chora: 

 

The dreamlike, alternative, liminal, fluid, in-between space of the “semiotic chora” (Julia Kristeva 1982) exists outside the patriarchal Western hegemony of Man and challenges the totality, harmony and integrity of the symbolic order subject (Liu 2004, 26, 28, 29) as well as the agency of the non-human and objects theorized in new materialist thought. In new materialist theorist Karen Barad’s “intra-active”3 formulation of agency (Karen Barad 2007), instead of being seen as the sole property of an individual to be exerted upon others, agency is thought of as a “dynamism of forces” (Barad 2007: 141) in which all matter-human, animal and the inanimate-are continuously working concomitantly and influencing one another in an intimately entangled relationship. I explore the latent agency of the non-human within my photography; the non-human and inanimate objects photographed are imbued with a kind of energy and begin to “vibrate”, becoming something more than mere objects.