A Study of Productive Fragmentation in Contemporary Dialogue

Abstract

My project attempts to explore the development of metaphysical binaries as the beginning of Western philosophy. These dichotomies are presented as polar opposites ? exclusive, universal, eternal and absolute . Their universality is dependent on the exclusion of the in between?s, the odd examples which do not fit the standard categories. These dichotomies originate in Plato?s Dialogues with his illumination of the eternal Forms, of which everything is made and judged against. Frederick Nietzsche and thinkers to follow, interrogate these claims of universality by introducing historical contingency and exposing the impossibility of universality. The style of dialogue, in Plato and later contemporary thinking, is a counter metaphor to metaphysical binaries. The dialogic style as a mode of deconstruction, does not only counter metaphysical dichotomies but productively constructs and creates through difference. Having the full knowledge of the impossibility of there being only One, True way of seeing and experiencing the world, I wanted to express the theories in a different medium, creating a dialogue between the text, myself and the canvas. In my painting, I portrayed the multiplicity of experiences within the environment of Occidental College by a variety of different mark making and layering between abstract, figurative and architectural elements in their continuous movement and interplay with each other. I hoped to create a dialogue with the Occidental students, challenging their way of experiencing Occidental and opening them up to the multiplicity: standing architecture, passage of time, singular and collective experience, which come to shape the environment and its inhabitants. View the painting here