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BEYOND REPRESENTATION – A POST-QUALITATIVE AND PERFORMATIVE APPROACH
THE PhD PROJECT
This PhD project is contextualized within teaching and teacher education, focusing on music in early childhood education. The overarching research question explored in this project is: What may materialize in the matter of digital musicking1 when a loop station and 1–3-year-olds meet each other in a kindergarten2 context?
The agents (amongst others) this project unfolds with are as follows:
1 loop station
1 microphone
1 speaker
1 GoPro camera
2 rooms with different interior and layouts
1 toddler group with 9 1-3-year-olds in one Norwegian kindergarten centrally placed in Oslo
1 35-year-old
The emerging research material is produced between these active agents through experimental, exploratory, and improvisatory approaches, both in methodological and analytical processes.
The project is founded in post-qualitative approaches, which rejects pre-existing research design, methods, processes, procedures or practices (St. Pierre, 2021, p. 163). This opens up for not-yet traveled paths to explore what may materialize and what might be (St. Pierre, 2021, p. 164), acknowledging that a process will unfold and materialize differently in different projects.
The research material informing this project is produced over time, through numerous encounters between loop station and the 1-3-year-olds in two different rooms in the kindergarten. The length of these encounters varied, guided by the process itself. At times, they lasted close to an hour, while on other occasions it was over almost before it started. Who and how many participating also varied and were guided by who wished to join.
The loop station and I visited the kindergarten in a total of 11 times, with no other intention than to see what happened when we walked through the door. I had some ideas and prompts to get us started if needed, but these were not fixed plans, only initiatives. And they were never needed. We (the loop station and I) were always greeted with some variation of “Do you have that thing with you today?” and “Can I join today?” and then we were of exploring.
The research material consists of audio recordings on the loop station, videos recorded with a GoPro camera and of what Waterhouse (2021; 2023) calls ‘observa(c)tions’. This concept merges ‘observation’ and ‘action’ to emphasize the active in observation in action, not observation of action. This merging allows for multisensory engagement and for wondering and speculations in the moment of observing (Waterhouse, 2023, p. 74).
In this exposition, it is one cut within the video material that calls for my attention. It is analyzed with the arts as a way of exploring one possible method of analyzing in a post-qualitative and performative approach. These approaches decenter the written or spoken language as the primary sources of meaning-making, understanding and creation of knowledge. Within the post-qualitative, performative and arts-based approach there will be room for other equally valued ways to understand with and through. With this shift, young children are no longer viewed as insufficient, awaiting the acquisition of spoken language (Sandvik, 2015, p. 49, my transelation). Focuses of the eyes, gestures, musical expressions, and other forms of communication are positioned as equal to spoken language (Sandvik, 2015, p. 49, my transelation). By positioning this project and exposition within these paradigms, this work contributes to an increasingly established research tradition where children are viewed as equal participants and active agents in knowledge production. I also bring this into a music context.
In the context of music, I’m think with music philosophy concepts like ‘musicking’ (Small, 1998) and the avant-garde (Cage, 1961), where playful expressions like hallo could be understood as as aesthetic and musical possibilities. This will be about being willing to listen to reative, inventive, exploratory, and unexpected expressions as musically potent and creating spaces for the unorthodox and experimental. “It’s not about being in time with a metronome and in harmony with a tuning fork, it is about being in time with life and in harmony with the moment” (Knudsen, 2008, p. 290).
These contributions enable ways of working with music in the kindergarten that create spaces for creative and inventive exploration with and through technology.
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LOOPS AND RE-TURNS
In this exposition the loop is a key element. The loop is present in the research material, in the expression, in the loop station, in the illustrations, in the theory, in the analytical process, and in the construction of this site where you will be sent in loops between the different components.
Like the illustrations3 looped and re-turned throughout this exposition, the loops have no point of beginning or ending, they turn over and over. The loops are re-turning (Barad, 2014), not again and again, but anew with every turn. Re-turning, with a hyphen as Barad (2014, p. 168) puts it, understood as “not by returning as in reflecting on or going back to a past that was, but re-turning as in turning it over and over again [...]”.
The loops are not the same loops coming back again and again but are different and does something different every time they re-turn.
