Tactical practices for locating intimacy

Transcription

1 University of Iowa Iowa Research Online Theses and Dissertations Fall 2012 Tactical practices for locating intimacy Joshua James Hoeks University of Iowa Copyright 2012 Joshua Hoeks This thesis is available at Iowa Research Online: Recommended Citation Hoeks, Joshua James. "Tactical practices for locating intimacy." MFA (Master of Fine Arts) thesis, University of Iowa, Follow this and additional works at: Part of the Art Practice Commons

2 TACTICAL PRACTICES FOR LOCATING INTIMACY by Joshua James Hoeks A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Fine Arts degree in Art in the Graduate College of The University of Iowa December 2012 Thesis Supervisor: Associate Professor Isabel Barbuzza

3 Graduate College The University of Iowa Iowa City, Iowa CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL MASTER S THESIS This is to certify that the Master s thesis of Joshua James Hoeks has been approved by the Examining Committee for the thesis requirement for the Master of Fine Arts degree in Art at the December 2012 graduation. Thesis Committee: Isabel Barbuzza, Thesis Supervisor Craig Adcock Sarah Kanouse Jim Snitzer

4 To you, for you are joy ii

5 The universe suddenly regained infinite value in my eyes. Proust We all came into this world naked. The rest is all drag. RuPaul iii

6 TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES...v TACTICAL PRACTICES FOR LOCATING INTIMACY... 1 INTRODUCTION...2 iv

7 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Untitled... 1 Figure 2. Untitled... 6 Figure 3. Untitled... 7 Figure 4. Untitled... 7 Figure 5. Untitled... 8 Figure 6. Untitled... 8 Figure 7. Untitled... 9 Figure 8. Untitled... 9 Figure 9. Untitled Figure 10. Untitled Figure 11. Untitled Figure 12. Untitled Figure 13. Untitled Figure 14. Untitled Figure 15. Untitled Figure 16. Untitled Figure 17. Untitled Figure 18. Untitled Figure 19. Untitled Figure 20. Untitled v

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11 1 TACTICAL PRACTICES FOR LOCATING INTIMACY Figure 1. Untitled

12 2 INTRODUCTION The story goes that immersion into the sophisticated hermeneutics of academia will liberate the individual and by extension society from the barbarism of ignorance. In practice however, the contemporary educational system in the United States contributes to socio-politico-economic modes of being that work to contradict such emancipatory claims. Massive debt accrued from student loans and credit card companies that aggressively target students, all within a job market that is completely flooded has become the norm for most college students. Free market ideology of neoliberalism has rendered the United States educational system a travesty of its idealistic claims. This disjuncture in praxis, between the liberatory ideology of education and the production of a new class of enlightened peons, can be difficult to perceive at times due to the ways in which it is entangled in everyday life: the world that we inherit has a tendency to be normalized, making our capacity to imagine alternate ways of being far from easy. Thus, if as a culture we continue to hold the educational system to be an integral, even primary cog to the liberatory processes then it seems imperative that we locate practices that contest its oppressive tendencies. Our position is not that education is intrinsically antithetical to a liberatory project, rather that our cultural institutions should not be assumed to promote a more egalitarian society. Indeed, it has become clear that not only has the capitalist machine opened-up new markets by privatizing social institutions but that it has been achieved with our blessing. How does such blatant exploitation occur with barely even a modicum of resistance? Foucault

13 3 argued that power is not a thing but a relation, and that these relations are deployed not only through the various disciplinary functions we associate with juridical institutions but also on a discursive level. We feel that crucial to a project of recuperating education is the nurturing of the critical intellect and for us, the practice of art becomes meaningful by the ways in which it promotes these mindsets. Yet if aesthetics is to contribute to liberatory project it seems important that what art strives for is more than just the liberation of autonomy and authenticity as expressed through the stylization of an identity but must also provide a means for attuning to ways of living that encourage a more egalitarian existence for all beings, human and non-human alike. What is at stake here? Happiness. As Paulo Freire noted, one s ability to attain happiness my very well be dependent upon the well being of the other. He theorized that to embark on a liberatory project that seeks to emancipate the oppressed is to simultaneously set in motion a process of emancipating the oppressors. How does this translate in terms of an expanded notion of ecology? Timothy Morton argues, ecological awareness can no longer be denied in era when humans are coming face to face with massive objects that are intimately connected to our behavior: climate change, radiated crust, oceanic plastic trash heaps.it might be necessary, Morton suggests that we do away with ontological perspectives that are based on metaphysical notions of difference, such as subject/object, nature/culture, male/female, and so on in order to liberate human subjectivity. This may seem counterintuitive, incompatible, absurd, and possibly even

14 4 ethically reckless: to liberate humans we have to throw out the very idea of human and all of the uniqueness that we grant ourselves as the sole possessors of consciousness. To interrogate subjectivity from an ecological point of view is to consider: where has anthropocentrism gotten us? The place we call home, planet earth, has been rendered toxic with pollutants that span time-space in ways that we can hardly fathom, the mass extinction of countless species, and human relations that are hierarchical, exploitive, and oppressive. Given this ecological crisis that were are already immersed, it becomes imperative that we interrogate the philosophical underpinnings that have contributed to such a state of affairs. Morton suggests it may be helpful to think about ecology in terms of queer theory. If we look at how nature behaves, rarely if ever does it fit into binary categories. Rather, it behaves in ways similar to the ways described by queer theory. Judith Butler considers the differences between normative conceptions about gender and the types of sexual behaviors that are actually performed in everyday life. She argues that there is no prediscursive state that can be described ontologically gender essentialism does not align with real life. Similarly, Morton argues that the idea of nature may not serve us well, due to the way it maintains fantasies such as wilderness that do not help us develop a more nuanced sense of ecology. From this perspective notions such as environment, outside, nature, and wilderness are seen to be a set of discursive power relations that might serve to advance inegalitarian ways of being, with such social constructs like nationalism, gender, racial, private property and so on. So how might aesthetics contribute to an expanded sense of ecological and how is educational system implicated in this processes?

15 5 One way might be to consider the work of Michel de Certeau. Similar to a queer ecology, a point of view that asks us to consider the ways in which actors perform rather than the discursive categories that attempt to normalize behavior, de Certeau asks us to consider the everyday practices of people. As such, it is an investigation or a recuperation of agency expressed through the various manners in which people use objects and move in places that differ from intended design or ideological intent. So in this way de Certeau reimagines power relations and argues that even though power and its various disciplinary strategies, capitalist market, advertising, government, medicine, religion, seem totalizing by the way in which late capitalism has moved into the realm of immaterial production its power is not equivalent to a loss of the subjects various expressions of agency. That is to say, the material production of places and objects and the deployment of discourses that attempt to determine how we use them does not account for how they are actually used. This type of approach might be expanded on and used as a way in which to intervene in society. We feel that through a broad set of art practices, that include, but are not limited to collaboration, selforganization, hacking, DIY, slowing-down, and so on might serve to develop intimate relations not only with other humans but also non-humans.

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30 20! BECOMING-PROFESSIONAL: NOTES ON THE UNIVERSITY AND THE PRODUCTION OF MFAs by Heath Schultz A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Masters of Arts degree in the Graduate College of The University of Iowa December 2011 Thesis Supervisor: Assistant Professor Sarah Kanouse Figure 23. Untitled

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41 31 FREE ART, FREE LOVE, FREE MONEY: A SCHOO1 COMMUNIQUÉ by Kathleen Grace McGowan A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Fine Arts degree in Art in the Graduate College of The University of Iowa May 2010 Thesis Supervisor: Associate Professor Jon Winet Figure 36. Untitled

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