SHE LINES: The Duel/Duet of Eros and Thanatos in The Act of Drawing Desire: as an expanded Drawing practice

Date
2021
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Abstract
SHE LINES The Duel/Duet of Eros & Thanatos in the Act of Drawing Desire as an expanded drawing practice. In my self-reflexive act of ‘Seeking Susan’, through the explorative act of Drawing Desire, I am drawing in my ‘She Lines’ through the act of (un)packing the Russian Cupping Doll as artistic process-as-practice. This performative disquisition is a self-reflexive, transdisciplinary exploration of Desire, Identity, Loss and Line as it presents through the psychoanalytic ‘Acting-Out’ process in the creative impulse of my expanded drawing practice. Through the act of both ‘Drawing out Psyche’ and ‘Drawing in Psyche’, the creative research interrogates the activating/acting role Eros and Thanatos play in my creative practice. What does the Duel/Duet of Eros and Thanatos look like in the Artist’s ‘Every Love Story’? Women’s imaginary is inexhaustible (Cixous 1976:877) I am reimagining the ‘drawn line’ as it traverses across disciplines and spaces, beyond the recognized traditional and conventional stroke, brush, pencil on paper or canvas. This creative research is an analysis of my transdisciplinary art-making ‘process-aspractice/practice-as-process’. It takes shape and form as a performative proposition: Conversations in Constellations /Constellations in Conversation Through my praxis and practice of mapping, tracking and unpacking, this ‘performance on paper’ analytically examines how, in positioning transdisciplinary process-as-practice in the space of the (in)between, new ‘She Lines’ emerge through ‘Drawing Beyond the Line’ in the performative Act of Drawing Desire.
Description
A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Fine Arts, in 2021
Keywords
She Lines, Act of drawing desire, Self-reflexive act, Seeking Susan, Duel/Duet of Eros and Thanatos, Drawing Beyond the Line, Gerrit Schoonhoven, Conversation in constellations
Citation
Pam-Grant, Sue. (2021). SHE LINES: The Duel/Duet of Eros and Thanatos in The Act of Drawing Desire: as an expanded Drawing practice. [Masters' dissertation, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg]. WIReDSpace. https://hdl.handle.net/10539/38418