Author:

Keywords:

artistic research, actor-network theory

Abstract:

In this paper I describe an empirical case study for which I have put Actor-Network Theory (ANT) in practice. The case study involves the Niva to Nenets art project, in which a Lada Niva is driven from Belgium towards the Nenets Autonomous Region in the Northwest of Russia in 2013. The car was transformed into a small mobile film studio, equipped with GPS and seven GoPro cameras that recorded situations and conversations on the road simultaneously from different view angles. Participants accompanied the artist and discussed my intention to give this car to a Nenets family. A road-movie about this journey, as an interactive documentary on a website and as an art installation, is scheduled to reach its final stage in 2015. In order to structure and analyze the enormous amount of filmed footage, which includes recordings of events and other activities that took place outside the car, I have used ANT as a practical tool. In this paper I first describe how I reflected upon the road-trip through critical engagement with ANT categories as described by Latour (2005), in order to investigate what actually did happen. As this investigation uncovers the boundaries of ANT, I focus on fluidity in comparison.