Search

The deliberate destruction of urban residences is a well-known but little-studied fact of civic life in the medieval period, especially for centres of the Italian peninsula. Most often, it is seen as a corollary to the urban factionalism which characterised life in these cities in the central and later Middle Ages. This thesis investigates the period between the early ninth and the late twelfth centuries, a time for which destructions have been mostly ignored by scholars. Throughout this period, intellectual and social changes transformed conceptions about the very nature of power. Ideas about legitimacy, legality, rightful authority, citizenship, and belonging, which were at the heart of urban consciousness, gave rise to communal governance. These shifts have been amply studied from an institutional and intellectual angle, but they also had a material dimension. While this has been analysed most often in connection to the construction of architecture, destruction of the material dimension had an equally fundamental part to play in these changes. The extent to which the violent modifications of the urban fabric mattered to processes of social and political change has never been understood fully. In our sources for these centuries, the practice of deliberate destruction appears as a central concern for kings, lords, bishops, citizen communities, and popes alike. The authors of these sources also often analysed their effects and judged their legitimacy in lengthy passages. This thesis engages with this evidence to demonstrate the ways in which authority, justice, and power depended on the destruction of buildings for symbolic and practical reasons. It looks at the ideology and the application of destruction in its political contexts to demonstrate that it was not always a drastic gesture of resistance (or oppression) as a modern observer might imagine. Instead, it shows that targeted destruction was key to processes of negotiation between urban communities and lay/religious rulers, part of a language of violence which was shared by rulers and ruled. The episodes studied in this thesis outline a phenomenon of social competition which makes use of the urban fabric and of the built environment using demolition, rather than construction, to serve specific political ends.

This dissertation explores the contour and content of state-ordered destruction in the construction of state, territory, and subjects. To do so, it carries out a historical and ethnographic study of state violence, from the colonial era until today, in Pakistan's southern province of Balochistan. Through this study, the dissertation argues: Where the construction of state, territory, and subjects requires a rendering of society as legible in order to create it and make it manipulable for the purposes of rule, the destruction of politics, places and peoples requires a rendering of networks opposing the state as obscure in order to dismantle them and make them docile for the same purpose. These networks, or "counter-societies," are collective identities that transgress and resist the state's version of society proper, e.g. through the collective identities of the anti-colonial rebel, the revolutionary communist, or the separatist ethnonationalist. In turn, society proper is constituted by state-sanctioned identities considered necessary for rule, like the "tribal" colonial subject or the loyal and growth-minded Pakistani citizen. Through a close reading of three cases of state violence in the colonial, early post-colonial, and contemporary era-a 1918 colonial-era military expedition, a 1973-'77 counterinsurgency campaign, and post-9/11 displacements, disappearances, killings, and army raids-the dissertation argues that the state sought to contain the "infection" of "fanaticism" in the colonial era, censure alternative ideas of Pakistan as socialist and multi-national in the early post-colonial era, and confuse attempts to articulate a counter-hegemonic front against the violence of the state in the contemporary era.

The intentional destruction of Bronze Age metalwork prior to deposition is frequently recognised within assemblages, but rarely forms the focus of study. Furthermore, most research focuses on why metalwork was deliberately destroyed without considering how this process was undertaken. This thesis therefore analyses how metalwork might have been intentionally damaged and uses this to better interpret why. The material properties of bronze are considered alongside past research into the use of different implements, before a series of experiments are presented that explore how one might best break a bronze object. A better understanding of the methods by which Bronze Age metalwork might become damaged means one can identify intentional damage over that sustained accidentally, through use or post-deposition. This culminates in a Damage Ranking System, which can be utilised to assess the likelihood that damage observed on archaeological specimens is the result of intent. The Damage Ranking System is applied to Bronze Age metalwork from South West England (i.e. Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset). The catalogue of metalwork from this region was recently updated, highlighting instances of deliberate destruction that would warrant further study (Knight et al. 2015). The present research builds on this catalogue and involved analysis of complete and damaged objects from across the study region and from throughout the Bronze Age. Approximately 1300 objects were handled and studied and set within the Damage Ranking System alongside a contextual analysis of the findspots. This allowed trends in damage and depositional practices to be observed, demonstrating increased intentional destruction throughout the Bronze Age. It is shown that the deliberate destruction of metalwork throughout the Bronze Age related to the construction of personhood and emphasised links with other regions of Bronze Age Europe. This research demonstrates a new approach to the material that has wide-reaching applications in future studies.

