Nomadic Encounters with Art and Art Education DISSERTATION
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Nomadic Encounters with Art and Art Education DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy In the Graduate School of the Ohio State University By Timothy Joseph Smith, M.F.A Graduate Program in Arts Administration, Education and Policy The Ohio State University 2016 Dissertation Committee: Sydney Walker, Advisor Jack Richardson Jennifer Richardson Copyright by Timothy Joseph Smith 2016 Abstract This dissertation is both a philosophical inquiry and series of case studies that explore how artists’ practices navigate and negotiate the forces and intensities of chaos and the structuring order of the world to create the conditions for the emergence of something new in the artmaking process. The philosophical inquiry is rooted in Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s concepts related to the encounter, both as a radical perspective on the emergence of thought, and as a concept to be put to work to create a new terrains of thinking through artmaking. As a case study, this dissertation examines the artist practices of Tehching Hsieh and Nina Katchadourian, as well as a self-reflective inquiry on my own practice as an art student several years ago. These practices are approached as art-based counterparts through two philosophical paths. Deleuze’s early writing conceptualizes a first power of thought as a pre-subjective emergence through the encounter. In his later writing with Guattari, Deleuze turns to the encounter as generative nomadic process which emerges as a productive, paradoxical engagement of territorializing and deterritorializing assemblages that gives rise to new expanses of thinking through which creation and learning takes form as artmaking. The philosophical inquiry takes form through the various conceptual entwinements of the nomadic encounter in analyzing the artist practices in the case studies, which in turn raises questions surrounding how art educators might consider the ii implications of these processes in creating a milieu through which new mindsets might emerge for teachers and students to experiment with these concepts through artmaking. The primary thesis of this study is that artists and teachers are constantly struggling to create new terrains of thinking through artmaking in the face of the various systems and structures that reinforce a dogmatic image of thought and constrains the movements and flows of creative transformation. As such, this study looks toward a new nomadic milieu of art education, through which the subjectivity of teachers and students are co-constituted through an experimentation through the lived experience of artmaking—one that reconfigures a teaching and learning environment that is always on the lookout to disrupt our habits of thought, and avoiding adherence to predetermined outcomes in artmaking. iii Acknowledgments I wish to give unending thanks and appreciation to my advisor, Sydney Walker. You introduced me to new lines of thinking and artmaking. I never imagined that my life would change walking into a classroom early on a summer morning in 2011, and that transformation is reflected in this dissertation. I express my gratitude for your tremendous patience, insight, and encouragement throughout these years in both my MFA and PhD studies. I am grateful to Jack Richardson, for allowing me the space to get lost in our many animated and inspiring conversations over coffee, and for your incisive notes as this study evolved. Thank you Jennifer Richardson for serving on my committee and offering illuminating notes. I will never forget that you were the one who planted the idea of enrolling in this program at a time when I never thought I could reach this level of scholarship Thank you to George Rush and Dani Levanthal for your very important feedback and your dedication to this process in its candidacy stages. Sincere thanks to Michael Kellner for your incredibly thoughtful words of advice and amazing patience in sharing your own experiences as a PhD student with me. Your grace and insight in conversations gave me the confidence to believe in myself in pursuing this path. Clayton Funk, thank you for your words of wisdom, your very practical feedback, and iv especially for your friendship through this process. Thank you to the AAEP faculty, Debbie Smith-Shank, Karen Hutzel, Candace Stout, and Christine Ballangee-Morris, for your ideas, encouragement, and feedback throughout this program. All of my friends and colleagues at OSU, particularly Ani Javian, Ry Wharton, Liam O’Connor, Sage Lewis, Felipe Castelblanco, Michael Morris, Chris Jeansonne, Kelsi Stoltenow, Kate Collins, and Juuso Tervo, thank you for such wonderful conversations and inspiring friendship. To Stephanie Dant, I am indebted to you for believing in me for so many years, especially when I was not yet ready to believe in myself. Thank you for your feedback when my writing was in its early, ‘rough’ stages. I am truly honored to be able to return that favor now. To my dear family (Pat, Clare, Molly, Krissy, Mike, Tatum, and Tessa) and friends in Columbus and Boston, I am so very grateful that you were (and always will be) there for me. v Vita 1998...............................................................B.A. Political Science, Providence College e 2012...............................................................M.F.A Studio Art, The Ohio State University 2013 - present................................................ Graduate Teaching Assistant, The Ohio State University Field of Study Major Field: Arts Administration, Education and Policy vi Table of Contents Abstract................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements................................................................................................ iv Vita......................................................................................................................... vi Table of Contents.................................................................................................. vii Preface: Climbing Cappanawalla.............................................................................1 Chapter 1: Navigations and Negotiations ..............................................................12 Statement of the Problem.................................................................................14 Research Questions..........................................................................................16 Method of the Study.........................................................................................16 Nomadic Entwinements with Deleuze and Guattari........................................19 Chapter 2: Encountering the Dogmatic Image of Thought....................................26 Assumptions About Learning ..........................................................................27 A Different Kind of Learning ..........................................................................28 What is the Dogmatic Image of Thought?.......................................................31 Deleuze’s Ontology of Creation ......................................................................37 Encounters in Thought and the Creation of Concepts .....................................38 Difference and Immanence..............................................................................44 The Virtual, the Actual, and Becoming ...........................................................45 vii The Creative Transformation of Experimentation and Experience .................50 Becoming-Other...............................................................................................57 Chapter 3: Nomadic Encounters ............................................................................61 Logos and Nomos ............................................................................................66 Qualitative Multiplicity....................................................................................68 The Rhizome....................................................................................................73 Territorial Assemblages and Deterritorializing Lines of Flight.......................77 Smooth and Striated Spaces.............................................................................83 Molar and Molecular Lines..............................................................................88 Self-Awareness and the Creative Potential of Encounters ..............................92 Chapter 4: Art and Philosophy...............................................................................96 A Division of Labor: Philosophy, Art, and Science ........................................98 Deleuze and Guattari’s Notion of Art............................................................101 The Legacy of Conceptual Art.......................................................................110 Deleuze and Guattari and the Problem with Conceptual Art.........................113 Reconciling Deleuze and Guattari with Contemporary Art?.........................116 Becoming-Other of Art..................................................................................118 Chapter 5: Case Study One – Tehching Hsieh.....................................................125 The Dogmatic Image of Thought...................................................................130 A Jump as Encounter .....................................................................................137 viii When Thinking Becomes