Bureau/Division/Agency
Library
Files
Download Full Text (5.8 MB)
Document Type
Text
Broad Creation Date
2024
Language
English
Location
Portland
Abstract
This dissertation addresses the transitional, in-between state of liminality, a topic of study that intersects philosophy, anthropology, art, literature, science, religious mysticism, and spiritual experience. It provides a narrow focus on the act of entering into an artwork as both an opening and point of slippage. A liminal experience is one in which quantifiers of space and time are seemingly absent, as are previously known entrances, exits and borders. This project argues that passage and transformative change may and do occur through acts of movement. It examines the phenomena of buoyancy, departure, falling, oscillation, and drift and their conveyance in art as potential catalysts for shifting into a liminal state of becoming.
Understanding liminality through the lens of engagement with art and movement will illuminate new ways of thinking about art today: how it may be entered, its significance to lived experience and its potential to impact an understanding of a bodily conscious, felt awareness. This project elucidates the liminal experience through close examination of specified movements. Encounters with specific works of art by John Everett Millais, Andrei Tarkovsky and Francesca Stern Woodman are analyzed against this framework, and within the context of literature and science. Philosophical writings by Dufourmantelle, Irigaray and Meleau-Ponty are key to this exploration.
This project addresses ritual aspects of art encounters to include viewer receptivity to possible liminal passage, identified as transcendent interiorizations—altered states of consciousness which blur internal experience and exterior reality. It proposes that a duration of receptive, subsuming engagement is essential for a viewer’s potential liminal experience, while raising questions regarding recent shifts towards art encounters. It argues that such an engaged encounter has transforming capabilities—as an entering into—as other. It contributes new theories and reflective conclusions regarding the art viewing experience and the conveyance of movement in art.
Disciplines
Arts and Humanities | Fine Arts | Philosophy | Religion
Publisher
Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts
City
Portland ME
Recommended Citation
Doktorski, Eileen Marie, "Adrift, Uncertain and at Risk: Liminality, Movement and the Art of Encounter" (2024). Academic Research and Dissertations. 53.
https://digitalmaine.com/academic/53
Rights Statement
In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/
This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. In addition, no permission is required from the rights-holder(s) for educational uses. For other uses, you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).