Herta Müller represents physical suffering and repression in her works, often reflecting on the regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu, and her constant interest in language and reflexivity towards writing have led her to develop sophisticated metaphors that she uses to illuminate language and its functioning under such subjugation. With reference to her fiction and non-fiction, I demonstrate how she uses concrete ideas to understand linguistic phenomena. She evokes injury, destruction, force, life, space, touch, silence, and other bodily experiences to make sense of language in the condition of suffering from social oppression. Drawing on conceptual metaphor theory within the framework of cognitive literary studies, I argue that Müller both relies on and estranges the ways in which people speak and think about language. Language is imagined differently depending on the circumstances and in close relationship with various sensory experiences. The complexity of the relationship between language and thought problematises the process of metaphor building and makes it difficult to identify its key aspects across different contexts and sensory modalities. Müller’s tropes are easy to experience, but difficult to analyse. The idea of language does not exist as a stable concept and is regularly reimagined in her texts; but its meaning is not arbitrary and depends on bodily experience. While Müller evokes such experience to understand language in the condition of suffering, she can also use linguistic concepts to elucidate more abstract ideas. Language can be regarded as an abstract or concrete phenomenon depending on the relevant bodily, linguistic, and cultural contexts. This project contributes to the study of Müller’s poetics as well as to the literary critical interpretation of embodied cognition, and develops the use of conceptual metaphor theory for literary analysis. It also seeks to develop understanding of the role of bodily experience in the metaphorical conceptualisation of language.

Medieval castle slighting is the phenomenon in which a high-status fortification is demolished in a time of conflict. At its heart are issues about symbolism, the role of castles in medieval society, and the politics of power. Although examples can be found throughout the Middle Ages (1066–1500) in England, Wales and Scotland there has been no systematic study of the archaeology of castle slighting. Understanding castle slighting enhances our view of medieval society and how it responded to power struggles. This study interrogates the archaeological record to establish the nature of castle slighting: establishing how prevalent it was chronologically and geographically; which parts of castles were most likely to be slighted and why this is significant; the effects on the immediate landscape; and the wider role of destruction in medieval society. The contribution of archaeology is especially important as contemporary records give little information about this phenomenon. Using information recovered from excavation and survey allows this thesis to challenge existing narratives about slighting, especially with reference to the civil war between Stephen and Matilda (1139–1154) and the view that slighting was primarily to prevent an enemy from using a fortification. The thesis proposes a new framework for understanding how slighting is represented in the archaeological record and how it might be recognised in the future. Using this methodology, a total of 60 sites were identified. Slighting often coincides with periods of civil war, illustrating the importance of slighting as a tool of social control and the re-assertion of authority in the face of rebellion. Slighting did not necessarily encompass an entire site some parts of the castle – halls and chapels – were typically deliberately excluded from the destruction. There are also examples which fit the old narrative that slighting was used to prevent a fortification falling into enemy hands, but these cases are in the minority and are typically restricted to Scotland during the Scottish Wars of Independence. Given the castle’s role in shaping the landscape – acting as a focus for seigneurial power and precipitating the creation and growth of towns – it is important to understand how slighting effected nearby associated settlements. The evidence suggests that larger towns were able to prosper despite the disruption of slighting while smaller settlements were more likely to decline into obscurity. Importantly towns themselves were very rarely included in the destruction of slighting.

War is a perpetual shadow cast over human history. It brings forth unparalleled destruction, leaving behind a wake of devastation that scars both the land and its people. Its relentless march leaves cities in ruins, families torn, landscapes transformed and the built environment obliterated. War affects an individual, a community and a country's identity. Destruction both leaves a memory and shapes it. The process of rebuilding raises complex questions: How do we rebuild after that has which been destroyed? What should be rebuilt? Is rebuilding necessary? There are no easy answers and the choices made will reverberate through generations, influencing what endures in collective memory and what is forgotten. This thesis aims to explore the relationship between memory, destruction and architecture.

