' legacies are not fixed entities with circumscribed arenas of knowledge but are in constant flux and in continual contact with diverse epistemologies and ontologies. The legacy of the British modernist sculptor Dame Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975) at Tate serves as the case study for this research in its exploration of questions of value formation and knowledge production in relation to artistic legacy and its interpretation and mediation within a museological context. This research explores these questions by means of investigating the specificities of Hepworth's legacy - both her 'cultural legacy' in terms of how she is commonly understood and her 'patrimonial legacy' in terms of the objects and rights she bequeathed. In identifying the ways in which the authoritative construction and mediation of the patrimonial legacy impacts upon the received understanding of Hepworth's cultural legacy, the thesis argues that this patrimonial legacy also contains within it the ambiguity, alterity and complexity that point towards alternative ways of knowing and valuing. As this research argues, Hepworth's legacy is framed by an authoritative and dominant narrative that has led to it becoming naturalised and unquestioned. As an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership held with Tate and the Royal College of Art and taking place at a pivotal moment in Tate's role in the shaping of Hepworth's legacy, the need for a new methodological approach was particularly pressing. The method used in this research is designed to provoke and instigate change within understandings of Hepworth's legacy. More specifically, it is formulated through a practice-led, curatorial research enquiry into an object of her patrimony - a stone-carving chisel from the preserved studios at the Tate-managed Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden in St Ives, Cornwall. Bringing this tool out of this static framing, the research reframes the tool to become the focus of discursive discussion and object-handling at displays and events at Tate St Ives and Tate Britain. In so doing, the research asks: How can a curatorial research methodology serve to disrupt the established narrative of Hepworth's legacy and what new knowledge and value is subsequently revealed? How is value formed and how can it be reformed differently? As the thesis demonstrates, Hepworth's legacy contains within it both a formalised, authoritative, historical motivation and mediation (constructed and naturalised through art-historical and museological methods), as well as a tacit, discursive and changeable approach, as found most pressingly in the irregularities and ambiguities of her material practice and the presence of this within the museum context. The former contributes towards the key problem of Hepworth's legacy - its appearance as being fixed, unambiguous and naturalised - while the latter provides the opportunity for reevaluation and, ultimately, for change. In the situated institutional context of Tate, therefore, this project's expansive, practiceled curatorial research method breaks up the homogeneity of the museum's traditional and conventional systems of inherited knowledge and, in so doing, both recognises the way in which its 'patrimonial knowledge' has shaped the dominant reality of Hepworth's legacy, while also opening out that legacy to the multiple worlds it actually functions in and connects with.

This thesis examines the cycling patterns of simultaneity, or phasing, between two or more repeating images and identifies this as a visual phenomenon in which reoccurrences over time divide between spatial positions. The research that supports this is based upon my studio practice and my experience of works from contemporary art practice that foreground durational and spatial concerns. I refer to Henri Bergson's theories of spatialised time to examine the means by which we apprehend the spatial presentation of moving images and identify degrees of awareness between the temporal and the spatial. From my analysis of these I propose that the perception of image phasing results from chance configurations between points in time and positions in space, and argue that the experience of such simultaneities is twofold, that non-resolving patterns of behaviour extend a viewer's awareness from the moment of apprehension towards possible future configurations. It is the means by which such possibility is perceived that I examine in this thesis. My contribution to knowledge is offered in a body of studio work, as research into formal and perceptual relationships between repetition, extension, slippage and simultaneity. The research question underpinning this thesis addresses the means by which we might perceive the phenomena of image phasing, and how this might in turn extend opportunities for development within the studio practice. It is in a combination of analysis of selected studio works and the subsequent text that a response to this question is posited that frames a viewer's perception of possibility in terms that owe a debt to Bergsonian thinking about the nature of divided time flow as a series points in space. I argue that the experience of image phasing is one of alternating time apportioned as spatial units, and that this spatialisation process is predicated upon an accumulated past that is recognised as a pattern for possible future configurations. Extrapolating from this I claim that we anticipate the future of multiple temporalities in terms of their relative positions in space and that possibility, the potential future states of the experience, is therefore perceived as separate positions rather than parallel successions. It is at this point that I am able to claim that the studio work and the subsequent text make a contribution to knowledge in the form of an art practice that frames image phasing as an experience that is concurrent with an awareness of possible future configurations.

