The Unfolding Image: aurora in Process

Abstract

This thesis traces the development of the multimedia installation aurora, examining the dynamic interplay between language, image, and artistic process. Rather than offering a fixed interpretation, it provides a framework to read around the work, engaging with Walter Benjamin’s concept of experience as a narrative, intuitive, and subjective discourse that transmits meaning. The text embraces the fluidity and unpredictability inherent in artistic practice, reflecting on the tension between mechanical reproduction, aura, and the dialectical relationship between politics and aesthetics. Theories by Walter Benjamin, Vilém Flusser, and Ludwig Wittgenstein inform this exploration.At its core, aurora emerges within a historical moment marked by global crises, media saturation, and technology's evolving role in shaping perception. The writing acknowledges its constructed nature, mirroring how meaning is continually negotiated and reinterpreted. In this spirit, the thesis incorporates generative text tools like ChatGPT, embracing their mimicry and algorithmic voice as collaborators reflecting the systems the work seeks to interrogate. Aurora is an interactive multimedia installation that blends ancient and modern elements to explore themes of translation, memory, and reproducibility. Merging 19th-century wet plate collodion photography with contemporary video, the piece generates an alchemical dialogue between light, shadow, and time. The artist’s practice is deeply rooted in the ancestral traditions of curandeiras from her Brazilian lineage. Karina Buzzi’s work is a dialogue between spirituality, the body, and time-based media.