Non-representational theory & actor network theory

Activity and activities is what this international use of video streaming and in the context of visual art and design practices is all about. It is fascinating to see how theory coming from human geography is just so obviously helpful in thinking about these spaces, territories and the mapping techniques that we seem to be involved with in the events of the past seven years.

In particular I would like to reference the work of Nigel Thrift and Non-representational theory.

This is a theory developed in human geography, largely through the work of Nigel Thrift that challenges those using social theory and conducting geographical research to go beyond representation. Instead of studying and representing social relationships, non-representational theory focuses upon practices - how human and nonhuman formations are enacted or performed - not simply on what is produced. This is a post-structuralist theory drawing in part from the works of Michel Foucault, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and phenomenonologists such as Martin Heidegger, but also weaving in the perspectives of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Bruno Latour and Michel Serres, and more recently from political science (including ideas developed in radical democracy) and anthropological discussions of the material dimensions of human life. Non-representational theory's focus upon hybrid formations parallels the conception of 'hybrid geographies' developed by Sarah Whatmore.

Actor-network theory is clearly relevant to this context especially the current iteration of sustainability. Everything we are doing is clearly weak, especially in terms of the notion that it is the pathways of repeated and then again, repeated exchange and movement, migration and journeying that influence the patterns of flow, along rivers, roads and co-axial cable.

Looking at how actor-network theory might help get our heads round what it is we are actually doing here is very useful, because of the in the work of the French philosopher of science, Michel Serres, and the French engineer, Bruno Latour, we come across;
an attempt to write the world anew, by starting from first principles; its aim is nothing less than an attempt to rewrite the 'constitution' of western knowledge.

Blackwell’s The Dictionary of Human Geography has a chapter on this.
To quote and paraphrase the very succinct account of this theory by the afore mentioned Nigel Thrift in Blackwell’s The Dictionary of Human Geography, actor-network theory is the study of heterogeneous engineering:

'heterogeneous' because it is concerned with a vision of the world as a multiplicity of different connections (translations, associations, mediations); and 'engineering' because it sees these connections as fabricated out of a diverse range of materials.

The new constitution proposed by actor-network theory is based on four main principles.

1. The first is that all the usual boundaries from which and with which western knowledge is constituted - between humans and things, nature and culture, tradition and modernity, inside and outside - must be put aside. These divides have made it impossible to see the world for what it really is: a collection of heterogeneous activities which are constantly in formation.
2. The second is that the world is a series of acts of 'heterogenous engineering', by which is meant that the world is made up of diverse networks of association which are constituted by that association - by the links rather than the nodes of the network and, more than this, by the traffic through the links.
3. Thirdly: Because the existence of actor-networks depends so heavily on circulation, their continuation relies on a whole series of 'immutable mobiles' - devices, types of people, animals, money, and so on, which can be transported from one location to another without changing form - which allow those networks to become durable: 'technology is society made durable' as Latour (1991) would have it. These immutable mobiles harden and anneal the networks, making it possible for them to last.
4. The fourth principle is a result of the previous three: the stress laid on mediaries and intermediaries. Taking a leaf from the work of Michel Serres (1995, 1996), the most important elements of the world are counted as the messengers which do the work of keeping networks connected and folding networks into each other. These most prominent performers of association stitch the world together.

I think that is where we are, in a specific and self-conscious art context that is essentially performative, and where there is an awareness of the fact that we are stitching bits of the world together in new ways.

This theory is helpful in that it:
problematizes the act of representation; representation becomes a kaleidoscope of different representational modes which can only be briefly stabilized and constantly interfere with each other.
Also,
it provides a means of understanding space as an order of partial connection and in doing so suggests new means of understanding space and place as folds in constantly evolving topologies since 'time and space are the consequences of the way in which bodies relate to one another' (Latour, 1997, p. 174).