Using as a starting point George Didi-Huberman's inquiry into what it actually means to have knowledge of an artwork, this practice-led research engages a dialogue between philosophy, painting, and cognitive science to explore how a cross-disciplinary account of visual perception might lead to a greater understanding of perceptual sense-making. By exploring both cognitive and embodied models of experiencing the visible, this investigation considers the application of painting as a philosophical practice, where the material practice of painting contributes to our understanding of the anatomy of meaning. The central trajectory of this investigation seeks to situate how a painter might contribute through material practice to the broader philosophical and experiential vocabularies that have always existed around sight and sightlessness, including ideas around imagination, memory, vision and belief. This investigation is conducted through a body of artwork engaging and responding to the particular concerns integral to theories of perception including the relationship of surface to illusion, form to ground, as well as ideas of measurement and distance, sight and vision, eye and skin. This research practice anchors and tests various aspects of perception by orchestrating particular physical experiences that play with ideas of what is out of grasp, points of unraveling. Framing this investigation, both in practice and research, are four central themes presented through an experimental writerly method of three parallel texts in an attempt to embody the ideas of this research. This approach devises a dialogue between the cognitive, the analytic, and the poetic, engaging an unorthodox method of presentation that integrates writing as practice into the written thesis. This method intends to situate ideas not only within scholarship, but in how that scholarship might be transmitted effectively. Philosophical issues around perception including mental imagery, representation/depiction, and attention are explored, leading to concepts of embodied cognition, conceptual blending and metaphor. This is grounded in a discussion of Pierre Bonnard set in a framework of the neurophysiology of vision, recent studies of saccades in relation to memory and the body, and ideas of motor resonance. Drawing on philosophers from George Lakoff to Michel Serres, to neuroscientists from Antonio Damasio to Semir Zeki, this research articulates a link between Damisch and Didi-Huberman's position of art not as representation, but as direct experiential operation, illuminating the relationship between perception and thought intrinsic to the nature of meaning. This practice-led research seeks to map and explore the anatomy of meaning/sense-making through the materiality of a painting practice, presented in an experimental form of writing. Ultimately this inquiry explores the question of the relationship between art and philosophy, the space articulated between language and the world, philosophizing as it were, with brush in hand.

The central focus of this research project is the question of how pedagogic strategies concerning the teaching of extended techniques for string instruments can be embedded into original compositions. I show how practical studio-based experimentation, exploration and development of these extended techniques can generate written concert pieces, the study of which will help instrumentalists to acquire the technical and musical resources they need in order to be able to deliver convincing and creative interpretations of contemporary works which include the said techniques. After giving a brief review of the historical and musical context, these pieces are explained in detail. How and why they were written with the double function of concert pieces and learning paths for the player with explicit pedagogical content is discussed in four essays, which raise some fundamental issues involved in playing, writing and teaching music. Through these essays, I explain my strategy of empowering and equipping the player with the technical and aesthetic means of contributing to the creative interpretation of each piece, emphasizing the collaborative aspect of musical creation. Videos of complete performances of all the pieces are included in the thesis, as well as some explanatory videos.

Traditional brand theory has been criticised for approximately three decades on the grounds that it cannot survive the rapidly changing marketing environment. Academia's reflection upon the development of brand theory is still in progress. In this context, the paradigm shift in marketing theory from goods-dominant (G-D) to service-dominant (S-D) logic has encouraged some brand scholars to consider the role that brands should play in today's market environment. The mainstream view among brand research is that brands should play the role of a communication tool. This research study embraces the S-D logic of marketing and suggests that brands should be considered as a driving force for innovation, leading service systems (i.e. companies) to always serve better. It identifies three functions for this new role, which echoes to the three key concepts of S-D logic: operant resources, value co-creation and relationships. According to the S-D logic of marketing, the most important task of marketing is designing within the service system (the company) a Resource Integration Mechanism (RIM) that drives and supports customer-centred value co-creation. Based on this view, this thesis puts forward the idea that brand managers have the potential to design such a RIM centred on brand-driven innovation for their companies. Such a RIM can help the company to embrace the S-D logic of marketing and gain market competitiveness through innovation. Integrating management and design research is considered important for designing the RIM. This research study conducted a multiple-case study to explore the feasibility of designing such a RIM centred and to identify the value of integrating management and design research in the design of the RIM. The findings confirm this study's initial ideas and provide rich information for further discussion.

