Relational (Trans)formations: On the Aesthetics of Mediated Experiences with Infertility and Assisted Reproduction in Video Blogs, TV and Film Documentaries, and Installation Art

Abstract in English
This anthological PhD dissertation takes issue with experiences of infertility and assisted reproduction technology (ART) in digital media and installation art. As part of the Danish collective research project “Transformations of Kinship. Travelling in Search of Relatedness” (KinTra) 2011-2014, the project sets out to investigate how experiences with infertility and kinship involving ART moves in(to) media and art and how digital media and art practices (trans)form cultural understandings of body, kinship and technology. These movements are discussed in four articles that analyzes video blogs on YouTube, TV and film documentaries, and installation art. In addition to the four articles the dissertation consists of a dissertation summary which is structured in three chapters ((Digital) atmospheres – migratory aesthetics, Biotechnology, and Aesthetics), that discuss the methodological, theoretical and analytical arguments, considerations, and results of the dissertation.
The dissertation is particular interested in intersections between media technology and biotechnology (ART) and the main argument of the study is that these intersections produce atmospheres that through their generative immediacy structure understandings of body, technology and kinship. Biotechnological and media technological intersections are widely acknowledged within kinship studies and media studies as ways in which biotechnology networks itself into the way we think of the body socially, economically and politically. Intersections of media and biotechnology are in this perspective not considered neutral, an argument with which this dissertation aligns. What however hitherto has been understated by these studies is the force of the aesthetic reality of mediated experiences with biotechnology in digital media and art – their affective attunements, or in other words, their capacity to structure feelings. The aim of this dissertation is to destabilize and to bring more nuances to fields of research emphasizing cultural transformation due to biotechnological intersections with media by turning attention to the aesthetic-affective dimension of such intersections. The dissertation aligns with resent considerations on the shared defining features of digital media and art practices presented by performance theorist and artist Susan Broadhurst (2007): the centrality of the digital, an emphasis on the corporeal, the implication of new aesthetics, and the requirement of a transaesthetic mode of analysis and interpretation.
Methodically, the project is greatly inspired by the Dutch project Performing Culture and follows Mieke Bal’s perspectives (2002) that centers on the performative dimension on human practices including artistic and digital media practices. Bal’s perspectives have enabled the transaesthetic focus of the dissertation on movements in the material as well as a focus on digital media and art practices that take issue with infertility and assisted reproduction as a transcultural phenomenon. By consequence the dissertation discusses the production of atmosphere by the empirical material as a cultural mode, an active force in constituting cultural norms, ideals, and values in relation to kinship, body, and technology. Theoretically the dissertation draws on Foucauldian inspired sociological theories on what characterizes the contemporary understanding of the body, technology and kinship and their entanglements (Rose 2007; Thacker 2005, Franklin 1997, 2013). I have complemented this theoretical thread with the critical phenomenological aesthetic of atmosphere by the German philosopher Gernot Böhme 1993, 1995). The complementation enables an analytical strategy with the possibility to address the sociocultural implications of the varying constellations of people, objects and spaces in terms of how they structure feelings, question, and critically address dominant norms, ideals and values of body, technology and kinship.
Article 1: “Experiences of Assisted Reproduction in Video Blogs: On the Aesthetic-Affective Dimension of Individual Fertility Projects on YouTube” addresses how mediated experiences with IVF in American video blogs structures feelings. The article analyses video blogs about personal experiences with infertility and ART within a critical phenomenological aesthetic theory of atmospheres by the German philosopher Gernot Böhme and Brian Massumi’s perspectives on the concept of affect. The article concludes that an aesthetic-affective focus on experiences with ART in media practices such as vlogs contributes with significant perspectives on how such practices structure spectator’s involvement in bodily experiences with biotechnology. The article discusses how video blogs are characterized by a social dimension connecting performers to themselves and the viewer’s pointing to atmospheres as shared. The article points to the relevance of considering how the aesthetic-affective dimension of media cultural productions have ramifications for how we relate to ourselves, others, and the world where the small, mundane, ambivalent, and ugly feelings play a crucial role.
