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Orlan/Deleuze : coporeal/(in)corporeal

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posted on 2023-05-26, 17:18 authored by Moss, SE
\Orlan I Deleuze\" comprises an introduction three chapters and a conclusion. The introduction surveys the French performance-artist Orlan who for the past thirty-five years has worked with the materiality of her own body to create a \"body\" of contemporary art work which has provoked the art world in a number of ways. In the 1990's Orlan combined elements and recurring themes from her past work to create a \"performance for the future\" titled The Reincarnation of Saint Or/an. This series provides a recurring focus throughout the dissertation. Commentators have invoked a diversity of discursive frameworks to explicate the multiple elements of Orlan's Reincarnation. However the failure of these critiques to provide a sustained reading remains unsatisfying. The introduction signals that the conceptual schemas of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari will be activated in order to clear the ground of metaphysical concepts so that the affect of Orlan's corporeal practice can be apprehended in a sustained way. Chapter One situates Orlan as a concept-event intervening against the problem of a representational culture that portrays the body as ideal and seamless. Spinoza's formulation \"What can a body do?\" provides an informing question that enables a way of engaging with Orlan's corporeal strategy. This chapter modulates Orlan's art through a Deleuzean framework and discusses how the event of Orlan's non-face counter-actualises the designation Woman as Face. Chapter Two surveys Deleuze--Guattari's concepts offaciality and the incorporeal transformation effectuated by order-words. The alliance of the market and the socius in sustaining and circulating desired images of the face is also identified. The rules of the assemblage are applied to explicate Orlan's practice and the chapter presents an argument that Orlan enacts a becoming-minor of the face. Chapter Three situates Orlan's multi-medial practice as \"cinematic\" and approaches Deleuze's concept of the time-image as co-extensive with Orlan's corporeal art through the revelation of the unthought within thought. The spectatorial responses to the reception and viewing of Orlan's mediatised performances are also surveyed. The conclusion considers the ontological premise of contemporary art. In response to the uncomprehending and negative reactions to Orlan's project three concrete rules are presented for contemporary art."

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Copyright 2003 the author - The University is continuing to endeavour to trace the copyright owner(s) and in the meantime this item has been reproduced here in good faith. We would be pleased to hear from the copyright owner(s). Thesis (MA)--University of Tasmania, 2003. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 124-129)

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