| 1. |
- Andersson, Cecilia, 1961-
(författare)
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Rådjur och raketer : Gatukonst som estetisk produktion och kreativ praktik i det offentliga rummet
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyse the visual expressions of Street Art that occurs in the public space, and by doing so, to study this specifi c practice, and also elucidate the relation between public space as a democratic idea, a place for freedom of speech and as a planned, aesthetically shaped place. The intention is to throw light upon a central part of many young peoples lives in a didactic aspect. In this thesis I discuss Street Art as an informal image making in public space that young people use as tools to make meaning, but also as a form of resistance. The methodologies used in the study are ethnography and visual ethnography, where observational studies of Street Art as practice, interviews and interpretation of photographs (my own, and my informants) are performed and analysed. Theoretically, the study has a didactic and semiotic approach but I also rely on Cultural Studies as a research fi eld in order to be able to pick up different kinds of theories. From three platforms; public space and public place and places for Street Art, aesthetic learning processes within this specifi c practice, and fi nally the expanded fi eld of Art and the similarities and differences between formal Art and Street Art I have outlined four themes; ephemerality, the criteria for Street Art practice, how the work is being done, as a collective and individual practice, the struggle of space in public space, and fi nally high and low in Art and culture. By describing and analysing this informal image making light is thrown upon the aesthetic learning process that occurs, the didactic aspect of this practice and the communication that the images articulate. As a result, the study shows that Street Art, in spite of its illegal mark, points out that it is an aesthetic production and a creative practice that consists of resistance, meaning making, achieving knowledge through practice, and above all a way to use the city, to become a part of the city. The thesis contributes with the suggestion that this informal aesthetic learning process is a way to form identity, make meaning, take part of public space, and through symbolic resistance demand ones rights of expression.
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| 2. |
- Johansson, Carina
(författare)
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Visby visuellt : föreställningar om en plats med utgångspunkt i bilder och kulturarv
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Syftet med den här avhandlingen är att studera de roller bilder har i skapandet av dominerande föreställningar om en plats. Exemplen är hämtade från Visby, en stad med välkända medeltida lämningar på ön Gotland i Östersjön. Teoretiska verktyg kommer från kulturarvspolitik, som belyser kulturarv som konstruktioner med objekt värdeladdade av specifika aktörer i särskilda syften och från visuella kulturstudier som fokuserar hur vi betraktar vår omvärld. Bilder och berättelser skapar socialt konstruerade seenden och bortseenden. Dessa seenden, skapar i sin tur mindscapes tillsammans med upplevelser, drömmar, minnen, medierade budskap och ”före-bilder”. Det är Visbys mindscapes som fokuseras här. Med utgångspunkt i Visbys tio-i-topp-motiv diskuteras bilder hämtade från tre grupper av aktörer, kulturarvsbilder, konstbilder och turismbilder. Begrepp som autenticitet, tilltal och modus är viktiga i förståelsen av hur Visbys ikoner tillkommer bland annat genom upprepning av ett litet antal bildmotiv. Då medeltida lämningar och Visbys guldålder som Hansestad ofta ingår i människors mindscapes döljs och överskuggas andra tidsperioder, sociala kontexter och miljöer i Visby. Fotografier, målningar, teckningar, tryck och souvenirer är kraftfulla redskap i den processen. Detta resulterar i att 9/10 av Visby hamnar i skymundan genom stadens status som en medeltida ikon. Den historiska innerstaden har också fått anpassa sig efter föreställningarna om densamma.
