Vi vill med det här kandidatarbetet inleda en konversation med havet. Tillsammans med Karen Barads posthumanistiska performativitet, agentiell realism, vill vi utmana och ifrågasätta den antropocentriska designerrollen där materialiteten ses som passiv och designern som ensam härskare över meningsskapandet i designprocessen. Med Barads onto-epistemologiska utgångspunkt undersöker vi hur design-processen uppstår i arrangemang av både mänskliga och icke-mänskliga aktörer, där mening framförhandlas genom relationer inom fenomen. Genom att tillämpa detta posthumanistiska förhållningssätt i lekfulla experiment tillsammans-med-havet kan vi se hur mening är situerad och skapas inom de materiell-diskursiva fenomen och apparater som utgör designprocessen.  Vi förstår designprocessen som ett ingripande i världens tillblivelse. Ett ingripande där ett kollektiv av aktörer står som medskapare, där mening, kroppar, subjekt och objekt uppförs och samformas genom intra-aktion. Detta förhållningssätt föder en medvetenhet om vårt ansvar i att ingripa i världens tillblivelse och vårt ansvar för de kroppar som skapas, en etik i handling. / In this Bachelor thesis we aim to establish a conversation with the sea. With Karen Barads posthumanist performativity, agential realism, as our companion we aim to challenge the anthropocentric role of the designer. In doing this we question the view of materiality as passive and the designer as the sole creator of meaning in the design process.  With Barads onto-epistemological standpoint we explore how the process of design is enacted in a performance of human and non-human actors, where meaning is negotiated through relations within phenomena. By putting this posthumanist notion into practice through playful experiments together-with-the-sea, we can understand how meaning is situated and shaped within the material-discursive phenomenas and apparatuses that is, and is part of, the design process.  We understand the design process as an intervening in the world’s becoming. An intervening where an assemblage of actors stands as co-creators and where meaning, bodies, subject and object is enacted and co-shaped through intra-action. This perspective gives us an awareness of our responsibility to intervene in the world’s becoming and our accountability for the bodies produced, an ethics in action.

Konstnärens roll som forskare är svår att placera då det är svårt att hålla sig objektiv när ens forskning går ut på att undersöka ens kreativa handlingssätt som en individ.. Detta kandidatarbete har tagit ståndpunkten av en posthumanistiskt synvinkel på världen och hur vi agerar med den, speciellt genom ögonen på konstnären och ens material. Med detta i åtanke så utvecklade vi vår frågeställning kring fenomenet av diffraktion. Diffraktion är ett naturlig fenomen där vågor av ljus kolliderar och formar ett mönster där vi kan studera effekten av de skillnader som uppstår. Vår förståelse och syn på diffraktion är baserat på Donna Haraways och Karen Barads djupdykande kunskap kring området både i ett filosofiskt och vetenskapligt perspektiv.   Med diffraktion som metod experimenterar och dokumenterar vi vår position och intra-aktioner med vårt konstnärliga material som en bestående partner i att materialisera en 3D miljö inuti en spelmotor. Vi och vårt material blir fokusgruppen för vår undersökning för att svara på frågan hur diffraktion kan användas som en metod för konstnärligt skapande med analoga och digitala verktyg. Denna resa dokumenteras genom anteckningar och reflektioner från våra individuella perspektiv och beskriver även vår produktionscykel för att belysa vår process och vilka metoder som implementerades i vilken del av processen. För att avsluta detta arbete så diskuterar vi även de förhållanden som uppstod i vår undersökning och hur temat och fokuset skulle kunna expandera utanför vår valda inriktning. / The role of the artist as a researcher is difficult to place since it’s hard to be objective while researching your creative approach as an individual. This bachelor thesis has taken the stance of the post-humanist viewpoint on the world and how we as humans act within it, especially through the eyes of the artist and our relationship to our materials. With this in mind, we developed our research question surrounding the phenomena of diffraction. Diffraction is a natural phenomena where waves of light collide and form a pattern where we can look at the effect of the differences that occur. Our understanding and take on diffraction is based on Donna Haraway’s and Karen Barad’s deep knowledge on the subject in both a philosophical and scientific way.  With diffraction as a method we experiment and document our positions and intra-actions with our artistic material as our joined partner in materializing a 3D environment within a game engine. We and our material become the research subjects to answer the question about how diffraction can become a method for artistic creation in a blend of analogue and digital art production. This journey is documented through notes and reflections from our separate perspectives and we also lay out our production cycle to display our process and which production methods are integrated where. To finish this paper, we discuss the conditions of our work and how the theme and subject of this research could be expanded upon.