This practice-based investigation originated with a number of questions that have arisen from my fine art practice. The enquiry focuses on identifying which elements are bonded to the symbolic image of the opened book and how these can be unmasked to become a discursive space and material support to express visual ideas within a fine art context. By asking why conventions associated with the page generate such an impact on the way we engage and read an opened book, my research developed to investigate how the illusion of mirroring and echo, the fold and the suggestion of text, generate a fundamental shift in the perception and reading of the double page. I have explored the limits of the page through my own practice, questioning the role of perception and how powerful connotations are associated to the symbolism of the book. The fundamental subject of enquiry of this investigation has arisen as a direct result of the use of the printed image and the dual form of the page within my art practice. Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem Un Coup de Dés (1914) marks the historical context of this investigation. This poem questioned the nature of the page by suggesting not only a new approach to reading, but also unmasked some of the conventions associated with the structure of the book. Theoretical and critical context to the research is considered through the discussion of visual elements that compose the material presence of the double-page as an independent piece of art itself as they play a crucial role in the way we perceive it. I studied the notions of opening, duality, mirroring, echo and fold both through my own work as well as through the work of artists such as Jasper Johns, Dieter Roth and Anish Kapoor. Umberto Eco’s theories about mirrors also frame a questioning of the experience and perception of reading as a semiotic phenomenon as well as Deleuze’s essay The Fold and Adorno’s Minima Moralia contextualise the notion of fold. These ideas connect with my interpretation of the ‘perception’ of the page as articulated thought through the notion of connotation.

This practice-based research sets out to explore artistic strategies that destabilise fixed notions of belonging and identity in the context of globalisation and diasporic art. Drawing on Glissant's concept of Relation ([1990], 1997) in combination with feminist and new materialist theories (Braidotti, Haraway) and an "anthropology beyond the human" (Kohn, 2013), the research challenges a dualistic conception of self/Other and contributes to the decolonisation of contemporary art by opening and reinscribing the concept of belonging and identity beyond the human. The practice element consists of three discrete yet interrelated artworks that challenge an ethnocentric and anthropocentric conception of belonging. The multilingual video-performance Surya Namaz (2018) is a personal investigation of yoga and namaz, the Muslim prayer ritual, exploring the potential of transcultural performance, opacity and multilingualism to undo fixed notions of belonging. Kahvehane Kongresspark (2016), a temporary café, ceramic cups/saucers and a site-specific performance in public space and Trans Plantations (2018), an installation of cups/saucers and coffee beans cast in porcelain in combination with an audio-visual element, are concerned with the colonial history and human entanglements with coffee, taking the exploration of belonging beyond the anthropocentric. The written thesis is composed of three chapters. Chapter 1 contextualises the research by providing a brief overview on the globalisation of art and introduces Glissant's theory of Relation as guiding framework of the thesis. This part also reflects on feminist art and theory's relevance for current discourses concerned with belonging and identity, exploring the potential of feminist strategies for the complication of binary thinking. The subsequent chapters are guided by and complement the practice element of the thesis through ways of critical analysis and performative writing, addressing questions posed by the practice in addition to case studies of contemporary artworks. Based on the conception of identity as relational, the research argues that Relation is central to the re-thinking of belonging and identity.

This thesis explores and examines reciprocity between art practice, active participation, and traced memories of displacement. I review the significance of the active participation of the viewer with artwork which embodies personal experiences of war and displacement, with the aim of promoting what David Abram calls 'sensorial empathy' (1996). At the outset I formulated my hypotheses which I list below, along with their related questions: A. The first hypothesis infers that active participation is a tool that can be utilised as a form of communication to imply, indirectly, experienced situations of conflict and displacement. To test this, the following questions are raised: A1. How can the phenomenon of active participation, requiring the haptic perception, inform or affect the experience of embodied artwork? A2. How can an object embody an experience of displacement or conflict? B. The second hypothesis proposes that active participation of the viewer with artwork can help promote or facilitate sensorial empathy. To test this, the following questions are raised: B1. How does sensorial empathy affect the viewer's perception on the subject of displacement? B2. How can the sensorial empathy of the viewer provide insight into my experiences of war and displacement? In the thesis I have appropriated the term 'sensorial empathy' and use it to refer to a form of silent connection, or knowing, that can manifest phenomenologically between artist, artefacts, place and audience. I investigate how and when sensorial empathy takes place, and how it might affect the viewer's perception of the concept of displacement. My methodology consists of five main methods of inquiry: active participation, residues, autobiographical narrative, remembering and embodiment. My experiments with the active participation of the viewer have centred on the idea of the audience participating with the artefacts, both as a way of sensing and sharing my memories of experiences of displacement, and also to encourage in the viewer a sense of concern for the issues that initiated the work. Inquiry led active participation has been responsible for the artwork's transformation, relocation, and possibly, reconstruction or destruction. In experimental presentations of my artwork, this process of participation has been effective in promoting or instigating sensorial empathy, phenomenology, and existential awareness. Embodiment of the artefacts with memories of displacement was implemented through an intuitive approach, using metaphor and symbolism. Reflections on the effectiveness of active participation were drawn from analysis of audience feedback and used to modify and develop the artwork further. My intention is to show that active participation of the audience with immersive art, embodied with my experiences of displacement, can lead to sensorial empathy between the audience and these experiences in turn promoting a connection and understanding with each other that may help to overcome cultural barriers.

