Diffraction, Mixture and Cut-Ups in Performing with Plants

Abstract

Inspired by Karen Barad’s understanding of diffraction as a methodology and experiments in moving across time and space with diffraction I will in this text experiment with diffraction as a method for performance. On the one hand I will understand diffraction as reading images and texts diffractively, through one another, and on the other hand I will link diffraction to the tradition of artistic cut-up developed by Burroughs and Grysin. Some videos of sitting with shrubs are combined diffractively with ideas on vegetation by Emanuele Coccia, to see whether these ‘waves’ of artistic practice and philosophical discourse might interfere with each other in a way that resonates with Barad’s understanding of diffraction, whether the idea of ‘mixture’ proposed by Coccia resonates with the process of differentiation and entanglement involved in Barad’s use of diffraction. The performances that I use as examples - sitting with shrubs in Jandia on Fuerteventura in 2017 and sitting with the Tabaiba and the Cardón plants on Gran Canaria in 2018 - were made as part of the artistic research project Performing with Plants at Stockholm University of the Arts, as surplus experiments of a kind. What can these ‘ripples’ produced in tourist resorts tell us about performing with plants, and vice versa, what can the use of these works as material for a diffractive experiment tell us about diffraction as a tool?