Re-turning is a consept Barad (2014, p. 168) describes as
“a multiplicity of processes, such as the kinds earthworms revel in while helping to make compost or otherwise being busy at work and at play: turning the soil over and over – ingesting and excreting it, tunnelling through it, burrowing, all means of aerating the soil, allowing oxygen in, opening it up and breathing new life into it”.
With this way of engaging with and being enganged by the research material, a movement beyond representation becomes possible. The research material is no longer a passive entity, lying there just waiting for the researcher to activate it. It becomes an active agent. It's not only me who breathes new life into the glowing moment, but the glowing moment also breathes new life into me and my understanding of it. Re-turning (to) the moment over and over as a way of tuning in to the glowing moment and to tune in to what comes to matter in this glowing moment.
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BEYOND REPRESENTATION – A POST-QUALITATIVE AND PERFORMATIVE APPROACH
ANALYZING WITH THE ARTS
In a research process, the analysis is one of the most central parts to be able communicate some discoveries regarding the research question(s). But what an analysis ‘is’ or how it should be done would varies depending on the research(er)’s theoretical and methodological positionings. In the broadest sense, the analysis process is about examining or exploring something in detail to understand more about it (Cambridge Dictionary, n.d.; Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., n.d.).
Theoretically and methodologically, this exposition is founded in post-qualitative and performative approaches, where moving beyond linguistic representation as the favored mode of understanding and communicating becomes not only possible but also desirable. Lather (2013, p. 639) describes how the process(es) of analyzing in post-qualitative inquiry is about “open up to unexpected readings of and listenings to materials”. This will be about stopping or rather, as suggested in this exposition, slowing down, tuning in, and listening for the intensities, movements, opportunities, risks, wonderings and botherings that call for the researcher’s attention.
Post-qualitative and performative approaches welcome and equally value other modes of understanding and communicating knowledge, opening up for approaches like arts-based research. As Østern (2017, p. 9) writes, there is explosive development in the arts-based research within some qualitative disciplines and in the post-qualitative turn.
The process of arts-based inquiry could take place in any or all phases of research, including analysis, and “involves researchers engaging in making art as a way of knowing” (Leavy, 2019, p. 4). However, as Østern (2017, p. 11, my translation and italics added by me) points out, making art as a way of knowing is not identical to making art. Rather, it is about exploring a problem aera or a research question through or in art. Following Østern (2017), the expressions you may find in the upper right corner, straight below, and also published on SoundCloud, are not created as artistic expressions through the process of making art. Rather, they work as musical responses and materializations of the exploration of the research question4 and the glowing moment. When creating these expressions, the focus is on the analytical process as a way of knowing and understanding.
An important aspect with arts-based research is that it doesn’t seek to explain or describe, but to understand, point at what comes to matter, create activity, and to contribute to change (Østern, 2017, p. 11, my translation). In this exposition it will be about understanding and pointing at what comes to matter in the glowing moment, like the musical possibilities in the word hallo5. Arts-based research can bring forward understandings that other approaches can’t (Østern, 2017, p. 13, my translation) and can bring new knowledge and understandings. It is “embodied knowledge”, and the knowledges that arts-based researchers strive for is felt knowledges (Klein, n.d.)
When exploring or examining something in detail to understand more about it (what analyzing is about), close observa(c)tion is the first step. In Kleins (n.d., in Waterhouse, 2023, p. 126) mind “there is no better way to observe than to try and draw what you are looking at”. When researching with music, maybe there is no better way to observe than to try and articulate what one is listening to? Or at least, it is one possible way to articulate what one is listening to.
The articulations presented in this exposition take the form of audible expressions. They are not intended to represent or replicate the expression made by microphone-Felix-loop station-speaker6, but rather to respond to and tune in to their expression. It will be about listening “[…] oneself into the other and show what one hears and experiences, through one’s own expressions" (Hovik, 2015, p. 194, my translation). But given that I’m thinking with Barad (2003, 2007, 2014) and agential realism, “one’s own expression” is no longer an expression made by an isolated and separated individual. Rather, it's an entangled response produced with the active agents creating the glowing moment, which also works within and through me as the expression is made. This way of thinking is conveyed through Hljóðum, the project's artist name on SoundCloud.
