TMKM
Artistic Research
The Intensity of Matter: The Inhuman Affects of Geological Performance (doctoral thesis, 2025)
In December 2025, Tina Mariane Krogh Madsen published and successfully defended their doctoral thesis at Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture (FI), in the field of Contemporary Art.
Cover image, Tina Mariane Krogh Madsen Intervention at Hverfjall (studies in eventness), Iceland, May 2024. Photo: Malte Steiner.
Link to the full thesis can be found here via Aalto Doc: https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-64-2810-9
Link to examples of thesis fieldwork: https://environmentalresonance.net/Madsen_IntensityOfMatter/TheIntensityOfMatter_FieldsComponentsList.html
Abstract:
The doctoral thesis is an artistic research monograph which unfolds itself around Madsen’s conception of the term geological performance, and holds a main inquiry which concerns how the ethico-aesthetic intensive and affective experience can facilitate a meaningful encounter, towards awareness. The research questions of the thesis are thus approached in an immanent discussion with philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Félix Guattari’s thinking, individually and collectively, grounded in modes of geophilosophy and schizoanalysis which open up a consideration of the world as based on transversal relations that not only flows but also breaks. An important movement of the thesis is the activation of “problematic fields” (Deleuze [1968] 1994) and via the eventness of bodies, event-bodies as Madsen proposes, where performance art and encountering sonic performativity are considered as facilitating a transformative experience which can also be discussed as learning. This is undertaken in consideration of contemporary urgencies and climate issues and includes a deeper look at relation at the level of geological matter, here as machinic and queer. This further includes a reflection of time, and its inhuman potential as discussed by, among others, geographer Kathryn Yusoff. There is here a focus on affective encounters of (in)human bodies and their capabilities and properties, as evident in philosopher Baruch Spinoza’s thinking, also considering a mode of relational intensity. In this thesis, Madsen thus demonstrates a relation and deep connection between artistic practice and embodied philosophical writing which is exemplified in their proposed “practical-philosophical essays” which are foundational for the artistic processes and fieldwork of the thesis. The idea of the body is considered as expanding in its connection to and with the geological, and it becomes (an) event in Madsen’s formulation of the artistic outputs as “practised problems”. The main scope has been to develop a specific method of affective enunciation through and with the body, and as an artistic research thesis, it includes two already preliminary examined performances: one with a focus on sound and ideas of collaborative agency in the Matter-as-Collaborator Lab (2022), and another anchored in physical relations and extensions of the body, in the durational event-bodies [folding] (2024). As a result, Madsen introduces the concept matter-as-collaborator as an expansion of the ethico-aesthetic paradigm of Deleuze and Guattari, moving further beyond human experience, where intensity is necessary to produce affective relations to and with the environment and geology, to uncover, for example, the extractivist paradigms which global capitalism facilitates. Madsen research thus shows how this is carried forward, via bodies, and through modes of vibration in matter. As a core method, Madsen considers their body as a capturing device and interface which feeds relational remembrance from the field into the performances with a novel perception of the field as refrain, and activating the potentials of listening scores as collective assemblages of enunciation, connected to a deeper engagement with language in Deleuze and Guattari’s thinking, and in an expansion which includes, among other, composer Pauline Oliveros’ method of Deep Listening. Productive failure, hesitation, nonsense and the falsifier are also considered as tools to deterritorialise experience in artistic research with a focus on the potentialities of the minor.
Supervising professor: Helena Sederholm, Associate Professor, Aalto University, Department of Art and Media, Finland
Thesis advisor: Marietta Radomska, Associate Professor, Linköping University, Sweden
Artistic advisor on the performance event-bodies [folding]: Kira O’Reilly, Artist
The Voices of Stones (kivien ääniä)
The first performance of the matter-as-collaborator series was performed at Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki (FI) on October 15. 2020 as part of the event Sounds Like Performance_Now.
The Voices of Stones is a performance about entanglements, points of intensity and encounters, regarding stones as collaborators; having their own voice and own sound, in a dynamic process of co-creation. The artist moves with the stones, activates and relates to them, responds to their sounds and let them give sound. Action and response are creating a feedback-loop of mutual dependence as well as it activates the surroundings, its surfaces, and acoustics.
The Voices of Stones is grounded in the creation of affective relations. In new materialist theory and philosophy the non-human is regarded as also having agency, which in this performance is to view the performing bodies as multiple, and to include the body of the human performer as well as stones and other elements that they perform with. It is crucial how these human and non-human bodies are responding to, moving, and sounding together through the use of both acoustics and electronics.
The artist Tina Mariane Krogh Madsen has had a lifelong relation to stones. The artistic inclusion of stones as an active participant and agent began in Iceland in 2015 with the development of the first Body Interfaces performances and in the creation of stone scores. The Voices of Stones is in this way based on a longer work with relation and becoming as a focus-point in performance art, where agent materials, here stones, are regarded as participators for the artist.
Body Interfaces
Body Interfaces (2015-ongoing) discusses the body's critical potential as an analysing tool and affective apparatus. It began in Iceland with a series of interventions in rural nature that had an ecological awareness inscribed.
In Body Interfaces, the site-specific is an important element, advocating for local environmental awareness, where the body related to different surfaces and natural elements, creating dialogues with human and non-human entities. A departure point for the Body Interfaces concept came from architectural theorist Branden Hookway’s Interface (2014), which started a reflection on the layers of interaction in the interface experience with a strong focus on the ontology of the term which together with the artist's own experimentation with the body in different contexts started the foundation of this project.
Link to selected documentation from first part of Body Interfaces in Iceland, 2015
