Abstract

This thesis explores two artworks that inhabit the interstices between sculpture, design, performance and architecture through the production and occupation of portable, inflatable structures: Michael Rakowitz's paraSITE (1998, ongoing) and Ana Rewakowicz's SleepingBagDress Prototype (2003-2005). Chapter One, "On Becoming Through Monuments," tactically considers Rakowitz's paraSITE as an autonomous artwork, in excess of its instrumental function as homeless shelter, to unearth the pneumatic work's particular process of creative and political instigation. Chapter Two, "Prototypes for Embodied Utopias," draws on the relationship between Rewakowicz's SleepingBagDress Prototype and visionary inflatable architecture of the 1960s to analyze the work's implications for the possibilities of embodiment in utopian architectural design. Drawing on these two art works and the writing of Elizabeth Gross, the thesis pulls forward the potential inflatable design that can have for providing prototypes and platforms for resistant and alternative creativity in the everyday life of the city. This' thesis proposes that inflatable architecture provides a place from which to experiment (in thought, design and action) with alternative relationships between bodies and buildings that allows for their mutual becoming.