Article 2 “Atmospheric Video Blogs on Infertility” relates experiences with infertility and ART to media theories on mediated consumption (Jansson 2002). The article discusses vlogs as characterized by re-encodings, but destabilizes and nuances the understanding of re-encoding as anti-aesthetic, anti-narrative, about image production or about inspiring to consumption. The article concludes that such perspectives overlooks the force of the experiential value of constellations of people, objects, and space in the videos. The German philosopher Gernot Böhme’s aesthetics of atmosphere (1993, 1995) is introduced and used to discuss how the aesthetic-affective dimension of the constellations attunes the spectator. Theories on how everyday life is characterized by movements, physical as well as emotional (Felski 2002), contributes to the article’s discussion of movements in the vlogs and the article concludes that these movements, and their aesthetic-affective attunements is overlooked. The article addresses how the intertwining of the realm of assisted reproduction with the mundane in the vlogs does not express subordination to the forces of biotechnological or biomedical discourse, or that ART is naturalized. On the contrary, the article argues that constellations of people, objects, and space in the vlogs generate a state of alert sharpening the senses of the spectator. The varying constellations create an unstable narrative which consistently forces the spectator to relate to the experiences with infertility and ART anew.
Article 3: “Relational (Trans)formations. The Matter of Kinship in Technostorks (2006) and The Baby Clinic (2012)” takes departure in discussions and critiques within kinship studies of intersections between media and ART, particular media’s role in the public face of IVF as miraculous and spectacular (Franklin 2013; Bouquet 2002). Through an analysis of a Danish TV documentary (The Baby Clinic “Babyklinikken” 2012) and an American film documentary (Technostorks 2006), the study takes issue with how the presence of kinship matters comes to matter in mood-altering ways. This interest reflects a media-cultural movement from referential signs to signals (Thomsen 2012), and the findings supports the results of the articles on video blogs on YouTube. The theoretical frame of the article includes media theoretical perspectives on the characteristics of digital media practices as signaletic rather than referential signs (Thomsen 2012). The article revisits the aesthetic theory of Böhme which in this study is complemented with recent media theoretical interests in the more-than-representational and affective dimension of digital media culture (Sandbye 2012; Stage 2012; Thomsen 2012; Shaviro 2010). The article addresses the constitutive yet also transformative role of media of sociocultural understandings of kinship, and the article concludes that a continually critical approach to media intersections with biotechnology must include their affective structuring of feelings. The article also concludes that digital media practices rather than being invested in translating relational complexities into visual simplicity, deconstruct the simplicity of the public face of IVF and stress complex and dynamic dimensions of kinship practices.
Article 4: “Atmospheres of Belonging. The Aesthetic Qualities of the Japanese Installation wasted on (In)fertility and American Video blogs (vlogs) about IVF on YouTube” returns once more to the material collection of video blogs yet complicates the findings with a discussion of convergences between experiences with infertility and ART in new media and the Japanese installation art wasted (2009). The article point to a transcultural and transaesthetic denominator of the works: their critical approach to the perception of the body as object characteristic of biotechnology (Kato and Sleeboom Faulkner 2011; Rose 2007; Thacker 2005), and productions of atmospheres (Böhme 1993,1995) as explorations of alternative understandings of body, technology and kinship. The study also points to how the extension of experiences into an art installation or vlog creates experiences that are process related as well as premised on the visitor’s active bodily participation. The study emphasizes how diverse parameters such as abstractions and movements in wasted, and close-ups and haptic qualities in the vlogs are set to work as generators of an atmospheric attunement with the potential to transform understandings of kinship, body and technology. The article concludes that relations by the vlogs and art installation not are regarded as fixed or biological determined but move; they are structured by physical and emotional movements.