Hljóðum is a conjunction of the Icelandic verb hljóða, which means ‘active voice’ or ‘to sound’ (Wiktionary, 2022). In the conjunction ‘hljóðum’ it means ‘we sound’. The intention in choosing this name is to accentuate the agential realist notion of entanglement; it is not me as a separate researcher that works on the expressions. Rather, the expression emerges as a felt effect and consequence of encountering and entagneling with the research material and the material world (Taguchi, 2012, p. 14). As Hultman & Taguchi (2010, p. 257) put it, “The research material itself can be understood as constitutive force, working upon the researcher as much as the researcher works upon the research material”. The audible expression is a response to and an entanglement with loop station and Felix and the word hallo and the microphone and … and … and …
– we sound.
As I explore how analysis could be done in post-qualitative and performative approaches, I am not attempting to create a step-by-step recipe for performing analysis in general. Post-qualitative inquiry resists pre-existing research designs, methods, processes, procedures, or practices (St. Pierre, 2021, p. 163). The process will unfold and materialize differently with different research materials and in different projects. What I put forward here is a short description of the process of analyzing unfolded with this one glowing moment.
When I started working my way through the recorded research material, I was guided by the GLOWING MOMENT PIECE as a way to open up to unexpected readings of and listenings to the research material, letting the constitutive force of the research material work upon me, allowing it to lead me towards glowing moments.
Hallo is a glowing moment that called on my attention and demanded me to dwell on it. In this exposition THE TUNING IN PIECE works as a way of dwelling. It prompts an unexpected listening and a reading, where I understand reading as more than a visual activity and listening as more than an auditory activity. It is about affective, felt, embodied, and responsive reading and listening, allawing the glowing moment and the researcher-body work with and in each other to create felt knowledge and understandings that the arts-based researchers strive for.
As THE TUNING IN PIECE suggests, I’m reading and listening through my form of art, which is music. I’m tuning in by listening myself into the glowing moment, into loop station-Felix-microphone-speaker-hallo7 and expressing what I hear and experiences through a responsive and improvised expression, exploring through music.
I experience analyzing with the arts as one of many methods to examine or explore the research material in detail to understand more about it. I also understand more about the different glowing moments in my research material when working with different ways to unfold and be folded into it.
By analyzing and communicating the research material trough arts-based forms, I am able to articulate my thoughts and bring forward understandings in different ways, in ways that other approaches can’t. It acknowledges that “[…] making is a thinking in its own right” (Manning, 2016, s. 134) and that knowledge can be embodied. Together with other ways of articulation, like graphic responses, musical scores, and textual descriptions, an arts-based approach contributes to expressing discoveries related to the main research question in the PhD project. In the glowing moment analyzed here, it will be about what opportunities to explore the musical dimensions, and experiment with musical materialities, elements and aspects in the everyday word hallo.
The sounds, the rhythms, the melodies, the dynamics. What hides in hallo?
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BEYOND REPRESENTATION – A POST-QUALITATIVE AND PERFORMATIVE APPROACH
PIECES AND PROMPTS
Through this exposition you’ll find two pieces, THE GLOWING MOMENT PIECE and THE TUNING IN PIECE. These pieces are inspired by Yoko Ono (1967) and her 'instruction pieces', which are meant as prompts and instructions to create your own artistic expressions and performances. What I intend the pieces to do is to work as prompts to inspire, motivate, push, invite, provoke, and stimulate responsiveness and openness towards and with the research material.
These are prompts I've given myself during the research and analysis process to trigger and provoke myself to move beyond the representative idea.
The prompts encourage and challenge me to let the research material lead the way, showing me what comes to matter, and gently force me to become a listening partner to the research material.
They make the research material and me meet each other in exploratory ways, not searching for universal answers but striving to discover what comes to matter in that particular glowing moment.
I experience THE GLOWING MOMENT PIECE to be supportive whenever I’m engaging with the research material. It’s supporting the post-qualitative and performative approach by reminding of and pushing towards the understanding of the research material being an active agent working upon me as much as I’m working upon it. It guides my researcher-body to be present with all my senses and emotions, opening up for what may thug me in the sleeve, demanding me to listen to that which glimmers and glows in the moment that presents itself.
THE TUNING IN PIECE prompts further in-depth and detailed explorations through listening “[…] oneself into the other and show what one hears and experiences, through one’s own expressions" (Hovik, 2015, p. 194, my translation), where “one’s own expression” is understood as an entangled response in collaboration with the glowing moment.
