Mark Jackson

Northing Short of Complete Liberation: The Burroughsian Ideal of Space as Curatorial Strategy in Audial Art

The thesis uses analysis of the theories and tape experiments of William S. Burroughs (1914-1997) to explore curatorial problems occuring within sound-related gallery displays of contemporary art, and to articulate Burroughsian space as a motivation for experimental curatorial practices.

The study presents a Burroughsian methodology of curatorial practice engaging in "games of space and time" (Mottram 1977) and examines Burroughs' project of the '60s and early '70s in a theoretical framework of curatorial strategy in sound-oriented practices to articulate a domain of meaning-making focused on visitor interactions. By considering interaction with sound as un unstable and unclear process, and privileging the exhibition visitor as the focus of the process of meaning-making in exhibitions, this study presents an ecological approach to curating, advancing studies in ecological approaches to meaning, definitions of meaning in relation to Konstantins Raudive's experiments with Electronic Voice Phenomena and Burroughs' revision of the work of Alfred Korzybski and of L Ron Hubbard's Dianetics.

• Prof. Angus Carlyle (DoS)
• Prof. Salomé Voegelin
• Prof. David Toop