FUNDAMENTAL: The Cultural Negotiation of Radically Remote Science

Historically, the cognitive and imaginative dislocation of lay publics from the extreme abstraction of fundamental science has been understood as an issue to be addressed via public outreach initiatives; within this paradigm, the science itself is understood as essentially ‘complete’ and the task of communicators (sometimes with the added cultural advocacy of art) is to make the science more publicly accessible. Recent shifts in critical theory within the realm of New Materialism (Haraway, Barad), as well as questions regarding how empirical data can be reconciled with lived experience (Dowker), break down this rigid dichotomy of nature and culture; within this new paradigm, all fields are relational and contingent - but how do we negotiate this landscape in the context of cross-disciplinary research? This question is approached by looking at the specificity of practice-based strategies within two research projects (one recently completed and the other currently in R&D) that bring critical art practice into the sphere of radically remote science, exploring how we might approach knowledge-making practices in cross-disciplinary spheres as “social-material enactments that contribute to, and are part of, the phenomena we describe” (Barad 2007, 26).