Derrida: Aesthetics, Misc

This study draws a comparative framework between deconstructive reading of texts and jazz standards. It will be argued that both are defined by the constant play of tradition and innovation. On the one hand, the repetition of a set of rules and dominant understanding of texts/tunes that generates tradition. On the other hand, invention and improvisation that take on that tradition and generate innovation. The act of reading/playing becomes also an act of invention/improvisation that manifests a constant tension between the (...) old that is handed down through writing/recording and the new that is generated by the reader/musician. (shrink)

The thesis investigates the connection between deconstruction and creativity with regard to three aesthetic fields, namely jazz music, photography, and architecture. The thesis consists of three chapters. Chapter 1 focuses on deconstruction and jazz music. First, the analysis draws a comparison between the linguistic sign and the musical sign in the light of Derrida's analysis of signifier and signified. This supports an investigation of the supplementary character of writing in the specific case of jazz music. Second, the analysis draws an (...) analogy between the deconstructive reading of texts and jazz improvisation to show the relevance that creativity has for both. This is followed by an examination of the similarities between Derrida's notion of différance and the musical figure of syncopation. The analysis is completed by an argument that the jazz event of the jam session is an encounter and creative 'dialogue', with features similar to Derrida's conception of hospitality. Chapter 2 focuses on deconstruction and photography. First, the discussion explores the correlation between truth and photography. It will be argued that deconstruction challenges the logocentric organisation of photographs based on the prominence of what is immediately visible in images and fosters a more creative interpretation, which is based on the play between concealment and unconcealment within photographs. Second, it investigates the implications of Derrida's analysis of temporality for photography. This supports an investigation into how Derrida's notion of responsibility and the future to come can be applied to photography. Chapter 3 focuses on deconstruction and architecture. First, the analysis establishes the links between architecture and language by outlining the creative and transformative outcome that the correlation between function and meaning in the light of deconstruction produces. Second, the investigation examines Bernard Tschumi's idea of architecture as event in Parc de La Villette. Tschumi's work is an example of how the deconstructive approach adopted by architects fosters creativity in users. Finally, the analysis focuses on the transformative and creative character of portable architecture by investigating the correlation between the creative character of deconstructive concepts such as freeplay, parergon, and the axiom of incompleteness, and the transformative features of tents. (shrink)

Ruins, their evocations and enigmas, have been a source of fascination since the advent of civilization. Both coordinating and distressing the relations of space and time, ruins are unparalleled catalysts of cultural analysis, as both history and adumbration. Ruins, and the concept of ruin on which they ‘rest’ and through which they decay, can be regarded in space, as strata, in time, as sedimenta, and in dynamic terms, as lamina. This essay works down through each focusing on the forceof ruin (...) occurring between them. The essay itself is a lamination: Anselm Kiefer's exploration of ruins as artefacts, in recent works such as ‘Falling Star’, shown at Paris’ Grand Palais in the summer of 2007 as the first installation in its Monumenta series, plays across many dimensions of ruins’ themes; Derrida's exploration of the very idea of ruin – not ruins but ruin, as artefacture – conceptualizing ruins’ liminal nature, at the very limit of phenomenology, in Mémoires d'aveuglesand elsewhere; the ruin-caught-in-motion of the virtually unknown French-Italian painter ‘Monsù Desiderio’; and the linguistic ruin of Samuel Beckett's ‘D'un ouvrage abandonné’ and ‘Sans’. Each contributes to the others as ruins and ruin accumulate. Finally, ruin's decay passes into and through a passe partout into the uninhabitable. (shrink)