THE PASSAGE: Enquiry into the Ephemeral Absence of Social Construct During Transitions

“In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between them, there are doors.” ― William Blake. This thesis support paper presents my artistic research on the ephemeral nature of absence in social constructs while relocating myself to new places. I am interrogating a fluid positionality that is continuously shifting, leading me to contextualise the research stance in the between and betwixt of Passage. I am examining the experience of passing from one place, condition, or stage to another and highlight the in-between space made visible through artwork produced with various methods and processes. Throughout, absence is indicated via aesthetics, materiality, and immateriality pointing to subtle boundaries between play and seriousness, the real and imaginary, the ephemeral and permanent. Themes of travel, constraint, absence, liminality, and human consciousness are explored through performative installations, architectural spaces, and different degrees of audience participation. The research generates a dialogue between performance, space, and time which involves bodily experience, live actions with mixed media installations, and time-based works. The choice of media and symbols revolve around various conceptual ideas inspired by academic and non-academic sources — contemporary art, spiritual texts, psychology, lucid visions while meditating — which become the artistic expression's metaphorical core. Anchoring in an auto-ethnographic methodology of resisting mastery, the research was conducted by allowing space for unknowns to reveal their contours through silent being and doing by not doing.