The purpose of the study was to improve the understanding of the present situation and the key problems regarding the conservation of designed landscapes of the recent past. Another aim was to investigate roles and initiatives undertaken by key stakeholders and recommend key areas for measures and action to enhance the conservation and protection of designed landscapes of the recent past. The emphasis of the research was on the United Kingdom but relevant findings and actions from an international context were included. A qualitative method was applied using the between-method triangulation research methodology, which combined two methods of investigation, namely data triangulation and theory triangulation. Theory triangulation allowed for an investigation of the wider context or ‘the general’ and a comparison of findings from published sources and records, including an examination of the existing inventories and the roles and initiatives of key stakeholders. The data triangulation used a case study survey, with questionnaires and interviews, to enable the collection and analysis of data from different categories of stakeholders from a site-specific perspective or ‘the particular’ context. The case study survey investigated eleven case study sites using questionnaires and interviews. A total of 146 respondents were contacted and 103 completed responses were received. The results revealed that several recommendations for actions to improve the conservation and protection of heritage of the recent past exist, and that general conservation principles and methodologies exist for the conservation of designed landscapes, but that a lack of recognition and awareness for the significance of designed landscapes of the recent past results in poor implementation of such principles, and the continuing destruction and disfigurement of significant sites. The findings of the study led in the conclusions to the preparation of recommendations for measures and actions by stakeholders, to improve the protection and conservation of landscapes of the recent past.

The aim of this thesis is to identify and analyze underexplored risk factors that, in the past and present, have led to the damaging, and in some cases, the destruction of artifacts or works of art. The intentional destruction of art and relics has occurred throughout history for various reasons, and by analyzing specific examples in connection with particular risk factors, museums and galleries can further understand how to protect the objects within their collections from potential future damages. Within this thesis, I will address three risk factors through an analysis of case studies in which one risk factor served as a major cause that is closely related to an artifact or work’s destruction. The significance of this study is that it begins the identification of rarely explored risk factors that have culminated in the destruction of important historic artifacts. As this study has taken the first steps in a larger field of risk factors, future research is needed to fully identify the many risk factors that exist.

This thesis seeks to answer the question of the meaning of the destruction of the urban environment in the 1992-95 Bosnian war. The inquiry begins with the destruction of the Old Bridge in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina. This event constitutes an exemplary instance of the destruction of urban environments. The destruction of the Old Bridge is not, however, an isolated event: urban destruction was widespread during the Bosnian war. It is argued that a clue to the meaning of this destruction lies in the fact that it is shared spaces that are destroyed. The `logics' of urban destruction are then considered. Such destruction cannot be properly Accounted for by either the traditional notion of military necessity or the regimes established to protect cultural heritage. Rather, it is argued that the destruction of urban environment comprises `urbicide'. Urbicide is defined as the destruction of that which characterises the urban: heterogeneityI.t is argued that destroying buildings represents the destruction of the conditions of possibility of heterogeneity. The thesis then addresses the relation between shared spatiality and heterogeneity. Drawing on Heidegger's account of Being-in-the-world, it is argued that existence is both spatial and shared. The fundamental sharing of existential spatiality constitutes existence as a heterogeneous Being-with-others. The Heideggerian notion of Mitsein (Being-with) is proposed as an initial account of the nature of this heterogeneity. This account of Mitsein is developed through a consideration of the work of Jean-Luc Nancy. In particular the implication of Being in community is noted. An account is given of the politics of Being-with at stake in urbicide. In conclusion it is argued that urbicide comprises an ethno-nationalist attempt to cover over the Heterogeneous nature of existence. The proper starting point for a response to ethno-nationalist violence must be a recognition of the heterogeneity and community at stake in urbicide.