You are most welcome to engage with the prompts and work with them in way(s) that suit your research and process of analysis!
GLOWING MOMENTS
What is glowing moment? Or rather, what does glowing moments do?
MacLure (2013, p. 660) introduces the concept of 'glowing data' as a a way of understanding data as something more than an as more than a passive, inert, and indifferent mass just waiting to be analyzed and coded by the researcher. This is an important part of moving beyond representation.
Even though my research question revolves around what might emerg when a loop station and 1–3-year-olds meet each other, I’m not seeking patterns to be analyzed and categorized into lists, tables, or themes, or to generalize what one might expect children generally to do when introduced to a loop station. I aim to understand what possibilities to music (Small, 1998) that may emerge when the 1-3-yeare-olds and the loop station meet each other.
When moving beyond representation, ‘data’ is undersood as something more than a passive mass merely lying there waiting to be activated by the researcher. And with this movement an urge to use a other word then 'data' emerges. Although we have moved beyond the positivist turn, we can still, according to Østern (2017, p. 12), still find some traces of this shift in what is accepted and valued in research. In my view, the word 'data' have deep connections to the positivistic and quantitative turn. By continuing to use the word 'data,' the representative turn this exposition strives to move beyond, are being maintained. By replacing 'data' with the term 'research material,' I aim to create spaces to understand this as exactly that — material being agentic and capable of making itself intelligible to us (MacLure, 2013, p. 660).
But how does the research material make itself intelligible to us? According to MacLure (2013, p. 661), it’s some detail in the material that starts to glimmer and gather our attention. "We are no longer autonomous agents choosing and disposing", and the intelligibleness "can be seen, or rather felt, on occasions when one comes especially 'interested' in a piece of data" (MacLure, 2013, p. 660). The research material is no longer viewed as a passive entity, but understood “as a constitutive force, working upon the researcher as much as the researcher works upon the research material” (Hultman & Taguchi, 2010, p. 527).
This is where I would like to introduce the consept ‘glowing data’ to the ‘stop moment’, because what makes the glimmer especially interesting is moments of risk8 and opportunities that calls on our attention (Fels, 2015, p. 53). It tugs on our sleeve and says listen (Fels, 2015, p. 53). This manner of collaborating with the research material resonates strongly with how I perceive the intra-action between the research material and myself. However, there is one challenge: I don't necessarily agree that we are stopping. Instead, I suggest that these moments actually make us aware of something that triggers and accelerates the research process.
Slowing accelerating down
Halting, pausing, plunging
Resting on the move
Breathing, pulsing, stalling
Vibrantly still
Calmly hurrying
Excitedly serene
Patiently eager
Vaguely clear
This is why I'm plugging he concepts of 'glowing data' and 'stop moments' together, choosing to call it ‘glowing moments’.
Glowing moments can be understood as moments of opportunity, risk, wondering, and bothering, like something that calls and gathers your attention, like a child tugging your sleeve and says listen.
So, what can a glowing moment do? It compels us to, and make it possible to, move beyond representation. Instead of zooming out and attemting to find categories to stand in for and capture the material world, we are drawn into one moment that comes to matter. We are invited and urged to look closer and to examining it in detail to understand what comes to matter in this glowing moment.
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BEYOND REPRESENTATION – A POST-QUALITATIVE AND PERFORMATIVE APPROACH
WHAT HIDES IN HALLO9?
My lower back is aching after several hours spent sitting on the hard wooden floor, where I’ve been sitting listening and looking through the research material recorded with a GoPro camera, now flashing over the laptop screen and flowing out of the headset speakers.
The hardwood frame on the couch is gnawing deep into my upper back, creating a very particular stinging sensation, signalling that it's time to change my seating position.
I’m sitting on the living room floor, leaning backwards onto the couch, as I often do when I’m working at home during lockdown. It is a cold winter day late in 2021.
A hollow growl is roaring from the depths of my stomach, signaling that lunch is long overdue.
‘I’m just going to look through this part, then I’ll grab some food’ I think to myself, hurrying through the clip and not really paying much attention anymore. So distracted by bodily demands that everything rolling over the screen and finding its way out of the headset becomes nothing but a cacophonous blur.
But then, as if a fog is lifting, everything suddenly becomes crystal clear and I no longer feel the backaches (plural) or the hunger.
