The intensity of matter: The inhuman affects of geological performance
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School of Arts, Design and Architecture |
Doctoral thesis (monograph)
| Defence date: 2025-12-05
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Degree programme
Language
en
Pages
342
Series
Aalto University publication series Doctoral Theses, 219/2025
Abstract
The doctoral thesis is an artistic research monograph which unfolds itself around Madsen’s conception of the term geological performance, and holds a main inquiry which concerns how the ethico-aesthetic intensive and affective experience can facilitate a meaningful encounter, towards awareness. The research questions of the thesis are thus approached in an immanent discussion with philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Félix Guattari’s thinking, individually and collectively, grounded in modes of geophilosophy and schizoanalysis which open up a consideration of the world as based on transversal relations that not only flows but also breaks. An important movement of the thesis is the activation of “problematic fields” (Deleuze [1968] 1994) and via the eventness of bodies, event-bodies as Madsen proposes, where performance art and encountering sonic performativity are considered as facilitating a transformative experience which can also be discussed as learning. This is undertaken in consideration of contemporary urgencies and climate issues and includes a deeper look at relation at the level of geological matter, here as machinic and queer. This further includes a reflection of time, and its inhuman potential as discussed by, among others, geographer Kathryn Yusoff. There is here a focus on affective encounters of (in)human bodies and their capabilities and properties, as evident in philosopher Baruch Spinoza’s thinking, also considering a mode of relational intensity. In this thesis, Madsen thus demonstrates a relation and deep connection between artistic practice and embodied philosophical writing which is exemplified in their proposed “practical-philosophical essays” which are foundational for the artistic processes and fieldwork of the thesis. The idea of the body is considered as expanding in its connection to and with the geological, and it becomes (an) event in Madsen’s formulation of the artistic outputs as “practised problems”. The main scope has been to develop a specific method of affective enunciation through and with the body, and as an artistic research thesis, it includes two already preliminary examined performances: one with a focus on sound and ideas of collaborative agency in the Matter-as-Collaborator Lab (2022), and another anchored in physical relations and extensions of the body, in the durational event-bodies [folding] (2024). As a result, Madsen introduces the concept matter-as-collaborator as an expansion of the ethico-aesthetic paradigm of Deleuze and Guattari, moving further beyond human experience, where intensity is necessary to produce affective relations to and with the environment and geology, to uncover, for example, the extractivist paradigms which global capitalism facilitates. Madsen research thus shows how this is carried forward, via bodies, and through modes of vibration in matter. As a core method, Madsen considers their body as a capturing device and interface which feeds relational remembrance from the field into the performances with a novel perception of the field as refrain, and activating the potentials of listening scores as collective assemblages of enunciation, connected to a deeper engagement with language in Deleuze and Guattari’s thinking, and in an expansion which includes, among other, composer Pauline Oliveros’ method of Deep Listening. Productive failure, hesitation, nonsense and the falsifier are also considered as tools to deterritorialise experience in artistic research with a focus on the potentialities of the minor.Description
Supervising professor
Sederholm, Helena, Assoc. Prof., Aalto University, Department of Art and Media, FinlandThesis advisor
Radomska, Marietta, Assoc. Prof., Linköping University, SwedenO’Reilly, Kira, Artist