This research presents the gap contemporary curatorial discourses have in terms of feminist theory and work, as well as the gap principal contemporary discourses on feminisms and curating have in terms of discursive curatorial practices and independent curatorship. I argue, that the current discussions on feminisms and curating are narrowed down by governing art historical approaches, in which focus remains on representation instead of curatorial practice. Focusing primarily on exhibitions presenting art by feminist and/or women artists, the critique remains in the ways exhibitions are framed in terms of art historical narratives within museum institutions. The paradigm of feminist curating needs to be shifted to the realm of the curatorial, in order to extend the discussion to discursive feminist curatorial practices and the actual potential of feminist curatorial work with art. Within the curatorial, curating is seen beyond exhibition-making as a discursive practice with art, artists, spaces and audiences. Drawing from curatorial theory, affect theory, and feminist new materialist theory, I present a model for a feminist curatorial practice based on a process of thinking with art, and aiming at creating transformative energies through affective encounters with artworks. The practice relies on the political potential of affect, and engages the notion of affective transformation as an essential part of feminist work with contemporary art. Curating is discussed in relation to independent curatorhip, with reflection on my own practice. I analyse current discourses in the fields of contemporary curating, and curating and feminist thought, and present current views on feminist affect and new materialist theory. I discuss the topics through reflection on selected artistic and curatorial practices, exhibition projects, and two group exhibitions I have curated during the research process.

This study attempts to deliver an intellectual history of the journal Inventory and its place within theories of knowledge, publishing, artistic practice, ethnography, politics and critical theory. The initial movement of the thesis, Chapter 1, establishes Inventory's formal structure as a journal. Chapter 2 establishes the presuppositions and models for the use of a journal or magazine as a platform for heterodox cultural practice and inquiry. The study then follows Inventory's proposition of a method derived from the fusion of the heterogeneous sociology of Georges Bataille and his circle in Chapter 3; and the speculative aesthetic theory, and 'anthropological materialism', of Walter Benjamin in Chapter 4. In Chapters 3 and 4 Inventory's 'constellation of methods': surrealism - as a mode of research and publishing, rather than as a visual art - meets ethnography, the study of the culture of all humankind on a common plane of praxis. This partisan reappropriation of surrealist and ethnographic method is shown to generate a complex para-academic publishing and research project, one which has a relation to, but ultimately exceeds, contemporary theories of either the 'artist as anthropologist' (Joseph Kosuth), 'ethnographic surrealism' (James Clifford) or 'the artist as ethnographer' (Hal Foster). Chapter 5 discusses the journal's presentation as writing or literature and the relation between the whole and its parts developed philosophically in the previous chapters in terms of the form of the journal itself as a constellation and the writing it cohered around and presented. This chapter therefore also discusses the development of mental or perceptual spaces of resistance to the restructuring of space discusses in the preceding chapter through experimental writing and publishing (artist projects, found texts, visionary or prophetic texts). The study subsequently situates the intellectual and cultural productions of Inventory journal within the dynamic social, political and cultural context of London in the 1990s and 2000s. This contextualisation is achieved by engagement, in Chapter 6, with a specific site of dissemination for Inventory, Info Centre (1999-2000), through it the journal associated with parallel cultural and political practices of self-publishing and self-organisation by artists, writers and activists in the late-1990s and 2000s. I argue that these practices sought to challenge existing forms of organisation, knowledge production, cultural and social totality during a period of capitalist restructuring of work, social reproduction, the urban environment and the institutions of art. The opposition to this restructuring and its re-colonisation of space in London is conceived both in terms of the production of critical commentaries on the production of space in the city (urban sociology, psychogeography); contesting established cultural histories (e.g. of surrealism, the Situationist International and conceptual art); creation of small autonomous institutions and development of mental or perceptual spaces of resistance through experimental writing and publishing. I argue that Inventory itself takes on a 'self-institutional' form in this situation, and as journal provides a space and singular spaces (in terms of individual contributions) for independent critical thinking (artist projects, urban sociology, found texts, visionary or prophetic texts). Chapter 7 presents the journal's contribution to critical accounts of practices and legacies of urbanism (housing, city planning, spatial practices and government) in London in the post-war period and during the period of the journal's publication (1995-2005). The journal's identification of, and opposition to, forces restructuring London spatially during this period is conceived in terms of the production of critical commentaries on the production of space in the city (urban sociology and psychogeography). The Conclusion evaluates the aims of the study and reevaluates Inventory journal on the basis of the critical traditions surveyed in the prior chapters and in terms of problems arising from the path the journal followed and gaps between its projected programme or method and the achievements it attained.