Hallo-hallo-hallo-hallo! HALLO!
It washes over me like a wave, making me slow down and accelerate at the same time, the moment stands vibrantly still, both halting and plunging in one motion. There's something about the way this everyday, mundane word, Hallo is expressed that captures my attention.
It is not just a child saying hallo into a loop station; there’s something more here something emerging in-between loop station-Felix-speaker-microphone10 . Something tugging my sleeve.
A moment of risk. Not ‘risk’ as in something dangerous, but understood as a vibrant suspense that articulates that something is at stake – a chance, a possibility for playfully explorations of the unfamiliar in the familiar.
Hallo is an everyday word, so often spoken and replied to that it happens almost automatically, without much thought or awareness. But here, out of its familiar context, it suddenly becomes possible to hear and explore it differently. What else may emerge in hallo, beyond being a word and a greeting?
A moment of opportunity. An opportunity to explore the potentials of sound and music in hallo. How can it form and be formed by lips-voice-breath-loop station11 in different ways, exploring different sounds, tempos, dynamics and rhythms in hallo?
A moment of bothering. Like an inviting and appealing disturbance that sparks and tickles the curiosity, urging it forward, not allowing it to rest in the comfort of the already known, but rather pushes towards the edge of the not (yet) known. What knowledges does hallo produce?
A moment of wondering. A wondering about what hides in hallo?
All of this stands out as glowing to me in the moment, and all these questions arise within the entanglement between loop station-Felix-microphone-speaker12. These questions aren't articulated verbally, but they prompt me to explore through intensities, forces, dynamics, rhythms, pauses, lingerings, wanderings, and movements in the ways the word hallo is expressed in the intra-action.
So, what potential does this moment hold? I find that this glowing moment produces opportunities for exploring unfamiliar and not (yet) known musical potential in something familiar as the word hallo. This is what is re-turned (to) in the analysis, not as an attempt to reproduce the expression created by loop station-Felix-microphone-speaker13, but as inspiration to further explorations of the potential to music (Small, 1998) with the word hallo. And to offer a suggestion to how one might analyze, examine and explore the research material in detail to understand more about it in post-qualitative and performative approaches.
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REFERENCES
Barad, K. (2003). Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of how matters come to matter. Signs, (28)3, 801- 831. https://doi.org/10.1086/345321
Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and The Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Duke University Press.
Barad, K. (2014). Diffracting Diffraction: Cutting Together-Apart. Parallax, 20(3), 168-187. http://doi.org/10.1080/13534645.2014.927623
Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant Matter. A political ecology of things. Duke University Press.
Cage, J. (1961). Silence. Lectures and Writings by John Cage. Wesleyan University Press.
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Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. (n.d.). Analyze. The Britannica Dictionary. Accesed 16. September 2024. https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/analyze
Fels, L. (2015). Collecting Data Through Performative Inqury: A Tug on the Sleeve. Youth Theatre Journal, 26(1), 50-60. http://doi.org/10.1080/08929092.2012.678209
Haseman, B. (2006). A Manifesto for Performative Research. Media International Australia, 118(1), 98-106. https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878X0611800113
Hovik, L. (2015). Din lytting skal være din sang: om inntoning, lytting og interaktivitet i scenekunst for små barn. In G. Strømsøe & A. Hammer (eds.), Drama og skapende prosesser I barnehagen (pp. 193-209). Fagbokforlaget.
Hultman, K., & Lenz Taguchi, H. (2010). Challenging anthropocentric analysis of visual data: a relational materialist methodological approach to educational research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 23(5), 525–542. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2010.500628
Jusslin, S. & Østern, T. P. (2020). Entanglements of teachers, artists, and researchers in Pedagogical environments: A new materialist and arts-based approach to an educational design research team. International Journal of Education & the Arts, 21(26), 1- 28. http://doi.org/10.26209/ijea21n26
Klein, J. (n.d.). What is Artistic Research?. Research Catalogue. https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/15292/15293
Knudsen, J. S. (2008). Children’s Improvised Vocalisations: Learning, Communication and Technology of The Self. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 9(4), 287-296. https://doi.org/10.2304/ciec.2008.9.4.287
Kuby, C. R. (2019). (Re)Thinking and (Re)Imagining Social(ing) With a More-Than-Human Ontology Given the Limits of (Re)(Con)Straining. Language. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 19(2), 126 143. https://doi.org/10.1177/1532708618807258
Lather, P. (2013). Methodology-21: what do we do in the afterward? International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 26(6), 634–645. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2013.788753
Leavy, P. (2019). Introduction to Arts-Based Research. In P. Leavy (Ed.), Handbook of Arts-Based Research (Paperback edition, pp. 3-21). The Guilford Press.
