Before 1936, musical practices in Palestine relied heavily on colloquial poetry, especially in rural communities, which constituted most of the population. During the first half of the twentieth... Show moreBefore 1936, musical practices in Palestine relied heavily on colloquial poetry, especially in rural communities, which constituted most of the population. During the first half of the twentieth century, Palestinian music evolved as a reflection of the social, cultural, and political evolution of Palestinians. Palestinian music-making evolved exponentially resulting in the expansion of various folk tunes into shaʿbī songs, the creation of the Palestinian qaṣīda song genre, new compositions of instrumental music for traditional and Western music formations, the establishment of choirs and children music programing, and active engagement in composing in the styles of the dominant Egyptian genres of the time as well as muwashshaḥāt.In 1948, the vast majority of Palestinians were displaced, and musicians found themselves at the frontier of implementing new political and cultural visions in the countries of Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq. Therefore, the continuation of the musical narrative in the West Bank did not seem attainable. By the early 1950s, Palestinian musicians and intellectuals developed a vocabulary that reflected the topography, scenery, culture, dialects, and history of al-Mashriq, one that is independent of Egypt’s. Their input, intuition, experience, and convictions of various Palestinian musicians helped to make the music scene in Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan what they are today. Show less
The PhD project Territoriality and Choreography in Site-Situated Performance is conducted through artistic practice and theoretical inquiry. The project performatively activates a series of... Show moreThe PhD project Territoriality and Choreography in Site-Situated Performance is conducted through artistic practice and theoretical inquiry. The project performatively activates a series of residential sites in Canada and the Netherlands. Site-situated performance refers to an artistic process that begins and ends on-site, working within the specific conditions of a location. The key terms territoriality and choreography here represent concepts and practices that express and navigate space-time(s). The project animates qualities of territoriality through a choreographed encounter between host-dancer, guest-audience and site-performance. Written and explored from the perspective of a Canadian settler scholar and artist, the project attunes to the material and discursive agency of the guest, host and site within colonial and settler colonial conditions. The project develops a critical and creative mode of engagement with the social, material and political characteristics of a site and with the world-building potential of performance. Show less
Musicians spend a significant amount of time practicing. Over the years, intuitions and understandings accumulate that may be difficult not only to share, but also to make sense of. Musika is an... Show moreMusicians spend a significant amount of time practicing. Over the years, intuitions and understandings accumulate that may be difficult not only to share, but also to make sense of. Musika is an exercise in musical metaphysics, which attempts to articulate and contextualize some of these intuitions and understandings, expanding the territory on which thinking about music is familiarly performed. With the presumption that consciousness is fundamental, this dissertation proposes that music is a form of consciousness, which enters in a mutualistic relationship with sentients to acquire experience and to propagate its evolution. ‘Musika’ is defined as a consciousness organization cultivating sound-based forms and intelligences.Incorporating and integrating insights from physics, philosophy and psychology with a cultural-musicological attitude, Musika is concerned with contextualizing and validating the artistic experience and its practice-derived tacit knowledge. A contribution to the fields of philosophy of music and music ontology, and specifically, to the musicological discourse of musical meaning, the study explores how music and consciousness trace the same fundamental process of evolution, constructing different information-based realities. Show less
The Guava Platform, which is at the centre of this PhD thesis, was initiated in 2014 as a conceptual framework of my art practice and research. The aim of the Guava Platform is to research and... Show moreThe Guava Platform, which is at the centre of this PhD thesis, was initiated in 2014 as a conceptual framework of my art practice and research. The aim of the Guava Platform is to research and create possible techniques of art-actions that are part of my quest to continue to live in the conflicted landscape, east of the Mediterranean, as an artist.This dissertation assembles the Guava art-actions: i.e. a series of three short films, an online radio station, two performances, a geotagging website, and a scent collection as well as the research into a combined space. Both the art-actions and the research convey the Guava Platform. The leading questions of the thesis are: How can time-based art-actions in a conflicted landscape induce and take part in an embodiment of constructive political imagination? If both physical and conceptual ‘movement’ are the actions’ impetus, how can these actions adjust the socio-political impasse of the landscape? And how can they contribute to a socio-political discussion of the landscape I live in?The outcome of this research is presented on a website. Here, the different components, the art-actions and texts, are not bound to a hierarchical relationship between theory and practice that might restrict their possibility to interact. Instead, the website enables the visitor to navigate between the different artistic and discursive elements in a nonlinear way. Show less
This dissertation commences from the concept of poiesis, informed chiefly by Hannah Arendt’s use of the term in The Human Condition (1958) to indicate a form of creativity married to craftsmanship.... Show moreThis dissertation commences from the concept of poiesis, informed chiefly by Hannah Arendt’s use of the term in The Human Condition (1958) to indicate a form of creativity married to craftsmanship. This poietic framework will then be used throughout the dissertation to inform a practice-based analysis of the learning process involved with physically polyphonic notations (herein defined as notations of dissynchronous physical actions within a single performative body). Despite polyphonic asynchrony, the unifying performative demands of these pieces are the learning strategies necessary to accomplish this eventual reassembly of instrumental practice within a single, performing body. The following essays will explore the physically polyphonic repertoire of the trombone specifically as a laboratory for problematizing this poietic approach to the learning process. Show less
This dissertation explores the question of what contemporary mapmaking practices can reveal about the ever-evolving field of graphic design.The shift towards digital modes of production has... Show moreThis dissertation explores the question of what contemporary mapmaking practices can reveal about the ever-evolving field of graphic design.The shift towards digital modes of production has fundamentally changed the field of graphic design, to the extent that a clear distinction between the producers and users of visual information no longer exists. The evaluation of graphic design’s recent developments is too strongly focused on what happened to the persona of the graphic designer. In this research an alternative model is introduced that focuses on the technologies that have shaped the field.Graphic design and cartography have different origins and concerns, but their contemporary practices have much in common. In this research, cartography is considered a testing ground to understand the transformations of graphic design. Adopting notions from post-representational cartography, three mapmaking practices of amateurs and technology companies were selected to survey, analyse and test that transformation.The dissertation contains of a series of visualizations that embody an alternative documentation of the research. The development of alternative and complementary languages is considered to be an essential aspect of artistic research. This parallel visual documentation of the research questions the discursive text, and all the prejudices and histories contained within it. Show less
