Diffracting the Copenhagen Interpretation - Toward Non-Local Collaborative Art Practices by Søren Kjærgaard

'Diffracting the Copenhagen Interpretation: Toward non-local collaborative art practices' investigates the resonances of concepts from quantum theory in the realm of transdisciplinary practice-based artistic research. Throughout a series of protocols using diffractive methodologies, we intend to translate and embody concepts such as spacetime, entanglement, non-locality, uncertainty, indeterminacy, and superpositionality, and embed them as tools for our artistic practices. These concepts were chosen for their singularity in physics, but also for the ways in which they confront ontoepistemic pillars of ‘Modernity’, such as sequentiality, determinacy and separability. The research is carried out by a transdisciplinary non-local core ensemble formed by Søren Kjærgaard, Amilcar Packer, and Carla Zaccagnini. The cities we inhabit – Copenhagen, Sao Paulo and Malmö – have been our laboratories. Departing from tools and methods learned from each-other's disciplines, we have been creating scores that guide our simultaneous actions while walking on the street –interacting with public spaces and their characteristics– or while lying asleep –in the most private of spheres. On the one hand, in a practice we call ‘non-local walking’, scores conduct our collective experiencing of our cities, involving a diffractive methodology of reading and listening, and the entangled collecting of objects, words and other affections found in the urban terrain. On the other hand, the ‘entangling dream practice’ experiment is an attempt without aiming at success of meeting each other in our dreams. Both investigations are conceived as boundary-crossing transdisciplinary methodologies through which we create a relational, critical consciousness and sensing that stimulates unexpected outcomes, embracing failure. These scored performances have resulted in cartographies, drawings, moving sculptures, audio works and writings. Across these various materializations, unexpected connections, constellations, and coincidences e/merge, unveiling yet unheard polyphonies that give resonance to the urban and mental spaces, as potentized terrains awaiting (re)circuitry, and, as fields of forces that await to be (re)experienced.

References

Barad, Karen. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke University Press.

———. 2011. “Erasers and Erasures: Pinch’s Unfortunate ‘Uncertainty Principle’, Social Studies of Science,.” Sage Journal 41 (3). https://doi.org/10.1177/030631271140.

———. 2012a. Intra-Actions (Interview of Karen Barad by Adam Kleinmann). DOCUMENTA (13) Issue of Mousse Magazine. Milan, Italy.

———. 2012b. “Nature’s Queer Performativity, Women.” Women, Gender and Research 2012 (2): 25–53.

———. 2012c. What Is the Measure of Nothingness? Infinity, Virtuality, Justice / Was Ist Das Maß Des Nichts? Unendlichkeit, Virtualität, Gerechtigkeit. 100 Notes - 100 Thoughts / 100 Notizen - 100 Gedanken, No099: Karen Barad. DOCUMENTA (13) © 2012 Documenta Und Museum Fridericianum Veranstaltungs-GmbH. Kassel; Ostﬁldern: Hatje Cantz Verlag.

———. 2014. "Diffracting Diffraction: Cutting Together-Apart". Parallax 20 (3): 168–87. https://doi.org/10.1080/13534645.2014.927623.

Bennett, Jane. 2010. Vibrant Matter. A Political Ecology of Things. Durham/London: Duke University Press.

Bohr, Niels. 1972. Collected Works; Vol. 1: Early Work (1905-1911) (ed. J. Rud Nielsen), 1972. ; Vol. 2: Work on Atomic Physics (1912-1917) (ed. Ulrich Hoyer), Amsterdam : North-Holland Pub. Co.

Bongo, David. 2022. Sync and Swarm. Bloomsbury Academic.

Busch, Karen. 2009. “Artistic Research and the Poetics of Knowledge.” Art & Research - A Journal of Ideas, Contexts and Methods 2 (2).

Cage, John. 1961. Silence: Lectures and Writings. Middletown, Conn: Wesleyan University Press.

