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 thesis investigates Søren Kierkegaard’s place in Martin Heidegger’s first Freiburg period lecture courses. The principal questions asked are: what is Heidegger searching for in his first... Show moreThis thesis investigates Søren Kierkegaard’s place in Martin Heidegger’s first Freiburg period lecture courses. The principal questions asked are: what is Heidegger searching for in his first Freiburg period and where does he turn to Kierkegaard? The point of departure is taken from the question which Heidegger himself raises in these lecture courses: ‘what is philosophy?’ The replies given to this explicitly asked question lead to the central claims of this thesis. First, I claim that Heidegger rethinks philosophy in two directions. On the one hand, philosophy is philosophizing, a mode of access in the living situation. On the other hand, philosophy is about a proper methodology for accessing and expressing its subject matter: it is a mode of investigation. Second, I claim that Kierkegaard appears in one of these directions: when Heidegger considers access in the living situation. In addition, I show that two dominant approaches to Heidegger’s philosophy emphasize either one or the other side of what Heidegger puts forth. This insight, together with the view of how Kierkegaard appears in Heidegger’s path, makes it possible to account for the contradictory takes on Kierkegaard’s role in Heidegger’s philosophy that emerge in the secondary literature. Show less