Rechargeable batteries are set to power sustainable development by 2030. In this context, the increasingly important role of certain ‘strategic minerals’ used in emerging renewable technologies has become highly topical. As the geopolitical landscape is changing as the world moves away from fossil fuels, a surge in demand for these minerals will entail an increase of production at unprecedented levels. A case in point and a focus of analysis in this thesis is the extractive sector sourcing one of the most important of transition minerals ‘cobalt’ that is predominantly mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Against the challenge of a secret and non-transparent mining industry, this thesis has identified and listed all operational and openly communicative Multinational Corporations (MNC’s) extracting cobalt in the DRC. By conducting a critical discourse analysis on seven different cobalt extracting MNC’s, the analysis unveils different ways in which the companies ‘frame’ cobalt as strategic. Thus, a new and relevant ‘material-discursive framework’ has been utilised to bridge the underlying discourses of these companies with their material practices relating to cobalt. By employing this theoretical framework, the findings point at three main logics of corporate narrative the MNC’s in the sample use to form and maintain their operational activities: securitisation, environmentalism and developmentalism. Central discourses within these themes point at the way in which companies seek to maintain their economic security and legitimacy in an increasingly contested industry by continuously representing themselves as central actors with the responsibility and knowledge to deliver sustainable development for local communities affected by the industry in the DRC and for the sustainability transition.

Based on Timothy Mortons notion of hyperobject, this material-discursive practice is a cooperative play of forces and intra-active agencies between nature and the technical world. This research reflects especially a paradigmatic shift from the traditional model to one of an interrelated and performative network, in which all of the non-human entities are seen with the same existence and considered to view as operative agents. From Karen Barads agential-realistic perspective and Timothy Mortons theory of hyperobjects, this article importantly examines how to enter into advantageous relationships in a posthumanist designpurpose. What this article contributes are theories and methods that are rooted in an ethical approach to include and explore non-human actors, especially with the starting point of repositioning oneself as a designer and collaborating with the material environment for the outcome for new perspectives. The study has thereof taken its final form into a design where its operational and performative actors, non-human and human agencies, have interacted to produce an audio-reactive installation. / Baserat på Timothy Mortons begrepp om hyperobjekt, är denna materiell-diskursiv praktik en kooperativ lek av krafter och intra-aktiva agenser mellan naturen och den tekniska världen. Denna undersökning reflekterar framförallt ett paradigmskifte från det traditionella formerna till en mer sammankopplad och performativt nätverk, där alla icke-mänskliga aktörer ses med samma grad av existens och övervägs att betraktas som operativa agenter. Utifrån Karen Barads agentiell-realistiska perspektiv och Timothy Mortons teori om hyperobjekt undersöker artikeln huvudsakligen hur man kan ingå i fördelaktiga relationer i ett posthumanistiskt designsyfte. Vad den här artikeln bidrar med är teorier och metoder som förankrar sig i ett etiskt förhållningssätt för att inkludera in och utforska icke-mänskliga aktörer, framförallt med utgångspunkten att ompositionera en designer och samverka med den materiella omgivningen för utfallet av nya perspektiv. Undersökningen har därav tagit sin slutform till en gestaltning där dess operativa och performativa aktörer, icke-mänskliga och mänskliga agenser, har samspelet fram en audio-reaktiv installation.

