Maria Gontarczuk

This paper will discuss the idea of modernism in territory as complex as India, with a focus on the city of Chandigarh. It will be examined how Chandigarh operates within the notion of national identity in India, and specifically, whether the new capital evokes Indianness or is another example of European hegemony, placed even after the era of colonialism, within postcolonial reality.

This dissertation will explore the notion of appropriation in modern and contemporary fine arts. Appropriation as an artistic concept will be divided into two branches which derive from, or to a certain extent are based on, the idea of artistic ‘borrowing’: imitation and influence. Examples of appropriation art will be given in this dissertation and will prove that either imitation or influence are predominant contextual or aesthetic components of appropriation in art. Moreover, it will be argued that the meaning and recognition of appropriation as an art practice have changed throughout the history and criticism of art. This paper will consider examples of different approaches to appropriation which represented changes in the perception of authorship and autonomy of an artwork. The dissertation will furthermore consider the aspect of copyright, a subject indivisible from the discussion on appropriation and legal rights. Overall, it will be proved that appropriation as an art practice
concerns various aspects of art and therefore it cannot be classified as just one category or artistic tendency, but rather as a component which constitutes, supports and interpenetrates other art techniques or movements

This thesis will explore the notion of spatiality and temporality in the relatively new field of new media art. It will argue that art produced by new media challenges the conventional understanding of time and space. On the examples of two artworks, Masaki Fujihata’s ‘FieldWorks’
(2002) and Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin’s ‘Listening Post’ (2001/2002), this paper will aim to demonstrate how new media art confronts the traditional perception of time and space and provides new opportunities for experiencing temporality as well as dimensionality that occurs simultaneously, i.e. that of the author, the viewer and the artwork. Furthermore, this thesis will argue that new media art generates its own micro-temporality and micro-spatiality, which coexist with their established traditional notions although at the same time remaining
against them. Lastly, taking to account new media art’s relation to time and space, this thesis will investigate the capacity of new media art to be transformed – migrated, emulated, and reinstantiated – and it will delve into the possibility of preservation and curation of these media.