Abstract
This article invites readers to follow our diffractive dialogue, which reflects on our interdisciplinary collaboration in thinking and writing with Karen Barad. Working with Barad’s diffractive methodology, we bring her agential realism, insights from quantum physics and feminist theories to contemporary feminist art. The aesthetic practices of three art works are discussed, and we argue that these call for an understanding of eco-, capitalist-, colonialist- and feminist critique as interrelated phenomena in the sense of agential realism. This is because it is not only the art works themselves that create encounter-moments of being-entangled with the bodies and discourses that surround them. From a methodological perspective, we are also interested in marking diffractive moments of encounter with the art works and between us, given our different disciplinary backgrounds. So, we intend to open up a space of encounters between Barad’s work, the work of the three artists and the work of ourselves as writers.
Highlights
This article invites readers to follow our diffractive dialogue, which reflects on our interdisciplinary collaboration in thinking and writing with Karen Barad
The white light splits into rainbow colours. It is not about linearity and chronology, but about a colour spectrum that refers to the relational nature of the differences. From these considerations the following questions arise from which we are guided: How can we be aware of and open to responses coming from different academic fields? What kind of responses of Barad’s agential realism like material-discursive entanglement, in/determinacy and diffraction do we find in the work of contemporary artists? And how does Barad’s agential realistic thinking relate to contemporary art practice and theory and vice versa? We have selected the three artists Katherine Behar, Morehshin Allahyari and A.K
In order to grasp the material-discursive entanglement of intra-acting phenomena - as Katherine Behar demonstrates in Roomba Rumba - Barad takes up the physical phenomenon of diffraction, which she introduces as a method to shed light on the indefinite nature of boundaries (Barad, 2008, p. 122)
Summary
This article invites readers to follow our diffractive dialogue, which reflects on our interdisciplinary collaboration in thinking and writing with Karen Barad. To not assume that human and non-human, matter and discourse or epistemology and ontology are antagonisms but to instead think of differences as being performatively entangled and intertwined is distinctive of agential realism. What kind of responses of Barad’s agential realism like material-discursive entanglement, in/determinacy and diffraction do we find in the work of contemporary artists?
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