Diffracting Dementia Co-creative Experiments with Agential Realism and Multisensoriality in a Residential Care Home in Northern Norway

Abstract

Alzheimer’s Disease and other dementias (ADD) challenge Western economies, in which biomedical human-centric understandings of ADD as deficit dominates. To imagine lives with ADD differently, we have facilitated and researched co-creative art sessions rooted in feminist posthumanities in residential care homes in Northern Norway. We have experimented with Karen Barad’s diffractive methodology, analysed human–nonhuman entanglements and observed the emergence of new diffraction patterns allowing for ADD to be enacted differently than human loss. We present our findings in the form of a conversation and extrapolate the significance of diffractive methodology for critical dementia studies and beyond.