Outside the spectrum: poietic encounters of light-matter

Abstract

The paper proposes a re-think of the poiesis of materiality in contemporary arts through arguments about the agency, processuality and ethics of the material and its supplements. Informed by new materialisms, the essay contributes to the repositioning of the practice of poiesis in an artistic context by establishing a new modality of Althusser’s ‘encountering the material’ from proximity to matter to the mastery of techniques. By investigating the etymology of the term ‘spectrum’, the paper sidelines the logic of classical materialism that encounters affective dispositions in the milieu of materiality, which reaches into the space of language, re-presentation and experience. The paper focuses on the poiesis of light’s matter by introducing James Turrell’s artistic practice, which explores the epiphany of a materiality of difference. Poiesis comes to identify a disposition toward the potentialities and actualities of the material, where the sensorium of experience coexists with the logic of techne. While the frames of material practices interrogate both the originary system of materiality and the virtuality of technologies, poiesis draws on these differences to cultivate a horizon of meaning and experience.