Restaurant Space and Other Work

Author

Silvia Dadian, Southern Illinois University CarbondaleFollow

Date of Award

5-1-2013

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts

Department

Mass Communication and Media Arts

First Advisor

Spahr, Robert

Abstract

My thesis show, Restaurant Space and Other Work, was an environment including performance, video and audio installation, and an exhibition of my net art, assembled for a two- hour period on the evening of March 29, 2013. It brought together work created in my final year in the MFA program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. My thesis work asks how we inhabit space--both within the context of the designated art-exhibition space, and within our everyday lives. I am specifically interested in how our market-produced identities as buyers and consumers shape how we experience space, and to relate to others--and especially how new technology and virtual space affect our roles and relationships (or do not). All of my work is centered, in some way, on the body--using my own body or the bodies of others as the mediating image. Although I present my work in a variety of ways--on monitors, as projections, or as an interactive "net art" piece--all of my work is centered around a performative event, engaged in by myself, or in the form of a documentation of everyday life performances. It is my intention in displaying all of the work together to create a total environment, in which the line between Restaurant Space and the rest of the work is blurred--to point to the lines that divide how we use space, and question them.