PhD Oral Exam - Andrew Rabyniuk, Humanities - Fine Arts

When studying for a doctoral degree (PhD), candidates submit a thesis that provides a critical review of the current state of knowledge of the thesis subject as well as the student’s own contributions to the subject. The distinguishing criterion of doctoral graduate research is a significant and original contribution to knowledge.

Once accepted, the candidate presents the thesis orally. This oral exam is open to the public.

Abstract

This project puts forward an outline theory of minor spatial practice. It combines art historical and research-creation methods in three parts. The first lays the theoretical foundation for minor spatial practice. It proposes a connection between Henri Lefevbvre’s theorization of the social production of space and Deleuze and Guattari’s description of minor literature. The pairing results in a framework for minor spatial practice. The second and third parts are case studies. In the second part, I discuss Omaskêko Ininiwak artist Duane Linklater’s public artwork, Monsters for Beauty, Permanence and Individuality (2017), located in the Don River Valley in Toronto, Canada. I compare the sculpture to the Evergreen Brick Works, a nearby architecture and land reclamation project. The juxtaposition suggests an inflection between expressions of minor and major spatial practice. The third part focuses on a body of artwork I produced during an artist residency in Barreiro, Portugal. The residency takes place on a mixed-used industrial park with ties to Barreiro’s historical industrialization and urbanization. I use architectural drawings and other techniques associated with producing scientific representations of space to analyse the material conditions of the site. The resulting drawings, sculpture, and photographs are posed as speculative treatments of these authoritative techniques, and as revealing a possibility for a minor spatial practice to emerge from the ruins of a majoritarian mode of production. I conclude by specifying practical and theoretical intention motivating the definition of minor spatial practice.