Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Johung, Jennifer

Titel

Replacements: From the primordial hut to the digital network

Ort / Verlag

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

Erscheinungsjahr

2008

Quelle

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• In our contemporary moment, we are able to travel great distances over actual land and through virtual space, whether by choice, in response to natural catastrophe or under duress of political crisis. What does it mean, now in light of our global dispersions and temporary situations, to be and belong to a specific site, to be and belong at home? How can we be in one place where we might find ourselves lingering, however temporarily, with others without fully celebrating our release from territorial borders or longing impossibly for a return to tightly localized community formations? Art installations and architectural constructions that together address our increasingly limitless expansion into space while also recognizing our desire to be and belong in place provide a way to begin thinking about these questions. In response to the ever increasing expansion of spatial borders and social networks, contemporary art and architectural practices have offered models and systems for temporarily situated dwelling that are capable of continuously reconnecting us to each other and to our ever-changing spatial environment. In dialogue, art and architecture attend to our need for both stasis and mobility, in full recognition and acceptance of our globalized spatial expansion. In particular, site-specific art that is continuously being re-installed in various locations and nomadic architecture that is structured to be portable together suggest pathways for bodies to partially return home, revisiting specific places and renewing the material constructions found there. Addressing the entwinement of these artistic and architectural practices from a performance studies perspective importantly emphasizes the body's vulnerable relationship to another body and to the built environment, a momentary connection that nonetheless determines a potential experience of belonging. Through this interdisciplinary lens, Replacements acknowledges that we want to be able to move across spatial boundaries, while also considering the ways in which we may want to linger and belong in some of those places.