MacLure, M. (2013). Researching Without Representation? Language and Materiality in Post-Qualitative Methodology. International Journal of. Qualutative Studies in Education, 26(6), 658-667. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2013.788755
Manning, E. (2016). Ten Propositions for Research-Creation. In: N. Colin & S. Sachsenmaier (eds), Collaboration in Performance Practice. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137462466_7
Ono, Y. (1967). Grapefruit [artistic book]. Wunternaum Press.
Sandvik, N. (2015). Post-humanistiske perspektiver. In A. M. Otterstad & A.B. Reinertsen (eds.), Metodeestival og øyeblikksrealisme – eksperimenterende kreative forskningspassasjer (pp. 45-62). Bergen: Fagbokforlaget
Small, C. (1998). Musicking; the meaning of performing and listening. Wesleyan University Press.
St. Pierre, E. A. (2021). Why Post Qualitative Inquiry? Qualitative Inquiry, 27(2), 163-166. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800420931142
Sæterdal, I. D. (2019). Digital musicking - Musikalske møter mellom loop station og barn i eit post-humanistisk perspektiv [master's desertation, Queen Maud University Collage]. DMMH Open. https://open.dmmh.no/dmmh-xmlui/handle/11250/2633597
Taguchi, H. L. (2012). Pedagogisk dokumentasjon som aktiv agent – Introduktion till antra-aktiv pedagogik. Gleerups Utbildning AB.
Waterhouse, A.-H. L. (2021). Materialpoetiske øyeblikk. En a-r-t-ografisk studie av små barns eksperimentelle materialprosesser i barnehagen. [Doctoral thesis, University of South-Eastern Norway]. USN Open archive. https://hdl.handle.net/11250/2758549
Waterhouse, A.-H. L. (2023). Fra observasjon til observa(k)sjon. In C. O. Myhre & A.-H. L. Waterhouse (eds.), Metodologiske ut-viklinger – Om kvalitativ og post-kvalitativ forskning i barnehagefeltet (pp. 73-89). Fagbokforlaget.
Wiktionary. (2022, 12 July). hljóða. Accesed 16. September 2024. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hlj%C3%B3%C3%B0a
Østern, T. P. (2017). Å forske med kunsten som metodologisk praksis med aesthesis som mandat. Journal for Research in Arts and Sports Education, Special Issue: «Å forske - med kunsten», 1(5), 7-27 http://dx.doi.org/10.23865/jased.v1.982
Østern, T. P., Jusslin, S., Knudsen K. N., Maapalo, P., & Bjørkøy, I. (2023). A performative paradigm for post-qualitative inquiry. Qualitative Research, 23(2), 272-289. https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941211027444
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BEYOND REPRESENTATION – A POST-QUALITATIVE AND PERFORMATIVE APPROACH
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BEYOND REPRESENTATION – A POST-QUALITATIVE AND PERFORMATIVE APPROACH
HALLO14 - A GLOWING MOMENT
In the room, there is, among others, a table, three 2-year-olds, a couch, a loop station of the type RC505 Boss, a 35-year-old, a microphone, an XLR cable, a power cord, and a speaker of the type JBL Charge 4. It's these agents that have the strongest agency in this cut and together create this glowing moment.
The loop station, which is not yet connected to the microphone, speaker, and electricity, sits on the table. As I set up the loop station, Marianne, Sebastian, and Felix are drawn towards it. They crowd around it, pressing, sliding, and exploring the buttons and levers.
Once the power cord is plugged in, I press the power button, tap on the microphone, and say "hallo" to test the sound. Unintentionally this word becomes part of what unfolds next.
The word hallo is re-turned (to) in further exploration between the loop station, voice, microphone, mouth, speaker, and body. At first, the word is re-turned (to) as a greeting, as if the person holding the microphone (which is passed around) is saying hallo to the others in the room. But on the third round, Felix holds onto the microphone and there is a shift in how the word is expressed.