Дисертація на здобуття наукового ступеня кандидата юридичних наук за спеціальністю 12.00.08 – кримінальне право та кримінологія; кримінально-виконавче право. – Національний університет «Одеська юридична академія», Одеса, 2021. Дисертація є першим в Україні комплексним порівняльно-правовим дослідженням кримінально-правової характеристики умисного незаконного знищення, руйнування або пошкодження об’єктів культурної спадщини за законодавством України та країн Східної Європи. У дисертації висунуто і обґрунтовано низку нових теоретичних і важливих у практичному значенні положень, що відбивають її наукову новизну, зокрема, вперше: на основі історичного аналізу нормативно-правових актів та історіографічних здобутків виділені періоди становлення кримінально-правової охорони об’єктів культурної спадщини в Україні: 1) імперський – початок XX – 1917 р.; 2) період національно-визвольного руху – 1917–1921 рр.; 3) радянський – 1921–1991 р.; 4) сучасний – з 1991 року по теперішній час. До початку ХХ ст. відбувався поступовий процес накопичення матеріальних цінностей, створених людством, а також переосмислення культури та її матеріальних форм як необхідного аспекту розвитку спільнот та соціумів, що потребує охорони, в тому числі і на законодавчому рівні. Встановлено, що кримінальне законодавство країн Східної Європи пропонує різні підходи до визначення змісту предметів правової охорони. У цих країнах такі предмети злочинних посягань, як об’єкти культурної спадщини мають різне найменування: пам’ятники культури (КК Словаччини, Республіки Болгарія), витвори культури (КК Албанії), культурні цінності (КК Хорватії), національні цінності (КК Литовської Республіки), культурна спадщина (КК Північної Македонії) та ін. У деяких країнах Східної Європи предметом досліджуваного злочину стають не лише культурні чи історичні цінності (пам’ятки), а й природні об’єкти, наприклад, у КК Боснії і Герцеговини. Охорона культурної спадщини за законодавством Східної Європи носить фрагментарний характер. Знищення культурної спадщини у країнах, що змінили своє законодавство після підписання міжнародних конвенцій, зазвичай карається як військовий злочин, а також як злочин проти власності. Охорона культурної спадщини здійснюється за допомогою норм кримінального права щодо охорони культурної спадщини у період збройних конфліктів, воєнного стану та у мирний час. Установлено, що більшість кримінальних кодексів країн Східної Європи містить такий склад злочину, як знищення, руйнування або пошкодження об’єктів культурної спадщини у розділі злочини проти власності (Чорногорія, Сербія, Албанія та ін.). З’ясовано, що існують і виключення. Так, у КК Північної Македонії міститься окремий розділ, який має назву «Злочини проти культурної спадщини та природних раритетів». На підставі аналізу основних різновидів кваліфікуючих ознак умисного незаконного знищення, руйнування або пошкодження об’єктів культурної спадщини за законодавством України та країн Східної Європи встановлено, що норма ст. 298 КК України, а також більшість кваліфікованих видів такого злочину не є типовими для законодавства країн Східної Європи.

This thesis explores the regulatory issues with the NRHP's high standards for architectural significance and integrity and how these have historically excluded African-American historic sites from listing to the Register, as well as the underlying problem of the ongoing destruction of such sites and their subsequent under-designation. The goal of this work is to examine the different ways in which preservationists and communities have addressed those issues through NRHP nominations and other documentation efforts of such sites. By understanding the methods and approaches used for similar sites across Texas and the country, such as the Odom Homestead in Burkeville, Texas; the African American Resources of Portland, Oregon, from 1851 to 1973; and the Ransom and Sara Williams Homestead in Travis County, Texas, this research provides a tentative examination of options for future African-American rural vernacular nominations.

Driven by the impulse to destroy, I use glass as a proxy for my own body and identity. Through a series of destructive experiments, provocations, dialogues, and games with materials, this body of work addresses this complex human mechanism of self-destruction by creating empathy with materials. Based on the introduction of my personal experience and cultural background, this work puts forward my obsession with the paradoxical aspect of human nature. I verify the self-destructive tendency of myself through the study of psychology and historically similar art movements. I discuss, the reflection that the research content brought to my creation. I also combine the actual works to explain the goals and choices in the creative process.

