Performing Landscape in Kilpisjärvi – 7.
posted by annette on 8 April 2014

Today I spent most of my time indoors at the computer, and also reading a book that I thought would fit into the environment, but which is rather heavy and complicated at times, Meeting the Universe Halfway - quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning, by Karen Barad (2007). She is inspired by Niels Bohr to develop a new form of ontology, which she calls agential realism, and which she discusses for instance in relation to Judith Butler's performativity. I have been reading this opus for a while now, and sometimes I feel energized when I think I understand what she is getting at, for example when she speaks of intra-action instead of interaction, because things come into being though intra-action instead of existing before hand as separate entities that could then inter-act. At other times I am completely exhausted by her complicated language and her references to physics which I have a hard time following. But for some reason I feel her work is really important and relevant, and that is why I keep on struggling. It sems clear, however, that I will not finish the book during my visit here. I have only one more day, and do not want to spend all of it reading. There are many students writing on their master thesis here, they can apply for a grant for one week to do that, so there is a sense of study in the atmosphere. I took a break today as well, and went to see Malla from closer distance, skiing as far as to the end of the lake in the north. Unfortunately, or perhaps luckily for my video work,  Malla is more beautiful from a far. This is what Malla Fell is like in "close up":                   And at the end of the lake you can also see Little Malla as a separate fell, and the funny sign forbidding snowmobiles exactly where all the snowmobiles are driving all the time .