The desire of the medium

Boumeester, Marc (2016)

Doctoral Thesis

'What is the desire of the medium?' is both a rhetorical question and a fundamental one. The rhetorical question serves as a framework for investigating the interplay between the artist/designer and the medium during the creative act. Arts and design operate on the level of problematising: they do not reproduce the visible, they make visible. By this, I am suggesting that there is no preconceived objective criterion: all perception needs to be produced. A critical supposition is that the complexity of the world cannot be reduced to either macro- or micro-systems or models (anti-representation). The only interesting route to pursue is to investigate what a medium does (asignification), not what it is (essentialism). My interest lies in affective capacities, not inherent properties and their respective place in any taxonomy or ontological setting. This requires the exploration of a non-hierarchical, flat ontology based on the equality of all parties (human and nonhuman). I propose four backgrounds against which to investigate the desire of the medium: ethoscape (which deals with affect), ideoscape (which deals with concepts), mediascape (forms of expression) and technoscape (forms of content). The desire of the medium is located somewhere in the middle between affect, concept, expression and content.

• Assemblage
• Somaesthetic
• Intensive
• Heuristics
• Agency
• Asignification
• Medium
• Desire
• Deleuze
• Affect

• All authors: Boumeester, Marc
• Supervisor: Zijlmans, C.J.M.
• Co-supervisor: Radman, A.
• Qualification: Doctor (dr.)
• Awarding Institution: Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS), Faculty of Humanities, Leiden University
• Date: 2016-03-09
• Sponsorship: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague. Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society