Entangled Gestures and Technical Objects: Illuminating embodiment and digital experience through diffraction in performance

• Published in: Performance research 2020-07, Vol.25 (5), p.49-55
• Main Author: Putnam, E L
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1352-8165; 1469-9990
• DOI: 10.1080/13528165.2020.1868842

Diffraction, as defined by Karen Barad, functions as a means of reframing corporeal-machinic relations through performance, as made evident through the examination of works by Joan Jonas, Pipolotti Rist, and myself, EL Putnam. Specifically, in this paper, I consider the practices of artists who bring together moving image and performance in a manner that draws attention to the material properties of technology while revealing and informing the relationship of human bodies to this technology. The purpose of this investigation is to explore how art functions as a diffraction apparatus that enables a rethinking of embodied digital experience through performance. Emphasis is placed on corporeal interactions with digital moving image technologies, drawing from Gilbert Simondon's understanding of the technical object. His philosophical approach entwines humanity with its technical objects and environment, blurring boundaries of subject and object, being and thing, artificial and natural, as he redefines these concepts from a position of technological co-existence. Three works in particular are analysed: the mirror room from Joan Jonas's 2015 Venice Biennale exhibiton "They came to us without a word," Pippolotti Rist's Pixel Forest, and my 2017 performance Ember. Through this process, I investigate how bodies can interrupt images and such interruptions enable a re-framing of the body's relationship to technology. Emphasis in all these works is placed on the shared materiality of the body and digital technology through performance; an entangled relationship that is made evident through diffraction.