Date of Award

Spring 6-2-2018

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Department

Graphic Design

First Advisor

James Goggin

Second Advisor

Douglass Scott

Third Advisor

Andrew Sloat

Abstract

Folks, the Truth is hard to know—if can be known at all.¹ Conventional Western wisdom tells us: stick to the facts. (I’m looking at you, Enlightenment.) We privilege the written word as an objective and reliable vehicle for communication. Useful, yes, but we over-rely. I counter with this: bodily performativity and purposeful inaccuracy that produces, paradoxically, narrative accuracy. These methods roil in our gut or tug at our heartstrings—instead of recoiling, we should embrace them.

I like to unpack “the stories we tell ourselves,”² our personal and societal mythologies, with a particular eye to how the past plays a role in these constructions. Telling things slant³—diving into the uncanny—disrupts our visual complacency with both delight and disorientation. By employing temporal and spatial anachronisms in a performative motion-based practice, I aim not to obscure truth, but to promote inquiry.

1. Riffing on the New York Times’ The Truth is Hard campaign.

2. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures.

3. A nod to Emily Dickinson’s “Tell all the truth but tell it slant.”

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.