NEITHER HERE NOR THERE; BECOMING THE LIMINAL OTHER Alexandria M. Berry Submitted ...

37 Pages·2013·1.63 MB·English

by  Alex Berry

NEITHER HERE NOR THERE; BECOMING THE LIMINAL OTHER

Alexandria M. Berry

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree of Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture
at
The Savannah College of Art and Design

© August 2013, Alexandria M. Berry

The author hereby grants SCAD permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and
electronic thesis copies of document in whole or in part in any medium now known or hereafter
created.

______________________________________________________________ 08/15/2013
Alexandria M. Berry
Author

______________________________________________________________ 08/15/2013
Susan Krause
Committee Chair

______________________________________________________________ 08/15/2013
Allen Peterson
Committee

______________________________________________________________ 08/15/2013
Steve Jarvis
Committee
NEITHER HERE NOR THERE; BECOMING THE LIMINAL OTHER

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the Sculpture Department
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the
Degree of Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture
at
Savannah College of Art and Design

By

Alexandria M. Berry

Atlanta, GA

August 2013
TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................... 1
1. INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................... 2
1.1 CONCEPT ....................................................................................................................... 2
1.2 FINAL PROJECT ............................................................................................................ 3

2. PERSONAL HISTORY AND INFLUENCE........................................................................... 5
2.1 DIVERSITY POSTER-CHILD ....................................................................................... 5
2.2 THE OUTGROWING OF LABELS AND ENTANGLEMENT ...................................... 6

3. PHILOSOPHICAL INFLUENCE ........................................................................................... 6
3.1 BECOMING AND SOCIAL IMAGINARY .................................................................... 6
4. PROCESS AND PERFORMANCES .................................................................................... 10
4.1 DECONSTRUCTING LIMINALITY ...................................................................... 10
4.1.1 METAPHORICAL DEATH ........................................................................... 11
4.1.2 THE UNLEARNED SELF .............................................................................. 13
4.1.3 SOMETHING NEW ....................................................................................... 15

5. ISSUES OF CONTENT ........................................................................................................ 18
5.1 SENSIBLE EXPERIENCE AND SPECTACLE ............................................................ 18
5.2 THE BODY IN PAIN .................................................................................................... 19

6. AESTHETICS....................................................................................................................... 21
6.1 ACTION ....................................................................................................................... 21
6.2 DOCUMENTATION .................................................................................................... 22

7. FINAL THOUGHTS ............................................................................................................. 23
FIGURES ................................................................................................................................. 24
BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 33 66
NEITHER HERE NOR THERE; BECOMING THE LIMINAL OTHER

Alexandria M. Berry

August 2013

This thesis focuses on the process of becoming-other. Emphasis is placed upon the deconstructed
steps of rites of passage and liminality, inquiring means to exist as ‘the other’ in both time and
place. The aim of the thesis is to study minority identity and marginalized society by way of
becoming it. Set as an alternative to promoting social awareness and education, the act of
becoming-other examines the metaphysical and metaphorical deconstruction and reemergence of
the self into a heightened consciousness of experiential existence. Furthermore, the thesis
studies how investigative art practices are entangled with our identity, society and environment
to then be implemented in analyzing daily experiences and circumstances.
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INTRODUCTION

1.1 CONCEPT

Politics is what splits reality and demands that the master reality be reallocated to
accommodate an “other” reality.1 The other reality requires an action in order to produce change
within the master reality. Artistic and active exploration of liminality and becoming-other
undertakes this political doubling of reality; here, I propose liminality and becoming-other as the
analytical and allegorical process of displacement from master to other reality, from majority to
minority. On one hand there is the universal understanding of an action—its specific language,
its time and place, its dialogue with a societal system. On the other hand, the conceptual art
action invites new and alternative possibilities for comprehension and change. The possibilities
are unlimited, potentially irrational, metaphorical, or metaphysical. The existence in this “other”
sensory threshold of society correlates directly to the rational reality yet suspends the conceptual
idea in space allowing for dialogue inside and outside of the system.
My body of work questions the hierarchal, political creation of the other by examining the
personalized liminal experience through conceptual and performance art. Discovering my self-
identified otherness in the larger frame of social constructs has stimulated my interest in a
rebellion against the status quo. One does not simply exist as other/minority, the individual
becomes other. She is created. 2 I explore becoming-other through the three-step process
associated with rites of passage and liminality—an ambiguous threshold state of disorientation

