Immanent Transgressions and the Apparatus of Capture: Multiculturalism and Contemporary Art

Abstract

This thesis takes an ambitious look at multiculturalism as it pertains to contemporary art, art history and global politics. The scope of material encompassed in this thesis is vast and yet I also maintain a focus, which is to define and elaborate on the schema of an “apparatus of capture” which I argue is an effective way of thinking about and describing the way multiculturalism is manifested and administered in the global context. This schema helps to explain the seeming incongruence between the multiplicity of the world’s cultures and the singular global system within which they are celebrated and exhibited. The concept “apparatus of capture” is drawn from the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, in particular their influential book A Thousand Plateaus (1980). In this thesis, I challenge the basis for our understanding of multiculturalism, which is based upon the politics of recognition. By critiquing our understanding of multiculturalism and describing an ideological effect which is created through this dominant form of multiculturalism, I also point to new emerging artistic practices of resistance which may become more prevalent over time as global capitalism tightens its grip over its citizens.

The thesis is divided into three chapters. Each is a meditation on a particular element of the thesis as a whole and intended to form a kind of dialogue between and within each part. The thesis is very much influenced by the structure of A Thousand Plateaus, in which concepts weave in and out, reaching varying pitches of intensity. By the end of this thesis I hope to have worked over several concepts fully which are tied together in a kind of momentary unity that nevertheless cannot be contained. The first chapter takes an overview of the discourse of diversity that is part and parcel of multiculturalism. The chapter describes the varying critiques and also the foundations of multiculturalism as we know it in the politics of recognition. The overview sets the stage for the second chapter in which I elucidate upon the schema of an “apparatus of capture” and describe its functioning by looking at two case studies: the exhibition Roundabout at the City Gallery in Wellington (2009) and the 2012 Sydney Biennale, All Our Relations. In the third chapter I investigate effective artistic strategies of resistance within the apparatus of capture. The two case studies I look at are the urban aboriginal artists collective proppaNOW from Brisbane, and the Taiwanese artist Chen Chieh-jen. I also describe my own art project, White Fungus, which underpins my understanding of multiculturalism and contemporary art and is a challenge to both the apparatus of capture and the politics of recognition.