KAREN BARAD – various videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnOJioYNHU

Troubling Time/s: Undoing the Future

THIS VIDEO IS COMPULSORY VIEWING FOR THIS COURSE

In this talk, Barad draws on physics and history to discuss the notion of TIME (or
temporality) as a historical unfolding of European domination, which, if we (humans) were to
continue to follow this linear trajectory, would necessarily lead to our annihilation and
disaster for other planetary life.

This is quite a poetic talk, linking quantum physics (her field), not only to nuclear warfare
(which is a product of quantum physics) but to introduce totally different conceptions of time
and matter, with really beautiful conclusions regarding the past and the future. Do not be
worried if you don’t follow everything but give it a go – stop and rewind and listen as much
as you need to, and listen to the end.

Barad discusses the first nuclear bomb, and the ‘building’ of a symbolic clock – the
‘doomsday clock’, to introduce the idea of ‘time fixated to its own demise’. This is to
introduce us to the troubled nature of our current moment, where we not only face the threat
of nuclear annihilation, but also the consequences of the Anthropocene, which can be linked
to fossil fuels and the globalization of modernity through European colonization and settler
colonialism.

Barad points out that the nuclear experiment has always been linked to European domination
and annihilation of indigenous others. You will see, then, that New Materialism, as Barad
shows in this video, is a complex engagement with European Imperialism, colonization,
capitalist exploitation and the ‘military-industrial complex’.

She contrasts what Walter Benjamin called the “Homogenous empty time” of the
modernist/colonialist PROGRESSIVE conception of time, with indigenous conceptions of
time from the ‘Fourth world”. You will be interested to hear that she refers to a South African
student activists’ comments about time in ‘post-apartheid’ South Africa. She talks about
student movements as necessary disruptions of time.

In the process she takes issue with the concept of the FUTURE, and of the notion that there is
one universal clock, measuring ‘human progress’ – she shows us how dangerous this idea is,
and how that will mean inevitable global destruction.

She then proceeds to discuss what quantum physics has to say about time or temporality.

Explains diffraction via quantum physics.

Quantum science leads us to a different understanding of matter, time and space.

Blows away ideas of Newtonian Physics.
Quantum physics opens up radical political possibilities, even though it has been put to
terrible use by ‘the masters’, it does not ‘belong’ to them – it can also be used to ‘queer’ or
question conventional thinking about progress, space and time.
She then explains diffraction via Nils Bohr’s experiments with electrons.
She discusses Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and explores Nils Bohr’s statement that
“we have to know what we mean by concepts” to make the point that there is no difference
between the object and the apparatus – they are entangled. What she says here, is that there is
no such thing as an objective researcher, but that the observer is always-already entangled
with the object he/she looks at.

Here follows a long discussion about diffraction patterns in electrons, on the notion that
electrons are particles that also behave as waves, that the slit-screen experiment indicates that
a particle/wave can go through both slits at the same time.

She quotes Bohr on the concept that the world consists of phenomena, and unpacks the
implications of this.

Superposition (all possibilities co-exist at once)

Both time and space indeterminacy.
Space and time are not givens = spacetime mattering.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cS7szDFwXyg
Karen Barad Duke university talk
“Re-membering the Future, Re(con)figuring the Past: Temporality, Materiality, and Justice-
to-Come”.

Also deals with time.

Physics shows how ‘nature deconstructs itself’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeuCS28FsUo
Here Tara Fenwick talks about socio-material approaches Actor Network Theory and Karen
Barad’s diffractive methodology

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7LvXswjEBY
Rietveld academy: Karen Barad, the Alterity within

ON ART AND QUANTUM PHYSICS:

The entanglement of quantum physics and art, with Martha Lewis (artist) and Michael
Devoret (quantum physicist)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04at6DKzcNI

http://art.quantuminstitute.yale.edu/Pages/Martha.html
About Martha Lewis’ residency at Yale Quantum Institute

https://soundcloud.com/wpkn895/martha-willette-lewis-and-the-yale-quantum-institute-at-
arts-and-ideas
Soundcloud interview with Lewis about her residency
http://art.quantuminstitute.yale.edu/Pages/Martha.html#qubit
I’ll be your qubit! installation