1 William Kaizen. “Vulgar Politics,” http://www.artandeducation.net/paper/vulgar-politics[accessed February,
2013].
2 Noam Segal, “The Nest,” http://www.artandeducation.net/paper/the-nest/[accessed January, 2013].
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during a transitional phase. 3 My interpretation of the liminal transition attempts to replace the
identifiable self with something new—without complete surrendering of the body’s senses
within a likewise sensuous environment. This disembodiment lends itself to a slowed state of
being where an individual can actively question their current perception on status, identity and
societal role. My work indulges in both the analogies of the liminal transition as well as the
realistic displacement, prejudices and discriminations associated with minority identity and
otherness.
By exploring liminality—the threshold of existence—and becoming, I intend to investigate
the actual existence of the unlimited self in a heightened, new consciousness inside and outside
of the social infrastructure; the beast that was once restrained, kenneled and eroticized explores
freedom through experiencing, firsthand, its own breathing body. The metaphorical and
metaphysical exploration of becoming-other propels understanding beyond adoptive and
adaptive roles of societal framework (the essence of demographic categorical limits) into a
timeless, space-less reality where humanistic yet personalized traits (self-preservation, comfort,
androgyny, wanderlust, sexuality, voyeurism, etc.) manifest in all of us. If otherness is a creation
all its own, I question, then; how does the other exist neither here nor there? 4

1.2 FINAL PROJECT

My directed study entitled becoming-other, 2013, is a series of conceptual and performance
art pieces examining liminality and becoming the other, performed in an undisclosed region in
West Africa. Here, I question the universality of otherness by becoming the other and analyzing
the other’s self-reflective coming into existence and role in society after a period of

3 Dictionary.reference.com.
4. Victor Turner, “Betwixt and Between: Liminal Period,” in The Forest of Symbols (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1967), 96-7.
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reexamination. The study examines psychological and physical displacement. Although inspired
by the LGBTQ struggle for basic human rights in parts of the world where such identity or
behavior is condemned, the pieces, performed by myself and life-partner Elizabeth Steen, also
explore barriers of ethnicity, gender and the general tension involved in cultural
miscommunication and exoticism. These four conceptual performance pieces are documented by
video, audio and photography.
The four pieces in becoming-other all reflect the following: Firstly, the direct use of the
human body is imperative to an active investigation of the journey of the self. In these pieces, the
use of two bodies was utilized to further exemplify the dynamic of otherness and hybridity but
examines also the questioning of individuality when otherness is subjected onto a coupling of
different individuals. Through pushing limits of the body and its tactile senses, the solipsistic
mind is connected to the external sensuous world. Secondly, the use of language in both written
and spoken word purports a barrier for effective universal expression. The minimal usage of
words is compensated by the action of the body, most justly through the mouth, eyes and hands
as signifiers. Thirdly, the pieces take on my self-reflective understanding of otherness primarily
through the use of dirt, both literally and metaphorically expressing the unwarranted feeling of
shame, eroticism, self-reproof, or uncleanliness. And lastly, the series of individual performance
pieces illustrate a merging of binaries (good/evil, love/apathy, life/suffering,
submission/dominance, ecstasy/fear) in order to obliterate them. Duration, repetition and
discomfort of the physical action advise this obliteration into a suspended state of contemplation.
The pieces that constitute becoming-other include There is a hole, Embedded, Dirty Talk
and Is it the same? The conceptual influence and detailed explanation of the individual pieces are
discussed in Chapter 4, section 4.1.3. The fusion of philosophical concepts, real and personal
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displacement, the obliteration of language, the body and the camera’s gaze reflect a poetic
understanding of shared human emotions, positive and negative, despite prefabricated prejudices.

