MFA Exegesis Abstract


This practice-led research involves working between differing material demands of
painting and moving image. Through a method that involves working intuitively with
materials as modalities, my aim is to manipulate the experience of time to register
passive vitalism with the viewer. This research is informed by Gilles Deleuze’s
concepts of “time-images” in Cinema 2: the time-image (1989) and “vital life force as
creative differentiation” in Bergsonism (1966). The concept of time as duration is
linked to an understanding of vitalism framed through Claire Colebrook’s concept of
“passive vitalism.” In Deleuze and the Meaning of Life (2010), Colebrook elaborates
on the potential of passive forms of thought, by expanding on the differences between
passive and active vitalism outlined in Deleuze and Guattari’s What is Philosophy?
(1999). I develop the concept of passive vitalism through my own studio work as well
as my investigations into the work of artists such as Chantal Akerman. I draw on
Akerman’s methodology involving duration to develop my understanding of
contemporary painters such as Nicola Smith and Milli Jannides, and vitality in the
work of Kate Newby. Through discussion of different artworks, I explore how vital
life force – as the interplay of virtual and actual – can manifest as temporal
complexity that opens up through the operations of the trace, as registered materially.
By elaborating on the concept of passive vitalism in relation to contemporary
practices, I show the potential of materials as modalities that can be open to difference.