Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2014 Performing Joseph Cornell's chronotopes of assemblage Sarah Kathryn Jackson Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the Communication Commons Recommended Citation Jackson, Sarah Kathryn, "Performing Joseph Cornell's chronotopes of assemblage" (2014). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 3574. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/3574 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. PERFORMING JOSEPH CORNELL’S CHRONOTOPES OF ASSEMBLAGE A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical Collage in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of Communication Studies by Sarah Kathryn Jackson B.S., Southern Illinois University, 2006 M.A., Louisiana State University, 2009 May 2014 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are so many people that have helped to make this project possible. I am so grateful for all of the guidance and support. I am truly lucky to have you in my life. First of all to my advisor, my friend, and my mentor, Patricia Suchy. I do not have the words to thank you. I could not have completed this process without your encouragement and wisdom. Thank you for teaching me the importance and magical potentials in embarking on a creative dissertation, showing me that attention to detail and patience pays off. I have learned so much from working with you and am so grateful to be in the same field with you. I owe you all of the gratitude I have. To Tracy Shaffer and Ruth Bowman for their commitment and guidance through this process. Ruth, thank you for taking time from your retirement to be on my committee. Tracy, thank you for taking time from your sabbatical to sit on my committee. I have learned a great deal from both of you over the years both personally and professionally. I can’t thank you enough for supporting me. And, thank you to Susan Ryan and Elsie Michie for sitting on my committee. Thank you to Craig Gingrich-Philbrook who opened my eyes to the power of performance and who has been there for me over all of these years and seen me grow from a young undergraduate into who I am today. I will forever be grateful for the day I decided to my first class with you. To my friends, my comrades, my partners in crime: Raquel Polanco, Rebecca Walker, Benjamin Haas, Travis Brisini, Emily Graves, Ben Powell, Brianne Waychoff, Holley Vaughn, John LeBret, Jade Huell, Ariel Gratch, Lindsay Michalik, Mollye Deloach, Vince Celluci, Pierre ii Cazaubon, Danielle McGeough, Derek Mudd, Brian Leslie, Lisa Flanagan, and Brandon Nicholas. And to all of my SIU friend’s past and present. You all are the best people I know. Thank you to my Métaphysique cast for helping me create our beautiful and bizarre show. To all of my SIU friends who helped create Craig’s magical staging of Métaphysique. To my family for their unbelievable support. Thank you Mom and Dad for your unconditional love and encouragement. I continue to realize how lucky I am to have you as my parents. Thank you for being in my corner no matter what. To my brothers: Ben and Kristian. You are the best big brothers a girl could ask for. Thank you for being my role models and letting me call you at all hours to ask you for advice, listening to me whine, making me laugh, and always encouraging me. To my sister-in-law, Alecia, and my almost sister-in-law Alexis for being amazing, strong, and kind women. And, to my grandfathers, Papa Dewey and Grandpa Jackson. Their value of education, kindness, and perseverance motivated me as a young girl and still motivates me today. I have felt your warm, encouraging presence over these years. To Chris Shipman: my love, my Man Friday. You gave me love and tenderness when I needed it. You helped me to keep my chin up, my eyes to the future, and always reminded me of the magic I felt the first time I saw a Cornell box in person throughout the whole process. I could have never done this without you. As Stevie Nicks would say, “You are the poet of my heart.” To Jack, Adele, and George for their quiet encouragement and talent for making me laugh. And finally, to the soon to be newest member of our little family, Finnegan. She doesn’t know it yet, but she gave me the final push of motivation I needed to get this project done and make it something I’m proud of. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................ ii ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... vi CHAPTER ONE: AN INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................1 Joseph Cornell’s Creative Biography ......................................................................4 General Artistic Influences and Approaches ...........................................................5 Bakhtin’s Chronotope ............................................................................................13 The Chronotope of Product versus the Chronotopes of Performance ...................14 Cornell’s Assemblage Chronotopes .......................................................................16 Map of Chapters .....................................................................................................22 Significance ............................................................................................................26 Limitations .............................................................................................................28 CHAPTER TWO: THE WANDERING CHRONOTOPE ................................................30 Wandering as Aesthetic Practice ...........................................................................31 From Creative Inspiration to Aesthetic Practice ....................................................35 Poetically Engaging the City .................................................................................36 Wandering: Place and Memory .............................................................................39 Immortalization of Place and Memory through Film ............................................43 Cornell and Creative Cartography .........................................................................46 CHAPTER THREE: GRAMMAR OF THE LEGS ..........................................................49 Wandering New Orleans .........................................................................................50 Collaging Memory ..................................................................................................63 CHAPTER FOUR: THE ARCHIVING CHRONOTOPE ................................................72 The Archiving Chronotope ....................................................................................73 Theorizing the Archive ..........................................................................................74 Cornell’s Archives .................................................................................................76 Dynamic Archiving or the Archive at Play ............................................................84 CHAPTER FIVE: THE FILMIC AND DIGITAL ARCHIVE .........................................88 Film as Ephemeral Archive ...................................................................................88 The Digital Archive ...............................................................................................93 Nebula: The Powdered Sugar Princess ..................................................................94 CHAPTER SIX: THE COLLAGING CHRONOTOPE ..................................................102 Time and Space in Film .......................................................................................103 Cornell as Film Enthusiast ...................................................................................108 Cornell as Film Collector .....................................................................................109 Cornell as Filmmaker ...........................................................................................114 Film Scenarios .....................................................................................................114 The Collage Films ................................................................................................115 iv Cornell’s Collage Process ....................................................................................123 The Heterochronotopicity of Cornell’s Collage Films ........................................124 CHAPTER SEVEN: SONG OF THE NIGHTINGALE .................................................126 CHAPTER EIGHT: THE ASSEMBLAGE CHRONOTOPE .........................................136 Theorizing Assemblage .......................................................................................136 Assemblage Performance .....................................................................................138 Métaphysique d’Éphemera: A Performance Inspired by Joseph Cornell ............141 Assembling the Performance