Date of Award
August 2018
Degree Type
Thesis
Department
Art
Advisor(s)
Stephanie James
Abstract
My work is motivated by my struggles to cope with the absurdity of my own existence. I am investigating the essential property of our personal identity through ephemerality, memories, and the similarities between man and machine. Using the body as object and context, I use humor and absurdity to ease the burden of my haunting realizations, and allow my creations to be enjoyed simply through comedy or visual allure. I offer these social disturbances as mementos of the idea that it is impossible for the evidence-based understanding of ourselves to ever merge into the realm of the ethereal, but as it chips away at what we are not, a more thoughtful image of what kind of thing we are might start to emerge. I suggest we give our ethereal selves too much credit, and that even the ever-shrinking magic of who, or what we are is still enough to intoxicate us.
Access
Open Access
Recommended Citation
Koch, Marilyn Yvonne, "What Kind of Thing are we? Our unrelenting Demand for Self-Significance" (2018). Theses - ALL. 266.
https://surface.syr.edu/thesis/266
