The predicament of undecidability: moments of déjà vu in space, time and consciousness. Practice of photographing and writing in Los Angeles

Abstract

I am a photographer. In photographing the city, I remap it intuitively and libidinally. I distort it. Places in the city are turned inward, into a mental space, into a projection of my own desires and deceptions. I do not speak of this city, of which I know very little, but speak from within the city. I am a tourist.

For me the location is full of fantasies, dreams. It reminds me of art, of other photographs and films. I am with myself in this unknown and yet so familiar landscape. A place already close to me, already seen. It feels uncanny. It feels as if I were at the confines of memory, in what is left under forms of impressions, traces of stories, fantasy, and dreams, but also deceptions, frustrations, fears and symptoms. I look at the city through moments of déjà vu.

This thesis examines the relationship between photography and the city through the phenomenon of déjà vu, hence engaging the artistic practice with contemporary theories of space, time and consciousness. After a conceptualisation of key concepts, déjà vu, the cinematic and the excess, the thesis progresses through a speculative reading of the images exploring the boundaries between photographic practice, contemporary philosophy, and fiction. In interweaving those elements, at times dissonantly, the thesis investigates how déjà vu can implicate one’s subjectivity into the sense of duration, in a Bergsonian sense, and how this creates heterogeneous worlds rather than a homogeneous space. By fragmenting thought and dislocating the persona of the researcher, the thesis attempts to respond to such vision. Déjà vu permits a displacement of the relationship between photography and the city into questions of time. The thesis examines this displacement creatively and moves into a Deleuzian philosophy of becoming.

Date of Award	Jun 2015
Original language	English
Sponsors	Department for Employment and Learning (DEL)
Supervisor	Paul Seawright (Supervisor), Taina Rikala (Supervisor) & Willie Doherty (Supervisor)