This effort is comprised of three interwoven tasks: Decipher an evolving urban place, across a range of scales, to establish an informed point of departure for proposing a change. Attend to the particular imperative purpose of accommodating those among us who are most at risk, and who make their way through life without adequate resources. Design an individual cumulative form wherein the new architecture incorporates a rejuvenated existing structure, and the entire ensemble contributes something worthwhile to the neighborhood.

This thesis explores Saudi Arabia’s perspective on the destruction of heritage sites before and after Saudi Arabia became a state, seeking answers to these questions: why does Saudi Arabia commit these acts in the name of Islam? How much influence does Wahhabism have on Saudi actions? How does the country justify these actions even while non-Wahhabi scholars oppose these acts? Within the context of Islam, specifically Wahhabism, destruction of heritage sites occurred during the formation of the first Saudi state. But as time passed, the Wahhabi ulama (religious scholars) lost considerable power over religious affairs in Saudi Arabia, and it is apparent that religion is no longer at the helm of the Saudi society. Saudi Arabia claims that the destruction of heritage sites protects religious pilgrims from weak structures in danger of falling, and protects adherents whose faith is weak from the danger of committing shirk (associating others with God—a form of unbelief). I contend that in reality such destruction has no religious basis but rather reflects what suits the Saudi state, which in this case is financial gain. The Saudi state’s aim is to make way for modernization so it can increase the government’s financial resources which will enable investments in hotels and shopping malls. At the same time, the state maintains its religious hegemony by pacifying the Wahhabi ulama, giving them vague authority in matters of religion, such as the destruction of mosques in Kosovo. If the motivation for such destruction were solely religious, many heritage sites in Saudi Arabia would not exist today. These sites existed for centuries, maintained by previous Muslim rulers, and the government is enjoined to preserve them by both the Quran and the Sunnah, according to non-Wahhabi ulama. As such, although there is a need to accommodate an increasing number of pilgrims, there are several ways the state could safeguard not only the pilgrims but the historically relevant heritage sites, while still moving forward toward a modernized Saudi state.

In his book, An American Genocide: The United States and The California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873, the historian Benjamin Madley highlighted the intentional destruction of traditional California Indian foods, by the United States Army, vigilantes, and volunteer California state militiamen as a genocidal tactic. This thesis explores the wider intentional destruction of California Indian foods and assault on traditional California Indian foodways during the long conquest of California, beginning with the Spanish invasion of 1769, continuing under Mexicans from 1821 to 1846, and concluding with early United States rule between 1846 and 1873. This thesis will examine the effects that the destruction of California Indian foods had on traditional California Indian food ways and consequently California Indian people as well as how California Indian people kept their foodways alive against great odds.

This dissertation examines combat trauma under U.S. militarism, tracking its psychosomatic effects and aesthetic responses within U.S. veteran communities. It centers the concept of “moral injury,” psychiatrist Jonathan Shay’s term for the moment of psychic, ethical, and sociopolitical disturbance that often leads to PTSD. This dissertation reads moral injury through the lenses of critical race theory and U.S. imperial culture, examining the racial and imperial logics at work in the phenomenon of veteran self-destruction. It argues that the national crisis of veteran suicide exposes the limits of U.S. imperial reach and the ways race, gender, and religion coalesce to both form and undermine the military subject. This dissertation’s analysis of how white masculinity interweaves with the function and effects of moral injury offers insight to discourses on psychosocial wellness as well as disability studies, which often fail to adequately address questions of race and gender. Bringing disability studies into conversation with recent work on militarization, race, and religion offers the insight that moral injury destabilizes U.S. militarism. This dissertation suggests that discourses on race and war must contend with combat-related moral injury, psychosomatic ability, and veteran self destruction. While the accounts explored are primarily from the post-9/11 Iraq and Afghanistan wars, this dissertation traces the notion of moral injury to the Vietnam war, connecting escalating veteran self-destruction to the emergence of endless militarism as “counterinsurgency” warfare. It reads domestic and overseas militarism as resulting from increased U.S. bureaucratization and socioeconomic demand for security. It contends that any analysis of the ways race interweaves with the contemporary phenomenon of endless war or relations between extraterritorial combat and domestic militarism must consider the nexus between whiteness, masculinity, and ability that produces the citizen subject on which U.S. imperialism depends. This dissertation also brings moral injury to ongoing discourses on historical trauma in relation to U.S. racial formations. Through a comparative analysis between combat and “inner-city” PTSD, it tracks the racialized notions of moral authority and psychic invulnerability as well as individual, military, and state dominion inherent to moral injury and thus veteran trauma. It pushes psychoanalytic discourse to reflect on the ways trauma cannot be comprehended without attention to how the state deploys it through U.S. imperial culture, and to how it undermines that instrumental process. Through an examination of Operation Homecoming, this dissertation reads state desperation to salvage veteran behavior as an investment in the white, Christian, masculine citizen, or keystone of U.S. militarism. Its homogenizing therapeutic practices reintegrate affected veterans into the patriotic, heroic subject of martial might and sacrifice. Through analyses of the Combat Paper Project and Philip Metres’s abu ghraib arias, this dissertation then considers the abilities of art practice and poetics to produce an affective and psychosomatic realm through which engagements with trauma open the affected self to relational, collective vulnerability, memory, and experience, past and present. This collective self of historical trauma works to undo the bound, invulnerable, coherent individuality of the military subject. This dissertation concludes with a gesture toward decolonial feminist practices that illuminate a collective way forward.

