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| Gulsen Bal |
In this site, you'll find background information about
me and my research, visual material of my work, and updated information regarding my publications. Email me at: gbal@artserve.net |
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| Title of Proposed Research: 'Complicated Mirrors' Through the combination of video and installation and theoretical analysis the research aims to: explore in art practice the effect of inversion in the subject/object relations within the context of the commodification of representation; examine the notions of spectacle and simulacrum and their transformative potential in this context. ABSTRACT My investigation will be centred on the discourses of the spectacle and the simulacrum (as defined by J.Baudrillard in Symbolic Exchange & Death 1976) based on an analysis of the commodification process, primarily in the field of time based and installation practices. I shall also explore the way in which the commodification process in late capitalism has reached a stage where social life as a whole is organized around the commodity-spectacle. Here the term 'commodity-spectacle' refers to a consequence of the commodification process where there is an emergence of a realm of 'image reality' breaking the simple dichotomy between image and reality. The condition whereby the subject is reflected 'as in a mirror' where there is fusion between subject and object, where it is impossible to distinguish the subject from object. This fusion may also be taken as a metaphorical experience parallel to the subject object inversion in the commodification process. Out of this emerges the concept that the representation of the self is not actual nor constant but virtual and variable in that it displaces the dichotomy between image and reality. In the simulacrum, a 'virtual' world presents itself to the spectator to be experienced as if it were a direct contact with reality and, in the context of commodification, this becomes an immersive spectacle which suppresses any remaining division between subject and object. The practical and theoretical work will be integrated through examination of the symbolic experience of the work by reference to the core theoretical concepts defined within the research. In particular this will be informed by the theoretical concepts of G.Deleuze. The practical research will also examine the way in which the medium effaces the relationship of the sign to its means (or method) of production remaining only as an invisible source of power presupposed by the existence of the image. That will include, for example, unexpected camera movements and discontinuous edits within the video material, which point up the mediating agencies of photography, video and sound within the simulacrum. The practical work will explore the changed meaning of representations in space through the capacity of the digital to eliminate hierarchies (equalise values through digitalization) and to de-spatialize object relations through reconstructing their spatial relationships. This will be achieved by exploiting the manipulative capacities of digital image and video processing. The digital multimedia interactive video installation work will also explore new methodological analysis of interrelated concepts of spectacle and simulacrum and their transformative potential in the context of the inversion effect of the subject/object relations. Gulsen Bal |
List of Selected |
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