Tim Long
Difficult subjects and problematic objects: working with Antonin Artaud's subjectile
My PhD research is concerned with figurations of the grotesque and abnormal in art. I am particularly interested in the end limits of the subject - defined as the person, the individual - and Antonin Artaud's subjectile, that is neither subject not object, but a paradoxical combination of both. At the end limits of subjectivity where split and shredded forms proliferate the subject can be seen as part-subject and part-object.
I argue these interruptions to normality, that are often the concern of art practice, have an affirmative quality since subjectivity is itself a fragile construction that needs to identify the possibility of becoming something fearful and odd in order to persist.
Artaud was preoccupied with how irrational connections can form into creative processes; his works exploit the body, flux and chaotic properties of life. Duchamp's body mould works that I discuss present erotic but also intellectual investigations, that through their ambivalent significations question subject constitution and sexuate subjectivity.
I will link my theoretical examinations of the two artists to my own creative processes, illustrated with recent objects I have made.