Cette thèse propose de renforcer les liens entre les études sur l’œuvre d’art et les recherches sur le curatorial par le biais des études en communication, et plus précisément de l’analyse des interactions qui se déroulent entre les acteur·e·s humain·e·s et autre qu’humain·e·s composant le processus de conception et de réalisation d’une exposition d’arts. L’exposition Femynynytees, dont j’étais la co-curatrice, a été à l’affiche durant l’été 2018 à Montréal et fut spécialement conçue comme le terrain de recherche de cette expérience. Tout au long de la création de Femynynytees, j’ai pu observer un phénomène que j’ai appelé le devenir-œuvre d’art, auquel cette thèse consacre une attention particulière. Il s’agit d’un phénomène relationnel dans le cadre duquel l’œuvre, telle que créée par l’artiste, est mise en relation avec le « curatorial » (von Bismarck et Rogoff, 2012 ; Martinon, 2013), envisagé ici comme les connaissances produites pendant la réalisation d’un projet curatorial spécifique. Ces rencontres engendrent des transitions qui permettent que l’œuvre soit comprise non pas comme un objet, mais comme un trajet (Souriau, 2009), devenant ainsi un processus qui peut donc être défini comme étant, en même temps, œuvre et curatorial. Pour observer ce phénomène, j’adopte une approche théorique liée aux nouveaux matérialismes, en proposant que le curatorial soit conçu comme un ensemble de « pratiques matérielles-discursives » (Barad, 2003). Ces pratiques sont à l’origine des changements qui se produisent avec l’œuvre lorsqu’elle est mise en contact avec un processus curatorial. Selon cette perspective, les artistes, les curateur·e·s, les visiteur·e·s, les choix d’installation, les espaces d’exposition, et tout autre élément lié à la mise en branle d’un tel évènement, font partie du curatorial et sont ainsi parties prenantes de ses pratiques matérielles-discursives. Par ailleurs, cette recherche se concentre sur les pratiques en arts médiatiques, des œuvres envisagées comme matériellement plus perméables au curatorial par la relative flexibilité de leur processus de matérialisation, ainsi que par l’aspect collaboratif du système dans lequel elles sont généralement produites. Le terme « arts médiatiques » est prédominant au Québec et fait référence aux pratiques mobilisant des technologies médiatiques – soit des technologies électriques, électroniques ou numériques – dans la création d’une œuvre. D’un point de vue méthodologique, le devenir-œuvre d’art est analysé à partir d’une perspective ventriloque (Cooren, 2013) de la communication, une approche permettant d’identifier la complexité des voix (Mazzei et Jackson, 2012) qui participent de ce phénomène. Suite à l’examen des conversations tenues pendant les visites d’atelier et les réunions organisées entre curatrices et artistes, des courriels échangés entre artistes et curatrices et des entretiens réalisés avec une trentaine de visiteur·e·s, cette thèse montre comment s’opèrent concrètement les mises en relation du devenir-œuvre dans le cas d’une exposition d’arts médiatiques. Il s’agit donc d’une recherche située (Haraway, 1988), relationnelle et processuelle qui positionne la communication comme constitutive de toute réalité (Cooren, 2012). / This dissertation aims to strengthen the existing dialogue between art studies and curatorial studies through communication sciences, and more precisely, through the analysis of the interactions that take place between human and other-than-human actors composing the process of conception and realization of an art exhibition. The exhibition Femynytees, that I co-curated, was on display during the summer of 2018 in Montreal and was specially conceived as the fieldwork for this experience. Throughout the creation of Femynytees, I was able to observe a phenomenon that I propose to call the becoming-artwork, to which this dissertation devotes particular attention. By this, I mean a relational phenomenon by which the work, as created by the artist, is put in relation with the "curatorial" (von Bismarck and Rogoff, 2012; Martinon, 2013), considered here as a mode of knowledge engendered during the production of a specific curatorial project. This encounter generates transitions in the work that allow it to be understood as a path (Souriau, 2009), thus becoming a process that can be defined as both artwork and curatorial at the same time. To observe this phenomenon, I adopt a theoretical approach, inspired by the new materialisms, which proposes that the curatorial be conceived as a set of “material-discursive practices” (Barad, 2003). These practices are at the origin of the changes that occur with the artwork when it is brought into contact with a particular curatorial process. According to this perspective, artists, curators, visitors, installation choices, exhibition spaces, and any other element related to the setting in motion of such an event, are part of the curatorial and are thus taking part in its material-discursive practices. Moreover, this research focuses on media art practices, as this type of art is considered to be more permeable to the curatorial because of the relative flexibility of its materialization process, as well as the collaborative aspect of the system in which it is generally produced. The term "media arts" refers here to practices that mobilize media technologies – that is, electrical, electronic or digital technologies – in the creation of an artwork. From a methodological point of view, the becoming-artwork is analyzed from a ventriloqual perspective on communication (Cooren, 2013), an approach that makes it possible to identify the complexification of voices (Mazzei and Jackson, 2012) that participate in this phenomenon. Following an analysis of conversations held during studio visits and meetings between curators and artists, emails exchanged between artists and curators, and interviews with 30 of the visitors, this dissertation shows how the fundamental relationships at the heart of the becoming-artworks concretely operate in the case of a media art exhibition. It is thus a situated (Haraway, 1988), relational, and processual research that positions communication as constitutive of all reality (Cooren, 2012).