Throughout 2015, the Islamic State (ISIS) was a major news story for its destruction of Ancient Near Eastern collections and heritage sites, which created a spectacle across media. The focus of ISIS’s infamous video uploaded in February of 2015 was the colossal statue of a Lamassu, which was an ancient Assyrian guard deity. By focusing on the Lamassu, this thesis aims to address the Western concept of a “cradle of civilization” and ISIS’s motivation for destroying the sculpture. I utilize Kwame Appiah’s philosophy of cosmopolitanism in order to flesh out the language in which ISIS is communicating, namely through its destruction. What becomes apparent is a complex relationship with Near Eastern antiquities, which is best understood by analyzing the motivations of local looters. To conclude, I use ISIS’s destruction in order to offer thoughts on the concept of destruction with an aim to open dialogue regarding differing cultural value systems.

At certain moments in the creative development of an artist, experimentation leads to creative acts that on their face can appear negative because they are the actions of a young artist responding to the establishment. This thesis is an investigation of such works: a spoiled print, an erased drawing, a set of artist proofs stained by paint, and a painting wiped away with turpentine. Despite these negations, each of these works was pivotal to the career of its respective artist, and they were immediately cited by their makers as works of consequence. The four selected art works did not influence one another and the circumstances surrounding their creation are also distinct. Each work and artist developed independently from one another, in distinct spaces and times. However, there are notable parallels among the works. Each was created as the artist transitioned into the mature phase of his career. Additionally, each of the works is a layering of distinct images. The sub-images relate to an external artist, style, or dogma, and the superimposed image relates to the artist’s own work and his mature style. Further, each of the works is an indexical record of the artist’s activity. Each emphasizes the artist’s hand in the making of the super-image’s mark and even goes so far as to highlight the performative nature of the mark making. The marks of the super-image are so pronounced as the subject of each work and the performative element so emphasized that the artist himself is drawn into the work’s subject matter. In short, I investigate whether these images function as a commentary, a critique, a declaration, or simply as part of a process and a dialogue between the artist and his artistic environment.

"Manufacturing Ruin" argues that the most important moments in the history of the concept and consciousness of "American ruin" accompany volatile episodes of progress and decline in American manufacturing. This dissertation attends to the construction of "American ruin" in response to the rise of manufacturing in the early to mid-nineteenth century and the decline of industrial capitalism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Americans have manufactured picturesque ruins and spectacular episodes of ruination both to conceal and reveal and to "contain" and "harness" destructive forces inherent to capitalism. In some cases, ruins have been represented in ways that conceal processes of ruination inherent to their own destruction. In other instances, episodes of destruction demonstrate that in attending to particular processes of ruination, Americans have intentionally ignored others.

