Tarik Kiswanson

Philosopher Édouard Glissant describes pensée du tremblement, or trembling thinking, as a means to understand the contingent nature of the world. Resisting fixity, this form of thought tremors from the force of the world’s multitudinous voices colliding and “plunges us into an intimate understanding of depths.” Trembling therefore denotes a kind of refusal, an inability to be contained. This disruptive form of thinking and being in the world rejects notions of a stable identity, as well as categories of fixed and imperial thought. Indeed, Pensée du tremblement flows through the various strands of Swedish-Palestinian artist Tarik Kiswanson’s practice like an invisible current. Kiswanson has described his work as being “the border, the window between the iris and the world outside.” The window is less a demarcation between two opposed realms than a portal—a space between. This dynamic interstitial space nurtures his practice and animates his reflections on the human condition. Kiswanson’s interdisciplinary work encompasses sculpture, writing, performance, sound, and video. It is through dialogue between these multi-faceted practices that a distinctive conceptual language emerges. Notions of rootlessness, regeneration, and renewal are recurring themes in Kiswanson’s oeuvre. His practice is shaped by movement, by blurring borders, by belonging nowhere and everywhere. His various bodies of work can therefore be understood as a cosmology of related conceptual “families,” each exploring variations on themes like multiplication, disintegration, hybridity, and polyphony through their own distinct language.