It's as if the meaning of the word has escaped because the word has been said so many times rapidly after each other and the discourse(s) of hallo withdraws into the background.
The round, waffle-patterned metal-woven microphone head is pressed against Felix’s lips. He draws his breath, and a voice brimming with laughter and bubbling with joy is sent out in the room and into the microphone:
Hallo-hallo-hallo-hallo!
Suddenly, there is room to explore the unfamiliar in the familiar and the musical possibilities here. The rhythm is made clear, march-like, and holds a steady, driving pulse with extra strokes on "ll", as if it's an especially intriguing movement to make with the tongue inside the mouth. The melody is ascending.
Microphone-Felix sends this in through the XLR cable into the loop station where the sound is recorded, out through the mini-jack cable to the speakers, and out into the room again. Voice-speaker-loop stationx hits microphone-Felixx and they respond immediately with a…
HALLO!
...Into the microphone. The rhythm fits into the marching beat and carries the same melody as the other hallos, but the dynamics of this hallo are louder and more intense.
Felix stands looking at the loop station and listens to this loop for a few re-turning rounds...
...smiling more and more with each re-turn, until he finally bursts out laughing, climbs onto the couch, and starts to jump in sync with the recording, all the while responding hallo-hallo-hallo-hallo in rhythm with his jumps and the recording. Speaker-loop station-Felix15 are harmoniously accompanying each other.
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BEYOND REPRESENTATION – A POST-QUALITATIVE AND PERFORMATIVE APPROACH
BEYOND REPRESENTATION
– A POST-QUALITATIVE AND PERFORMATIVE APPROACH
This exposition is founded on post-qualitative and performative theory and methodology. One of the motivations for these approaches is to challenge the representative turn and offer alternative methods of inquiry.
MacLure (2013, p. 659) describes the logic of representation as a structuring process that produces stable meaning and stable subjects. Representationalism creates structure and stasis from movement and is understood as categorical, judgmental and hierarchical (MacLure, 2013, p. 659) where the material is viewed as "[...] passive stuff, as raw, brute or inert stuff." (Bennett, 2010, p. vii) and gets a passive role.
In my understand, this is a process where movement and lived life is made static in order to take a step back to objectively observe and describe it from a distance and from the outside. Representation produces an idea that the world is stable and constant, as if it's something separate from us that can be captured and gathered into words and pictures to represent the reality.
Barad (2007, p. 86) understands representationalism as the belief that words, concepts, and ideas accurately reflect or mirror the things to which they refer, serving as evidence of the thing or phenomenon they represent. They are evidence of how the real world really is and hold dominance in shaping our understanding and creation of knowledge.
According to MacLure (2013, p. 659) and Barad (2003, p. 802), representationalism is closely connected to the linguistic dominance. This involves that words can sometimes become more real to us than the actual materiality that we and the world consists of.
Both Barad (2003, 2007), Taguchi (2012), and MacLure (2013) among others, argue that we need to move beyond the idea that the world is a stable, constant, and separate entity that we can capture and collect. Instead, we need to understand knowledge production as an effect and consequence of our entanglement with and in the world, from which we cannot separate ourselves.
Post-qualitative approaches emerge as an alternative to the representative turn. The goal of this approach “is not to find and represent something that exists in the empirical world of human lived experience but to re-orient thought to experiment and create new forms of thought and life” (St. Pierre, 2021, p. 163).
The post-qualitative approach challenges the hierarchical structure of representation where written and spoken language has a God-like centrality (MacLure 2013, p. 660). Post-qualitative approaches prefer a flattened structure where discourse and matter are mutually entangled in the continuous, unfolding emergence of the world. In this view, the world is no longer fixed and separate from the linguistic systems or categories that 'represent' it (MacLure 2013, p. 660). Your sentence is already quite clear, but here's a slight revision for improved readability:
Linguistic and cognitive meaning-making are demoted from their elevated, privileged position in the construction of worldly affairs, becoming just one element in a manifold of forces and intensities that are in motion, connecting and diverging (MacLure 2013, p. 660; Østern et al., 2023, p. 284).
Wor(l)ds collide and connect with humans and more-than-humans. They coexist on the same ontological level, and as a result, language cannot achieve the distance or externality that would allow it to represent, stand over, or stand in for the world (MacLure 2013, p. 660).
