Rules of Engagement: Trope of Estrangement - A relation between art and consumer object

This research explores the relationship between objects and subjects and asks to what extent objects are constituted through an act of subjective interpretation, and by which they enter into a circulation of meaning; or to what extent objects, as things, escape a full determination by this act of interpretation. Through the analysis of a variety of artistic practices (including my own artistic trajectory) and drawing on different philosophical traditions, I will argue that the object can neither be reduced to interpretation nor can it be theorized as ‘outside’ language. Conversely, I claim that, although linguistically mediated, the relation between object and subject is characterized by a space of ‘undecidability,’ which arises as a consequence of a partiality in the nature of the encounter between them. It is the nature of this partiality that I will address in this thesis.