Thinking through uncertain and paradoxical practices (#1): aesthetic disengagement and escapology

Shepley, Alec (2015) Thinking through uncertain and paradoxical practices (#1): aesthetic disengagement and escapology. In: Paradox: alternative zones uncovering the official and unofficial in fine art practice, research and education, 9-11, September 2015, The University of the Arts in Poznan, Poland.

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(4) Disclosing ambivalence. Thinking through uncertainty and the paradox of escapology.docx
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(4) Disclosing ambivalence. Thinking through uncertainty and the paradox of escapology.docx

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Item Type:Conference or Workshop contribution (Paper)
Item Status:Live Archive

Abstract

This paper contextualizes two iterations of art practice performed in 2014 by Shepley (i) in the ruined catholic seminary St Peters, Kilmahew, Scotland and (ii) Connaught Place, Delhi, India. The paper examines ways in which he has sought to prolong the notion of artistic activity within the field of distribution and his efforts to disclose potential breaches in the cultural infrastructure emerging through dispersed and uncertain practices. These selected micro-encounters extend the provocation put forward by the Raqs Media Collective during INSERT2014 in Delhi. They are part of his broader practice research highlighting the potential of creative indeterminacy to restore an embodied relationship to the world. The paper explores creative work that attempts, as Marcel Duchamp once wrote, to be not of art, and to delay closure – that closure being the co-opting of art by the institutions that define art as art and that have traditionally distributed it.

Keywords:uncertainty, art, practice research, performance art, site specific art, fragmentation, urban fabric, dystopia, modernism, ruin, ambivalence, hope, purposeful purposelessness, bmjconvert
Subjects:W Creative Arts and Design > W100 Fine Art
W Creative Arts and Design > W613 Film & Sound Recording
W Creative Arts and Design > W190 Fine Art not elsewhere classified
W Creative Arts and Design > W130 Sculpture
Divisions:College of Arts > School of Fine & Performing Arts > School of Fine & Performing Arts (Fine Arts)
ID Code:19062
Deposited On:18 Oct 2015 19:24

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