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.

/ Non-Local Walks

Bohr to Bohr

Duration: 60’00

Location: Ved Stranden 14, Copenhagen (departure) Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen (destination)

Pre steps: Agree on a time of departure and duration of the walk. Use a GPS-based app to track and record the route, pace, and elevation of your walk. Each bring a text by Niels Bohr to read during your walk. Meet at the address of Niels Bohr’s birthplace (Ved Stranden 14, Copenhagen). End the walk on the address of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen.

00’00 Start the GPS-based app and begin walking. You now have 60’00 to make it to the Niels Bohr Institute. Choose your own route and pace to get there. Pause when needed. Take note if parts of the text you are reading has certain resonances or dissonances in your situation of walking.

60’00 End of walk

Post walk: Share your walking and reading experience with your cowalkers, along with notes from the text(s), route, encounters, etc

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Søren Kjærgaard, Amilcar Lucien Packer Yessouroun, Carla Zaccagnini - Diffracting the Copenhagen Interpretation - Toward Non-Local Collaborative Art Practices - 2025