Using the square and the cube as foundational elements that are rooted in art historical, architectural, and philosophical tradition, the (w)hole part. installation explores mark making on a variety of materials and surfaces to create a non-linear, allegorical narrative that investigates cyclic transformation through an entire space. It serves to illustrate ongoing exchanges that occur between chaos and order, construction and destruction, clarity and obscurity, simplicity and complexity. The arrangement of the space, shapes, and forms creates layers that suggest complexity of meaning, and paradoxes that raise questions about notions of illusion and reality. The layering of materials, marks, and text connects to a larger human tradition of recording information, conveying different senses of meaning, time, and density. The juxtaposing of materials are visual cues that add to the layers and indicate intricate relationships that exist between the objects, surfaces and ideas. The use of found or recycled materials signifies the process of transforming objects and their meaning.

Material tests provide intimate pieces that feel like moments captured. My material tests often come from creating new ways of making; my working methods come from a variation on a conventional way a material is formed and used in a process, such as mold making. Traditional techniques are learned, then subverted. Within a process I watch how materials change over time. The entire course of transformation can be the most alive part. Some of my most important observations come from failure, both within process as well as within individual pieces. Observed failure is harnessed and used to my advantage in the next generation of my work. Through the material investigations and tests, through observation and learning, I make discoveries. I see a worthwhile moment or idea within an unexpected outcome and mine it, pick it apart until it often doesn’t resemble the process of origin at all. There is a continuous dialogue between the object created and the action that created it. They inform one another, one could not exist without the other. Bind, hack, elongate, peel - verbs describing a material dissection, an investigation of character. Repetition is a returning - an expansion of time. Repetition is in the rhythm of labor; motion made continuously to complete a task, to reach an end result. The limits of our body, our personal thresholds, are found within our repetition. Touch is a physicality - it is personal and intimate, a drawing together of two spaces. This moment of touch forms a boundary where one thing ends and another begins. In this shift there is a sharing and acquisition of information. Material has its own physicality, and through touch informs our own bodies physicality. A membrane separates layers, shifts from one thing to another. It is in these shifts that a change happens, a place of transformation. Within that is a place of both gain and instability – an area of pure possibility. With possibility comes the potential for rupture. Just as a beginning is a change, so is an ending, and everything must have both. Destruction of an object is an ending, but can also be the beginning of a new one.

This work explores a research methodology bound by glimpses into sensual realities as seen through the eyes of the artist. Much attention has been paid to creating a mirrored existence between art and life, allowing personal philosophies to infiltrate the subsequent research. The goal is to develop a working regimen that promotes full immersion in the here and now, accepting any and all truths, no matter how impossible, tragic, painful or beautiful they present themselves. Communication with the real world, particularly used tire dealers, ice sculptors and butchers, has yielded an art form void of traditional media, one rooted in experimentation and ephemeral, everyday materiality.

All things are in the act of becoming, an endless cycle transforming one form into another. Change is a constant, creation and destruction are both natural and inevitable; growth and decay are equivocal processes that simultaneously build up and tear apart. Intrigued by these forces I have created a body of work that explores this transition. Using a single object as a module then altering it eliminating the original form creating something new. Beginning with a simple organic volume that has evolved from the ceramic vessel, then introducing elements that intrude undermine and destroy. This juxtaposition of the geometric and the biomorphic is also animating, elevating, and uniting the object, process, and the material. Each one is a labeled experiment, cataloged remains of a transformation of form.

