September 23, 2019

Thesis Outline

I.              Introduction

II.            Concepts

a.     Comfort and safety defining a sense of home

b.     How do material objects leave a trace on “home” spaces?

c.     Displaced feelings of comfort and safety attributed to the material objects which make up home space

d.     The transience of material objects and life

e.     The accumulation and arrangement of thingsholding nostalgia and memories

f.      The mind as home

g.     Reclaiming home spaces through meditation and mindfulness

Abstract

III.          Influence

a.     Art History

                                               i.     Dutch 17^thCentury Still Life

1.     Vanitas

2.     Memento Mori

3.     Christianity

b.     Theoretical Text

                                               i.     Phenomenology and Perception

1.     Maurice Merleau-Ponty

a.     The Objective World and the Experience World

b.     The Mind and the Body

2.     Henri Bergson

a.     Memory

3.     Phenomenology from a Non-Western Perspective

a.     Mindfulness and Meditation

b.     Spirituality

4.     Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard

a.     Personal relationship with and reaction to home space

b.     The home of the mind

                                                                                                     i.     Memories

                                              ii.     Psychoanalysis

1.     The Uncanny, Sigmund Freud

a.     “Unheimlich” translated as “unhomelike”

2.     On Transience,Sigmund Freud

a.     Beauty in Death

3.     Black Sun, Julia Kristeva

a.     Loss and Mourning in relation to Beauty and Art

c.     Contemporary Art 

                                               i.     The Contemporary Still Life

1.     Laura Letinsky

2.     Leslie Hewitt

3.     Elisabeth Belliveau

4.     Celia Perrin Sidarous

IV.          Execution

a.     Historical still life tropes

                                               i.     Oil Painting

                                              ii.     Traditional allegorical subject-matter

b.     Familiar objects from the contemporary everyday

c.     Multimedia modes of representation

                                               i.     Painting/drawing, sculpture/installation, photography

d.     Viewer considers time and contemplation

                                               i.     Allegory

                                              ii.     Treatment of light

                                            iii.     Universality of home, need for comfort, accumulation of objects, and death 

V.            Conclusion

Weekly Reflection

Going back to the Momenta Biennale (some artists from this exhibition were discussed in my summer research), I discovered artist Elisabeth Belliveau. Belliveau "captures material narratives and moments of transformation through stop motion video. She links living and inanimate, still life and passing time. She uses video to ultimately represent both the life and death of objects. 

Belliveau's work--along with an idea stemmed during a long list of sketchbook brainstorms--inspired me to create a video this week. I wanted to record clips of me cleaning and arranging my space compulsively, as I do nearly every day, twice a day, so that I may feel in control and comfortable before proceeding with any other activities. I spend a lot of time trying to make my own home feel like home, despite the fact that it is most certainly my dwelling. I wanted to capture the hectic nature of this, the exact opposite of still-ness, while creating my own version of a still life.

Finally, I wanted to dig deeper into Gaston Bachelard's Poetics of Space. More specifically, Dawn suggested I read the chapter titled, "Intimate Immensity." This chapter relates to my work in that I want to describe the mind--infinite and floating in space--as the true residence of home. Here is a list of quotes that I found interesting and relevant:

“Far from the immensities of sea and land, merely through memory, we can recapture, by means of meditation, the resonances of this contemplation of grandeur.”

“…Since immense is not an object, a phenomenology of immense would refer us directly to our imagining consciousness.”

“Immensity is within ourselves…which starts again when we are alone. As soon as we become motionless, we are elsewhere…immensity is the movement of motionless man.”

“When you felt so alone and abandoned in the presence of the sea, imagine what solitude the waters must have felt in the night, or the night’s own solitude in a universe without end!...man and the world two wedded creatures paradoxically united in a dialogue of their solitude.”

“When a relaxed spirit meditates and dreams, immensity seems to expect images of immensity. The mind sees and continues to see objects, while the spirit finds the nest of immensity in an object.”

It was very exciting to read this text and see a direct link to some of the ideas that I hope to communicate. Bachelard's text is certainly one of the texts that I will reference in my thesis.