Shannon-thesis outline

Thesis Outline

Questions:

What is the life cycle of a cut flower, where do the flowers we see in the stores come from?

Where do the flowers that I have used in my work come from?

What have they endured in their lives and even before their lives to reach me?

Why am I so interested in flowers - both emotionally identifying with their suffering, and yet at the same time enjoying the fruits of what they’ve suffered through?

What is the relationship between vulnerability and violence? And voyeurism?

Do my projects echo psychoanalytic frameworks for processing trauma?

Method:

I will structure my thesis tracing the lifecycle of cut flowers from breeding practices of seeds including the introduction of viruses, to planting, spraying with chemicals, to being cut and packed in refrigerated containers, to the flower auction, then shipped to another country, to a distribution facility, to a grocery store or florist shop, to a consumer’s hands. I will reference works I have made that include flowers, perhaps tracing the possible life cycle of each one.

Intro:

Background on my interest in flowers. Soft, fragrant, they display themselves for our pleasure, performing beauty. We buy them to watch them slowly die.

Chapter 1: Tracing the lifecycle of the cut flower

• Focus on the structures of control and manipulation in each stage of the process
• Before planting - breeding, introduction of viruses
• Planting, fertilizers, pesticides
• Being cut, beginning the process of transport

1. Other flowers grown for bulbs are at this stage ‘topped’, heads cut off

• Flower auction
• Shipped to a different country, to a distribution center, to a store
• To a consumer’s hands

Chapter 2: When the flower reaches my hands

• Works I have made including flowers

1. Sweet little flower (reenactment of trauma)
2. Cutting with scissors
3. Act of printing, pressing, preserving
4. Drench your lips in rich luxurious color/final project

Chapter 3: Paradox/conflicting desires

• My emotional identification with the flower and all of the manipulation and violence it has endured
• My enjoyment of the cut flowers despite that knowledge
• My usage of the flowers to reenact my own traumas

Chapter 4: The confusion of pleasure and pain

• Voyeurism
• Transgressive desire - do I/we enjoy the pain of the flower?
• “The pain which signals a toothache is a pain which saves your life” (Baldwin)
• Reference Feast (Leyendekker)

Chapter 5: Psychoanalyst's reading of my works?

• Sweet little flower
• Drench your lips in rich luxurious color

Bibliography

James Baldwin, The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity

Sophie Calle, Take Care of Yourself

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

Louise Bourgeois, Freud’s Daughter Exhibition

Psychoanalytic theory (Freud, Horney)