Framing, Following, Middling: Towards Methodologies of Relational Materialities

Main Article Content

Milla Tiainen
Katve-Kaisa Kontturi
Ilona Hongisto

Abstract

Through the conceptual triptych of framing, following and middling, this article explores the composition and importance of materialities beyond their seemingly stable and measurable objectivity. Drawing on recent insights about concepts as generative of practice and as a practice in their own right, the article offers this triptych as potential new materialist ‘methodological metamodellings’ that acknowledge and render palpable the plural forces of formation in a research process. The article demonstrates this with the vibrant and relational materialities of Björk’s Biophilia Live (2014). This concert film intersperses the scientific with the affective, audiovisual performance with myriad forms of nature’s mediatised liveness, and the human with more-than-human scales of existence.  

Article Details

Section
New Materialisms: Movement, Aesthetics, Ontology (Peer Reviewed)
Author Biographies

Milla Tiainen, University of Helsinki

Milla Tiainen teaches in the Department of Musicology at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and is Postdoctoral Researcher in the Academy of Finland-funded project 'Deleuzian Music Research' (2012–2016). She is among the founding members of the COST action 'New Materialism'. Her research concentrates on the voice, contemporary musical performance, new materialist feminisms, and posthumanities.

Katve-Kaisa Kontturi, University of Melbourne

Katve-Kaisa Kontturi is a McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow in the Victorian College of the Arts at the University of Melbourne and co-chairs the working group ‘Embracing Creative Arts’ in the COST action ‘New Materialism’ (2014–2018). She publishes and curates exhibitions on contemporary art and material-relational theories of the body, craftivism, fashion and fabrics.

Ilona Hongisto, University of Turku, FIN University of Melbourne, AUS

Ilona Hongisto is an Academy of Finland Postdoctoral Fellow in the department of Media Studies at The University of Turku, Finland, and an Honorary Fellow at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, Australia. Her research focuses on the ethico-aesthetics of documentary media, cinematic fabulation and the cultural economies of film festivals.