In everyday life, we are surrounded by innumerable material objects. In the context of new materialism, matter is understood not as passive or stable, but as dynamic and as a process. The objects of everyday life are not stable, but they perform and they make us perform. When one thinks, for example, of doing laundry at home, the drying laundry is "embedded in the routines, rhythms and routes through which people move and make their homes", as Sarah Pink and Kerstin L. Mackley (2015) have noted.1

This project, A Study on Objects, started out of my interest in the objects I have around me. I use these objects in everyday life and when making performances, but I hardly ever think about their materiality or the processes around them. My idea here is to give space and attention to the objects I have around me and see whether that demonstrates how relationships between humans and objects emerge in everyday life. This is an ongoing experiment, and I am still watching to see what kinds of forms it takes.

In addition to working with these videos, I have been thinking about examples of performance art in the context of new materialism.

FEMINIST NEW MATERIALISM

The background of my thinking here is in feminist materialism and the understanding of how a subject is already a part of the substances, systems, and becomings of the world.2 Rachel Tillman (2015) writes about feminist materialism and epistemology, highlighting the dynamic relation between mind and matter (including will, intention, intellect, and social and cultural forces) and underlining how these interact in important and dynamic ways. Tillman follows Karen Barad’s idea of agential realism and intra-action, saying, “Interactive matter is not and cannot be inert and passive. Instead, matter is dynamic and has its own kind of agency. Agency, in the most general sense, implies an ability to cause some kind of change.”3

This is not only a question of ontology, but also a question of responsibility and ethics. According to Tillman4, we are always engaged in a mutually performative relationship of responsibility with the world. All our interactions with matter are ethically charged because of this. We do not choose to take on this responsibility, but it is incarnate in all relationships between humans and material objects. Her conclusion here is that “we are not outside observers, nor the only intentional agents in the world, but we are always interactively responsible for co-creating what is.”5

When contemplating the relationship between objects and humans, as well as the agency of ‘stuff’, Stacey Alaimo suggests that humans cannot be separated from all the other stuff in the world. She suggests that “Thinking as the stuff of the world entails grappling with the strange agencies of ordinary objects that are already part of ourselves, as well as considering what it means for other creatures to contend with the environments they now inhabit.”6 She is also very critical of object-orientated ontology (ooo) and flat ontology – the equality of all objects – “which erases all distinctions between consumer products and living creatures”7. Instead, she demands a practice of thinking that interweaves ontology, epistemology, scientific disclosures, political perspectives, posthuman ethics, and environmental activism. She summarizes her thoughts with an idea from Karen Barad: “A posthumanist new materialism, emerging from feminist body politics and environmental activism, may wish to begin with Barad’s contention that 'there is no ‘I’ separate from the intra-active becoming of the world'”8.

NEW MATERIALISM AND PERFORMANCE ART

There is a special kind of relationship between matter and art. Barbara Bolt argues: “Art is material practice and that materiality of matter lies at the core of creative practice.”9 She writes that dance, theatre, and fashion as embodied practices engage the matter of bodies. In music, the material bodies of composers, musicians, and singers co-collaborate with instruments and other technologies in spaces that allow music to emerge. Moreover, she mentions visual artists who engage all manner of material processes in making and assembling art. “The material facts of artistic practices seem so self-evident and integral to our understanding of our art it may seem unremarkable to frame them in terms of material turn,”10 she writes.

Bolt does not mention performance artists – or perhaps she includes them in the category of visual artists – but I think performance artists have a unique relationship with matter. Firstly, performance art is known as embodied practice, a matter of body. Secondly, performance art quite often involves a special kind of relationship with things. 

It is not only about the things artists use, but performance art is also largely concerned with creating relationships with objects or showing something about the ways in which we relate to objects. These relationships can be conceptual or corporeal, and quite often they are both. If I think of classic performance art pieces like Martha Rosler’s Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975) or Marina Abramovic’s Rhythm 0 with 72 objects (1974), they both work with objects and show something about the relationships between humans and objects, not to mention that they both contain a bodily aspect.

