Distribution and Assemblage in the work of Joyce Hinterding and David Haines

Joyce Hinterding once remarked that she worked with "electricity we didn't make". Often using the electricity that "we did make" to make contact with that we didn't, her own work – and that in collaboration with David Haines – goes quite literally beyond many artistic engagements with technics. In so doing, it allows for a contemplation of the very basics of interaction, mediation, the temporalities and powers of technics. It contacts the ambiguity of the attempt to gather distributed forces. It lives at the junction of the various energies of manufactured technologies and the active environment. The result is that Hinterding and Haines capture the everyday excess of our complex ecological engagements. This paper looks at the open, relational circuits between distribution and assemblage in such works as Electrical Storms (Hinterding, 1992) and The Levitation Grounds (Haines and Hinterding, 2000-2001).

Dr. Andrew Murphie, Senior Lecturer, Theatre, Film and Media, UNSW