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| 3. |
- Kingsepp, Eva, 1961-
(författare)
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Nazityskland i populärkulturen : Minne, myt, medier
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The study follows the tradition of Cultural Studies, with a special interest in visual culture, and examines how history is being represented in different media, how these representations are interpreted by the audience, and how the outcome functions in the individual knowledge-building about this particular era. Here the notion of what is often called a collective, or cultural, memory, is important; both as a vehicle for a dominant discourse on memory and as a counterpart to individual memory, which might be more or less in agreement or opposition with the dominant. A central theme is the examination of how elements of the mythical enters a historical narrative, how they affect this, and how this is being interpreted by the audience. The media texts examined are mostly films (fiction and docudramas as well as documentaries) and computer games, although there are also some examples from role-playing games and alternative popular music. The audience part of the study consists of 11 in-depth interviews and a number of additional informants. I propose that the media material indicates a convergence between myth in the traditional, religiously connected sense, and in the secularized sense of Roland Barthes. The former is made visible by the persistent use of elements of a clearly metaphysical nature, while the latter is made clear through the almost omnipresent authoritarian character of the media presentations. The material in its entirety clearly shows the importance of transmediality, transmedia storytelling and knowledge communities (cf Henry Jenkins) within the context. The audience examined expresses a highly critical attitude towards what is considered to be a “mainstream” media representation of World War II and Nazi Germany that – according to them – transforms the gruesome historical reality into cheap thrills and entertainment. Thus, it becomes fundamentally problematic to look upon the media representations of the theme as an expression of collective memory.
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| 4. |
- Orrghen, Anna, 1972-
(författare)
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Den medierade konsten : Scenen, samtalet, samhället
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation takes its starting point in three Swedish art exhibitions which contain so called new media: Avatar (1998), Bäst före (1999) and Electrohype (2000-2006). These exhibitions take place in a time which according to media scholars is significant; media society, media age, media landscape, image culture, media culture and media space is a handful of concepts being used to characterize this particular time. These exhibitions contain new media, thematically or as an apparatus, and are to be considered as expressions of the contemporary media society. With the starting point in how printed media, radio, television and internet discuss Avatar, Bäst före and Electrohype the aim of this dissertation is to examine how the contemporary media society is thematized in the mediated discourse of art and new media in Sweden, formwise as well as thematically, during the turn of the century 2000. The overall intention is to shed light upon the pattern of tensions that are brought to the fore when new media emerge in the society. The societal context of the exhibitions is defined as a media society. The research object of the dissertation are mediation processes related to Avatar, Bäst före and Electrohype. The role of the exhibitions in the study are as discourse producing events. The material consists of written, auditive and visual texts from the mass media that relates to the three art exhibitions. By using textual analysis this dissertation puts to the fore spatial dimension of the synaesthetical practices of looking, the embodied vision, the compression of time and space, the importance of learning oneself how to see phenomena related to new media. This describes the contemporary media society as ephemeral and changeable, at the same time as it proves to have a continuity. It is vital to stress the importance of not understanding this characterization in terms of binary oppositions. On the contrary, it is their parallel existence that contribute to the elasticity significant of the contemporary media society.
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| 5. |
- Strandroth, Cecilia, 1974-
(författare)
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In Search of the Pure Photograph : A Historiographic Study of the Farm Security Administration, Walker Evans, and the Survey Histories of Photography
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The photographic archive of the American New Deal agency Farm Security Administration (created 1935-1943) occupies an important place in the history of photography as an exemplar of documentary photography and as symbol of the Great Depression. This dissertation is a historiographic study of this narrative of FSA photography, which investigates the archive's monumental position in the historical narration and demonstrates other possible readings. The first chapter delineates the dominating tropes of the narrative: the importance of the photographers' collective effort, the idea of the photographs as a collective portrait of America, the fear of propaganda, and describes the FSA canon and iconography.The three following chapters construct other potential narratives about the archive. The first shows that while the regular FSA canon is limited to photographs of waywardness and misery in rural America, the archive also contains photographs of modernity and development. The second shows that these photographs of modernity have not been made part of the narrative since they are explicitly motivated by politics and thus could be considered propaganda. The third narrative shows the reception of the most famous FSA photographer, Walker Evans, to have its foundation in the same resistance towards propaganda and politics. The study thus demonstrates that FSA photography was so much more than what is narrated in the history of photography. The survey histories are formulated within a modernist discourse of art, from an ideal of the media specific: each medium should strive towards a purification of its own interior qualities. The history of photography is thus narrated as a history of photographers' exploration of the medium itself. In the case of the FSA, the result is a narrative which considers the photographers' quest for more images the only important thing, which describes their practice as neutral, apolitical and pure.
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