Cocker, E, Gansterer, N. & Greil, M. 2015. “Choreo-Graphic Figures: Beginnings and Emergences.” Ruukku, On Process. 20 (6). http://ruukku-journal.fi/en.

Cocker, Emma. 2013. “Live Notation: – Reflections on a Kairotic Practice.” Performance Research 18 (5): 69–76. https://doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2013.828930.

———. 2018. “What Now, What next-Kairotic Coding and the Unfolding Future Seized.” Digital Creativity 29 (1): 82–95. https://doi.org/10.1080/14626268.217.1419978.

Cocker, Emma, Nikolaus Gansterer, and Mariella Greil. 2015. “Notion of Notation >< Notation of Notion.” Performance Research 20 (6): 53–57. https://doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2015.1111053.

Crispin, Darla . 2019. Artistic research as a process of unfolding. Norwegian Academy of Music, 3. https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/503395/503396

DeLanda, Manuel. 2016. Assemblage Theory. Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press.

Deleuze, Gilles. 1969. Bergsonism. Translated by Barbara Habberjam and Hugh Tomlinson. Zone Books.

———. 1988. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. Monroe, OR: City Lights Books.

———. 1992. Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza. New York: Zone Books.

Dolphijn, Rick, and Iris van der Tuin. 2012. New Materialism: Interviews & Cartographies. Open Humanities Press.

Eidsheim, Nina Sun. 2015. Sensing Sound: Singing and Listening as Vibrational Practice. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Franklin, Sarah. 2017. “Staying with the Manifesto: An Interview with Donna Haraway.” Theory, Culture & Society 34 (4): 49–63. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276417693290.

Golanska, Dorota. 2018. “Geoart as a New Materialist Practice. Intra-Active Becomings and Artistic (Knowledge) Production.‘, RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research.” RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research 9.

Haraway, Donna. 1997. Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium. FemaleMan©_Meets_OncoMouseTM: Feminism and Technoscience. Routledge, New York and London.

———. 2003. The Companion Species Manifesto, Dogs, People and Significant Otherness. Chicago, IL: Prickly Paradigm Press.

———. 2008. When Species Meet. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

———. 2016. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Kjærgaard, Søren. n.d.. Meridiana: Lines toward a non-local alchemy Researchcatalogue.net. Retrieved September 28, 2023, from https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/712210/712212

Kjærgaard, Søren. 2021. Multilayeredness in Solo Performance. Rhythmic Music Conservatory Copenhagen, 2.

https://www.researchcatalogue.net/profile/show-exposition?exposition=396330

Oliveros, Pauline. 2005. Deep Listening: A Composer’s Sound Practice. iUniverse.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 2013. Phenomenology of Perception. London, England: Routledge.

New Materialism. Accessed September 28, 2023.

https://newmaterialism.eu.

Robinson, Dylan. 2020. Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies. University of Minnesota Press.

Rovelli, Carlo. 2004. Quantum Gravity. Cambridge University Press.

Sellers, Susan, and Ian Blyth. 2004. Hélène Cixous: Live Theory. Continuum International Publishing Group.

Silva, Denise Ferraira da. 2017. 1 (life)÷ 0 (blackness)=∞−∞ or∞/∞: On Matter Beyond the Equation of Value. Re-visiones.

———. 2014. Extraordinary times: A preface. Cultural Dynamics, Vol. 26 (1) 3–8 DOI: 10.1177/0921374013510798

Smith, Timothy. 2019. A Queering of Memory, Temporality, Subjectivity: Subversive Methods in Audiovisual Practice. PhD thesis, University of the Arts London.

Voegelin, Salome. 2014. Sonic Possible Worlds: Hearing the Continuum of Sound. New York, NY: Continuum Publishing Corporation.

Witzgall, Susanne, and Stakemeier,Kerstin(ed),. 2015. Power of Material - Politics of Materiality. Berlin, Germany: Diaphanes.

Tip

Tip

Søren Kjærgaard, Carla Zaccagnini - Diffracting the Copenhagen Interpretation - Toward Non-Local Collaborative Art Practices - 2024