This research project adresses the question how local and traditional European forms of parrhesiastic theater—by which I mean events, actions, and performances staged by characters who courageously... Show moreThis research project adresses the question how local and traditional European forms of parrhesiastic theater—by which I mean events, actions, and performances staged by characters who courageously speak their minds through scenes of excess and laughter, that take place in public view and incite the spectator’s agency to speak their own minds—possibly relate to and/or provide new insights into critical artistic practices today. In this context, the project also examines the place and role of caricature today.I approach the issue as an artist-researcher concerned with socially engaged artistic practices. The experience of the playful, humorous, and sharply critical attitude of Gezi Park protesters speaking their minds in Istanbul in 2013 led me to critically reconsider my own courage in positioning myself within contemporary artistic production. Throughout the dissertation I work along a Moebius strip schema, which continually shifts from me as individual artist to dialogic collaborations to writing about the process. The research subject is investigated through a circulation process within which concepts such as communication, dialogue, and listening are continuously performed and put to the test. The dissertation aspires to provide new insights into how tensions between the roles of individual and group, “I” and “we,” may open up a parrhesiastic space for critical artistic practices. Show less
In this paper processes of appropriation and commodification are discussed from the perspective of subcultures and their relation to class. Dr. Martens boots are discussed as a specific case-study.... Show moreIn this paper processes of appropriation and commodification are discussed from the perspective of subcultures and their relation to class. Dr. Martens boots are discussed as a specific case-study. They were appropriated in the 1960s by British Skinheads to signify their working-classness. Besides being functional, design objects are apparently endowed with meaning and these can vary depending on different modes of appearance, on different styles. Today Dr. Martens, is primarily a fashion-item. This calls into question to what extent commercialization undermines the potential of design objects to be endowed with meaning. By critically discussing recent scholarly literature on subcultures and style I will explain how in recent decades the dynamics of the neo-liberal market economy with its emphasis on consumption, facilitated a further commodification of style-objects as desirable value-objects. What will be argued successively is that appropriation and commodification in late capitalist society might obscure but not obliterate the social realities of class that lie hidden beneath the flux of images in which we are engulfed today. Show less
