Advisor/tutor: Alena Alexandrova

Arnhem, June 2015

Abstract

A Bird in the Hand explores the territory surrounding an initial, clumsy thought: What is it to write a thesis without knowing what to write it about? Faced by an ‘insurmountable mound’ of topics, theories, artworks, ideas, thoughts and possibilities this thesis is actually a guide for trying to use, to see and be aware of all of those things at once, and to achieve this by keeping everything outside of our focus. A Bird in the Hand visits the territories of the net, the rend, abstraction and the status of the image/picture relationship. At the same time as asking questions of concentration, wallowing in obfuscation, exhausting images, appropriating sources, experimenting with writing, and rocking the reader back and forth in the structure, A Bird in the Hand explores the out-of -focus as a mode, or state, useful to the comprehension and perception of ‘everything all at once’. The thesis brings the reader to a place within the out-of-focus whereby everything is perceptible and anything is possible. A Bird in the Hand shows that there’s not just a bird in the hand, but there are more in the bush, the bush, the hand, and the ‘the’ too.