Cosmic Hunt, Copper Electroplating, Chaosmic Transduction: Chaosmotechnics of Molecular Collaboration in Matthew Barney’s Redoubt Project (2016–21)

Radek Przedpełski

doi:10.18778/2083-2931.13.13

Authors

Radek Przedpełski Trinity College Dublin https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1406-2301

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.13.13

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Keywords:

Matthew Barney, transduction, Simondon, electroplating, Cosmic Hunt, becoming-cosmic

Abstract

The article considers Matthew Barney’s artistic project Redoubt (2016–21) from the point of view of Gilbert Simondon’s transductive philosophy of individuation. Informed by Simondon—read here with Félix Guattari, Gilles Deleuze and Yuk Hui—the article performs a case study of Barney’s long-term, expansive and multi-layered project. Redoubt comprises a feature-length film, metal reliefs, and large-scale sculptures, as well as an intermedial performance. The article focuses on the mythological theme of the Cosmic Hunt deployed in Barney’s eponymous feature film as well as on his experimental artistic process entailing cast metals. The goal of the article is to provide a diagram of the functioning of Barney’s complex conception of metamorphosis, which plays itself out on many—heterogenous, yet ultimately entangled—orders of magnitude. Consideration will also be given to the political and decolonial implications of Barney’s artistic proposal, which liberate the notion of the hunt from its takeover by colonial extractivism in order to reveal it as an intensive capture of forces.

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Author Biography

Radek Przedpełski, Trinity College Dublin

Radek Przedpełski is a migrant artist and contemporary (media) art scholar lecturing in interactive digital media in the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College Dublin and at Maynooth University. Radek graduated from TCD with a PhD in Digital Art and Humanities, focusing on Polish neo-avant-garde of the 1970s. Radek is writing a monograph on artist Marek Konieczny (1936–2022). Radek holds an MA in Digital Media Technology from Dublin Institute of Technology (2011), and in English Philology (2005) from Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń. Radek co-edited a volume on Deleuze, Guattari and the Art of Multiplicity published by Edinburgh University Press in 2020. Radek is a member of Substantial Motion Research Network founded by Laura U. Marks and Azadeh Emadi for cross-cultural investigation of media art, as well as a curator, together with Marks, of the annual Small File Media Festival hosted by Simon Fraser University, Vancouver.

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