Plástico y fantástico : filiaciones, desbordamientos corporales y transformaciones de la imaginación material

Abstract

This doctoral dissertation addresses plasticity, as well as the imagery and agency of plastic materials from the point of view of artistic research and in continuous dialogue with other disciplines. It is grounded on the hypothesis that, beyond the world of specific objects that makeup material culture, there is an unexplored field of material properties – plasticity in this case –that remains unexplored and waiting to become an object of study in itself. First, this resear choffers a cartography of plasticity that exposes and analyzes its manifestations in other fields of knowledge, while expanding its meaning and relating it – in a loop back – to the world of art and fictions. As part of this strategy, two dimensions of plasticity are recovered, one conceptual –usually ignored – and the other phenomenological, in which it reveals its intimate relationship with the fantastic. Secondly and in parallel, this dissertation investigates and puts into practice the possibilities of doing, thinking and imagining not only about, but especially with and through plasticity. In this way, four case studies are proposed where the experience with different plastic materials reveals a certain logic of the imaginary capable of uniting areas as different as myths, cinematographic animation, images made by chance, spectra, the world of chemical synthesis or metamorphoses...