Sensation, spirituality, and Deleuze: Becoming‐colour through Katharina Grosse's explosive artworks

Abstract

AbstractAmidst a pandemic‐ridden world, in which esoteric practices, conspiracy theories, and alternative spiritual movements are gathering growing popularity, turning the spotlight on spirituality can be seen as a problematic move that some might feel tempted to reject outright. However, rather than reifying the belief‐driven pretensions traditionally upheld by religion, in this paper, I wish to propose a different outlook on spirituality, one which is linked to those inexplicable, visceral sensations engendered by German artist Katharina Grosse's explosive use of colour. To do this, I turn to the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, who when affirming the non‐representational, spiritual potencies inherent to art provides the conceptual means through which to address such relationship. Specifically, Deleuze places the emphasis on his concept of sensation, which speaks neither of subject nor object. Indeed, by apprehending those in‐between, intensive moments in which a visual work of art stimulates our eyes, mind, and body, sensation foregrounds an immanent, and not transcendent, understanding of spirituality. This immanent understanding of spirituality refers to the pre‐individual forces and processes from the outside through which sensation enables us to precursively experience what the spiritual looks and feels like, yet without enforcing a dogmatic pathway to follow. Thus, by combining my reflections on Deleuze's thinking on sensation with creative vignettes based on an online ethnographic study of Grosse's artworks, the paper presents three methodological pointers: (1) Confronting the in‐betweenness of sensation, (2) Experimenting with the precursive force of language, and (3) Unleashing the literary power of becoming. Through them, I show how geographers might rethink their engagements with art as having more to do with an aesthetically induced, micro‐subjective journey into their spiritual becoming than with an intentional encounter. I conclude the paper by discussing the ethico‐political implications that endorsing an ethos of sensation might have for geography and beyond.