The notion that written and spoken language is the only true way to understand and create knowledge is dethroned by scholars including MacLure (2013), Barad (2003, 2007, 2014), Taguchi (2012), and Østern et al. (2023).
Other forms of expression become equally valued as the linguistic expressions. Written or spoken language will no longer be at the center of meaning-making, understanding, and knowledge creation. Within the post-qualitative turn, spaces are made for other, equally valued methods of understanding with and through.
One of the consequences this implies that is of great importance for the field of early childhood education is that by decentering the spoken and written word, young children no longer are viewed as insufficient due to their pending mastery of the spoken and written language (Sandvik, 2015, p. 49, my transelation). Focusing of the eyes, gestures, musical expressions and other forms of communication is positioned as equal to the spoken language (Sandvik, 2015, p. 49, my transelation).
One approach that are close to the post-qualitative understanding of knowledge creation is the performative approach. Similar to the post-qualitative approach , “[...] performative research stands as an alternative to the qualitative and quantitative paradigms by insisting on different approaches to designing, conducting and reporting research [...] (Haseman, 2006, p. 1).
According to Barad (2007, p. 49), a performative way of understanding scientific practices recognize recognizes that knowledge comes from a direct material engagement with the world. Performative research does not attempt to represent reality, but instead to engage with it (Thrift, 2008, as cited in Østern et al., 2023, p. 277). Research material is no longer seen as passive matter, but is understood “as a constitutive force, working upon the researcher as much as the researcher works upon the research material” (Hultman & Taguchi, 2010, p. 527).
The performative approach also addresses the dethroning of linguistics and rejects the notion that written and spoken language are the only or superior way of engaging and communicating knowledge. It recognizes other methods of producing and articulating knowledge (Kuby, 2019). Performativity, as Barad (2007, p. 133) writes, “is not an invitation to turn everything (including material bodies) into words; on the contrary, performativity is precisely a contestation of the excessive power granted to language to determine what is real”.
This is where the process of analyzing with the arts in this exposition begins.
Articulations of knowledge may involve performative explorations through creative drama activities, dance, music, poetry, and visual arts (Fels, 2015. p. 51). This understanding produces spaces where we can welcome different questions, languages (beyond the written and spoken) and still-not-existing-research-methods (Østern et al., 2023, p. 283) and the starting point of a performative exploration may be a question, an action, a feeling, a sentence from a poem or a song. Or the word hallo entangled with Felix-loop station-speaker-microphone16
Performative explorations invite us engage in performative acts and provides spaces to explore what is known and not (yet) known. If we understand performative acts as knowing, doing, becoming, and creating, then the performative can offer us spaces for actions where we can explore that which glows and emerges as important to us in the glowing moments (Sæterdal 2019, p. 22). To do so, the performative researcher needs to become a present, sensing, and embodied researcher, not merely someone who thinks an writes from a distant and disembodied position (Østern et al., 2023, p. 284). That means that I need to engage with and tune in to the research material, working upon and being worked upon by the glowing moment.
The research material is no static or constant entity just lying there waiting for me to activate it; it is already an active agent. It is not captured and frozen moments in time to which I return, but rather living, vibrant, and glowing moments that are re-turned (to). The research material is by no means just in my hands. The research material works upon and affects me as much as I affect and work upon the research material (Jusslin & Østern, 2020, p. 8). I am also in the hands of the research material, in deeply affected ways (Østern et al., 2023, p. 284).
The researcher goes through pain, joy, despair, flow, relief, grief, and pride as the research material plays tricks on them (Østern et al., 2023, p. 284). As a researcher, I’m not constant or stable throughout the research process, I’m changing alongside with the emerging research process, as are the research material (Østern et al., 2023, p. 283).
For the performative researcher, the body is crucial. It is perceived as a resource that the researcher relies upon for conducting research, understanding, and analyzing (Østern et al., 2023, p. 284).
Together with the understanding of performative research as research that seeks to keep complexity, where artistic and arts-based expressions is a way of producing and articulating knowledge, I propose that to analyze with the arts is one of many methods to explore and examine the research material in detail to understand what comes to matter in this glowing moment, and to explore that which emerges as valuable in this entanglement.
In this capacity, the expression and the loops is not a result of an intention to create a product for display, but rather a consequence of an process of analyzing.
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