History of African American underclass community in northwestern DeKalb County, Georgia, from its settling in the late-1920s to its present displacement through gentrification. Thesis is that black underclass communities are the result of America's historic racism and subordination of blacks, whose members are left little choice but to engage in illegality as survival strategies. The work reveals the hard-work routines of people relegated to the bottom of American society, as well as their fun-loving leisure activities and embracing of vice as pleasurable. Established during Jim Crow segregation, Lynwood Park cultivated a reputation for danger and toughness to keep out outsiders, so that its children could have some semblance of a "normal" upbringing. The community's color line was then patrolled by dangerous men who created somebodiness for themselves as tough protectors, which ensured that they would be emulated as heroes. The work records the social and cultural history of the community as recalled and interpreted by residents in an oral interview project. Covers community organizations and institutions, such as churches and schools, as well as tensions within the community and tensions against both the white and black outside. Records social life of partying, hog killings, barbecues, baseball, drag racing. Includes culture of illegality and vice, school desegregation, racism, and the community's relationship to DeKalb County, its affluent white neighbors, and the various dynamics that eventually led to the displacement of the traditional black residents. The work challenges the golden-age-of-the-ghetto argument and demonstrates that Lynwood Park suffered from intragroup tensions and was not a safe cocoon for all its residents. The interviews also reveal that many children were left behind in the community's school during segregation because institutional caring generally rallied around only those children who demonstrated academic potential and a desire to eschew the negative dynamics of the enclave's street life. The work also demonstrates the ways in which whites were implicated in promoting, and profiting from, the community's illegality, which led to the eventual displacement of the traditional black residents.

Post-war socioeconomic shifts have reconfigured the built environment to complex networks of private, commodified zones masquerading as public space. These spaces are inextricably linked to marketing strategies, financial gains, sustained economic growth. Here, actual uses and potential new uses of space are forcefully suppressed. This is evidenced by the War on Graffiti.Graffiti causes no structural damage; because it disrupts the image of space it is fought and suppressed. An investigation into its constructs might unveil a complex political infrastructure which implicates society, consumerism, and architecture. Thus, the goal of this thesis is to investigate the disconnect between mediated use of space built from image and the actual use of space built from need, to establish a methodology that translates the politics of graffiti from visual/graphic to spatial/occupiable. The found paradigms will be applied to three designs: a rural cycling lane, privacy shells in suburbia, and an urban workplace.

This dissertation examines destruction of subsistence crops by reported pests attacking maize, millet, and sorghum in two nearby villages in northwestern Zimbabwe. The Communal Areas Management Program for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) enables district governments to earn substantial revenues by leasing safari hunting concessions. This is the preeminent collaborative natural resource management program established to date. However, elephant Loxodonta africana, buffalo Syncerus caffer and hippo Hippopotamus amphibius can cause extensive crop and property damage and occasionally kill people. Lethal problem animal control (PAC), especially for elephant, reduces the number of potential trophy animals and thus the market value of hunting leases. Furthermore, PAC represents both a management cost and foregone benefits. Villagers suffering from wildlife inflicted damage may be willing to forego collective revenues and prefer that offending animals be killed whether or not further crop damage is prevented or reduced. Protecting farmers while sustainably exploiting wildlife is one of the major challenges facing CAMPFIRE. Survey responses from villagers in two random samples, provided data on the perceptions of crop destruction by agricultural pests and opinions about wildlife, PAC, and CAMPFIRE. An electrified fence excluded elephant from Chunga village while Sinamusanga village was unprotected. Crop damage was monitored through the 1992-1993 and 1993-1994 growing seasons, with field inspections and post harvest surveys. Respondents reported none, little, moderate, severe, or complete destruction by each pest to each cultivated crop. Reports of damage to maize, millet, and sorghum from elephant, hippo, baboon Papio ursinus, goats/sheep, birds (Ploceidae), and four insect pests were statistically analyzed. There was great variation in the distribution and intensity of damage reports between crops, pests, respondents, villages, and seasons. In decreasing order of severity; crickets Hetrodes pupus, birds, hippo, elephant, and termites Hodotermes mossambicus each inflicted significantly (p = 0.01) more damage than any of the other reported pests. Damage was greater in 1993-1994 than in 1992-1993 (p = 0.01) and elephant damage was greater in Sinamusanga than Chunga for both seasons (p = 0.05). Elephant and hippo damaged a substantial portion of the crops in Sinamusanga. Respondents were poorly informed about CAMPFIRE and who provided the fence, were dissatisfied with PAC, and viewed elephant as a liability. PAC policy, procedures, and practice need to be substantially improved to earn residents' support. Better district-village communication and more substantial devolution of management responsibility are needed to strengthen this CAMPFIRE initiative.