Agential realism meets feminist art. A diffractive dialogue between writers, theories and art

Abstract

This article invites readers to follow our diffractive dialogue, which reflects on our interdisciplinary collaboration in thinking and writing with Karen Barad. Working with Barad’s diffractive methodology, we bring her agential realism, insights from quantum physics and feminist theories to contemporary feminist art. The aesthetic practices of three art works are discussed, and we argue that these call for an understanding of eco-, capitalist-, colonialist- and feminist critique as interrelated phenomena in the sense of agential realism. This is because it is not only the art works themselves that create encounter-moments of being-entangled with the bodies and discourses that surround them. From a methodological perspective, we are also interested in marking diffractive moments of encounter with the art works and between us, given our different disciplinary backgrounds. So, we intend to open up a space of encounters between Barad’s work, the work of the three artists and the work of ourselves as writers.