Moving the mouse cursor over the top of the page will display the menu bar.
‘Otherlands’ is an interdisciplinary and collaborative project traversing visual art, linguistics, psychoanalysis and philosophy. It interrogates Julia Kristeva’s concepts of abjection and the semiotic as pre-linguistic markers and their potential to articulate ‘otherness’ in visual art. Whilst Kristeva’s thinking is revolutionary in conceptualising dimensions of experience ‘beyond’ language and representation as vital to the signifying process, its application in aesthetic practice is limited. Those art practices that have engaged with abjection and the semiotic rely on representational strategies and thus undermine their very definition. Otherlands demonstrates that it is only where representational structures are disrupted towards the place where meaning collapses that abjection can function as ‘abjection’ in art practice, in turn articulating modalities of ‘othering’ as part of an alternative signifying process. Understood via a new theory of ‘intermateriality’ developed by the researcher, Otherlands offers for the first time vital new ways of understanding meaning-making in art practice that shifts from representational and visual economies of signification to the material, performative, affective and intersubjective dimensions of art. Informed by an eight-year corpus of practice-led research, Otherlands was developed collaboratively through 12 months of rigorously testing ideas. This included textual analysis, an on-site curatorial residency (University of Memphis), field visits to examine ‘othering’ in selected cultural sites, interviews with key practitioners and scholars, and feedback gathered at the Otherlands exhibition and live event at the Kristeva Circle annual conference, Memphis (prestigious interdisciplinary platform for world-leading Kristeva scholars). The work was blind peer-reviewed by the Kristeva Circle directors and Art Museum University of Memphis curatorial committee. The research includes a two-person exhibition with award-winning artist Georgia MacGuire, curatorial essay by Kristeva expert Professor Estelle Barrett and major live performative event. The research is simultaneously all these outputs, understood via the interrelations between its different parts as an ‘other’ form of signification.
This page contains media that is intended to start playback automatically on opening. This may include sound. Your browser is blocking automated playback. Please click here to start media.
A collaborative research project by Professor Estelle Barrett (Koorie Institute, Deakin University, Australia), Georgia MacGuire, (Visual Artist, Victoria, Australia) and Dr Jacqueline Taylor (Birmingham School of Art, Birmingham City University, UK)
'Dear reader': a performance articulating Otherlands and how to navigate this exposition by Dr Jacqueline Taylor
Audio recording of live Otherlands event including panel discussion chaired by Kat Zubko (90 minutes)