PERSONAL HISTORY AND INFLUENCE

2.1 DIVERSITY POSTER-CHILD

As an adolescent, I found myself stuck in between two fences. The fence in front of me
blocked my view of the potential exploratory opportunities that lay before me while the fence
behind me skewed my view of my past. The fences proposed a standardized order, a formulated
way of existence. The status quo or imaginary social structure outlined a level of consciousness
that, as a maturing teenager, I felt obligated to follow. As I navigated through the fences’
peepholes in the confined space of these social constructs, I acknowledged my existence as the
other. Diversity was first understood from my multi-cultural background, however, as I matured,
discovering and redefining cultural, ethnicity, sexuality and associated gender differences
stamped a rebellion against labels. Through this attempt at disassociating myself from labels I
entered a new realm, a disengaged socio-temporal plane of reality.
My fascination with liminality and its connection to otherness segued from an interest in
journalistic writing to the exploratory reign of fine art, specifically conceptual body and
performance art. My journalistic background also contributed to the creation of art with an
activist hue. The joint exploration of investigative and performance art have encouraged me to
further explore cultures and environments outside of my American youth as the diversity poster-
child in order to better understand and demonstrate general and taboo human instincts as
connecting universalities.

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2.2 THE OUTGROWING OF LABELS AND ENTANGLEMENT

The outgrowing of labels and restrictions presents a delicate, intricate web of
possibilities—freedom. In order to further understand the interconnectivity of identity, social
structures and our ecological binds, the “role of experience is crucial to a full understanding of
[liminality], however applied.”5 Imitation of the ritualized process exemplifies a detachment
from the limited self. Imagination is not separate from daily existence. The liminal imagination is
interdependent with a tangible environment, that is, the act of envisioning relies on reality and
vice versa reality is entangled with the solipsistic nature of the brain. My personal and
philosophical interests emerged from eliminating defined binary restrictions to a pursuit of
understanding this entanglement. The interconnection of binaries, as mentioned earlier (real and
unreal, good and evil) fuse together to co-exist and create one unified idea. The merging of polar
extremes mirrors commonalities of the self and the world. Beyond the constant acknowledgment
of hierarchal strategies and binary restrictions lies opportunity without limitation. Perhaps, when
the limitations of the self dissolve and our interdependence with the environment is unlocked, a
progressive understanding of human relations replaces the known system. The replacement is
now a becoming all its own—a creative, singular, original voice. Unlearning restrictions and
embracing the depths and confusions of personal transcendence is the current track I seek in
order to stimulate, encourage or create change.

PHILOSOPHICAL INFLUENCE

3.1 BECOMING AND SOCIAL IMAGINARY

5 Bjørn Thomassen, “The Uses and Meanings of Liminality,” International Political Anthropology (2009): 51.
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To identify an individual as a minority places the individual in a demographic
subcategory outside of the normative. The fabrication of this social construct, majority versus
minority, allows for play within the creation of sub-communities, not to be confused with
creation myths or generative creation. If a hierarchal system can be formulated according to
primitive biases and prejudices then can the culmination of characteristics that formulate
identity, both socially and psychologically, publicly and privately, be reexamined attuned to
another set of characteristics?
Philosopher and sociologist Charles Taylor describes our understanding of society as an
imaginary rather than as theory, he states; “Our social imaginary at any given time is complex. It
incorporates a sense of the normal expectations that we have of each other; the kind of common
understanding which enables us to carry out the collective practices which make up our social
life. This incorporates some sense of how we all fit together in carrying out the common practice.
This understanding is both factual and "normative"; that is, we have a sense of how things
usually go, but this is interwoven with an idea of how they ought to go, of what mis-steps would
invalidate the practice.”6
To place limits on an imaginary is to de-validate the imaginary as imaginary. Taylor
continues, “It can never be adequately expressed in the form of explicit doctrines, because of its
very unlimited and indefinite nature. The discriminations we have to make carry collective and
common actions (at the disposal of a given group of society); knowing whom to talk to and when
carries an implicit map of social space of what kind of people we can associate with in what
ways in what circumstances.”7 This implicit space directly ties to my undertaking of liminality,

6 Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries, (Duke University Press, 2004), 23-26.
7 Ibid.
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