Distance and Immediacy: Investigating narratives of portability

Abstract

With reference to the global emigration of South Africans (South African diaspora), this thesis explores themes of displacement, identity and cultural belonging. The hybrid figurine of a modified hula doll, adapted specifically from tourist memorabilia is used as a key motif in my investigation of narratives of portability and the portability of identity in particular. My research relies on a mix of puppet and collage typology, and the manipulation of miniatures and scale that emphasize spatial experiences. Hula dolls and a plastic Kewpie Doll, directly referencing Ray Lawler’s Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, are recurring motifs. These figurines act as metaphors for implied journeys, displacement and transformation. I work with a wide range of materials and mixed mediums to construct imagined worlds, in which I choreograph light, handcrafted stencils and kinetic objects. I aim to reconcile my use of these contrived or synthetic constructions and assembled collages through the amplification of their artifice within my videos and photographs. Working within the established range of methodologies associated with practice-based research, I draw particularly on phenomenology as lived experience, and utilize the phenomenological perspective of Merleau-Ponty. The aim of the studio investigation is to add to an understanding of the experience of South Africans living in Australia and perhaps the broader narrative and other mechanisms of displacement and construction of identity.