Toward misreading : assembling (k)new meaning

Abstract

This thesis explores meaning-making strategies in art practices through an entangled reading of the material and discursive forms through which that meaning is made. This thesis proposes that a necessarily material-discursive approach distinguishes art practices from other forms of meaning-making and, therefore, views art making as a significant mode of knowledge-making, with particular relevance to decolonial practices of knowledge. This thesis suggests that art-making practices employ specific strategies to rearrange material and discursive contexts, as well as mobilize material and discursive gestures, in order to produce urgent political meaning. This thesis proposes that through (mis)reading these strategies, new assemblages of meaning and material may emerge. This thesis employs critical theory, assemblage theory and modeling theory to improvise a method of apprehending these strategies, and re-articulating them for other ends.