In her video Semiotics of the Kitchen, Martha Rosler presents kitchen objects by naming them very clearly: “A is for apron”. The setting is familiar from TV cooking shows, but Rosler’s semi-aggressive mimicry related to objects does not lead the viewer to think about a kitchen full of delicious smells. At the latest by the time when Rosler is making a Zorro gesture with raised knives, it’s clear that the semiotics of the kitchen have nothing to do with cooking.11 Rosler herself has said of this work: "I was concerned with something like the notion of 'language speaking the subject,' and with the transformation of the woman herself into a sign in a system of signs that represent a system of food production, a system of harnessed subjectivity."12 Through the material objects, Rosler criticizes the place that is given to women. The kitchen objects are part of a subjectivity process that is not only semiotic but also a material convention.

Marina Abramovic’s Rhythm 0 was a very different kind of performance, but it also demonstrates something very significant about our relationship with objects. In her performance, Abramovic stood still while the audience was invited to do whatever they wished to her using one of the 72 objects she had placed on a table. The objects included a rose, a feather, perfume, honey, bread, grapes, wine, scissors, a scalpel, nails, a metal bar, and a gun loaded with one bullet. Abramovic herself has described her experience this way: “I felt really violated: they cut up my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the gun at my head, and another took it away. It created an aggressive atmosphere. After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood up and started walking toward the audience. Everyone ran away, to escape an actual confrontation.”13

We can analyze Abramovic's performance not only as an interaction between the artist and the audience, but also as an experiment of intra-action between humans and objects. On the one hand, there was the audience and their interaction with the objects that were available, their opportunity to use those objects. On the other hand, we can think of how the objects were related to the artist’s body (and how she felt about it). Of course, one can also ask what it means that the artist herself chose such objects to be used on her: what actions do these objects carry in themselves, what actions do they suggest, how do they perform, and what is the potentiality of matter?

However, materialistic approaches in performance art vary widely. As a more recent example, I would like to mention Tero Nauha’s performance Tell me about your machines (2012), in which he asked the audience to talk about their relationships with the machines that they use in their daily lives. Nauha describes the performance setting as follows: “There was a lot of black electric cables and wire on the floor, which created a kind of ‘nest’ or ‘network’ between the audience and myself. At the beginning of the performance I asked three or five people from the audience to become participants in the performance. They were asked to sit on the chairs reserved for them, which were closer to mine. These participants heard my voice through headphones, while the rest of the audience heard it normally without amplification. The participants were asked questions about the machines and devices they had.”14 The questions asked included, for example, how people used their machines or whether their machines used them. Who has control? Do the machines have their own individuality?

At the end of the discussion part, Nauha asked the audience to project or imagine their machines on the empty wall. Then he went to stand in the front of the wall telling the audience that he was the machine now and the audience could direct him as they wished. Members of the audience could tell Nauha how to move, what sounds to make, and so on. “The machines” were embodied and performed.

The performance was a part of Nauha’s doctoral dissertation, Schitzoproduction: Artistic research and performance in the context of immanent capitalism (2016), in which he asks what kind of role technological devices have in our everyday lives and how their role is related to the production of subjectivity. Following Gilbert Simondon’s thinking, Nauha states that our relationship to objects, here to machines and devices, is “an affective process, within a milieu – a system of objects and beings, where, in Gilbert Simondon’s terms, the question is not of ontology, but ontogenesis – a process of becoming in and through relationality.”15 So, matter is not only matter, but part of the system(s) of how we define ourselves.

In her performance Alphabets of Performance Art (2012), Leena Kela presents 26 objects and materials that are typically used by performance artists. The objects are titled from A to Z (‘a for an apple’, ‘b for a balloon’, ‘c for cardboard’ etc.) and each one includes an action with the object. The apple is for throwing on the floor, balloons are used here for floating in the air above a vacuum cleaner, and on the cardboard, Kela writes, “This is too noisy” as a comment to the vacuum cleaner that is still on. Kela’s performance can be seen as an introduction to the world of performance art, underlining the aspect of everyday life and its object-oriented nature. Kela comments on the genre of performance art with a touch of irony, but in a hearty manner, fully conscious of the conventions of the genre and the repetitive forms that it takes. Her performing attitude is far from Rosler’s aggressiveness, but rather playful and ‘educational’.