“Trembling Moments” : To develop methods for co-creating data with pupils in the kulturskole 1

In this article, the authors investigate making data with pupils in the kulturskole through the exploration of a performative paradigm. There seems to be a lack of knowledge concerning how the pupils see their place in and engagement with the kulturskole. When we started working with the pupils, a request emerged to not only observe and interview them, but also to hear their stories and understandings of being with the kulturskole. These processes are, throughout the article, described and understood as methodologically developmental when working with pupils. We attempt to bridge a qualitative approach into a post-qualitative performative thinking about making data. The article contributes explorations into what data can be and how to make data with pupils.


Introduction
This article focuses on pupils' perspectives concerning the phenomenon of kulturskole and how to develop performative methods when creating data together with the pupils.Kulturskole is a municipal extra-curricular school of music and performing arts and, in this article, we choose to use the Norwegian name.Kulturskole has emerged in all municipalities in Norway from the inception of music schools in the 1960s.We understand the school as being scarcely regulated on a national level and with leaders and teachers who, to a great extent, look for opportunities to fulfill demands from both users and municipal surroundings (Emstad & Angelo, 2021;Hauen & Emstad, 2021).
In line with the emergence of the school, a research-based knowledge base is growing, with various researchers focusing on leadership roles, teachers, and professionals, as well as organization and factors of inclusion/exclusion in a municipal context (Angelo & Emstad, 2017;Brøske, 2017;Emstad & Angelo, 2017;Jordhus-Lier et al., 2021;Karlsen et al., 2023;Westby, 2017) and a more complete knowledge base has been produced around the phenomenon in Norway (Berge et al., 2019).A review of the literature concerning pupils' perspectives suggests a predominance of research in which the pupils are observed and then interviewed afterwards (Bergman, 2009;Brändström, 1999;Kosonen, 2001;Rantala, 2001;Stabell & Jordhus-Lier, 2017).A similar observation was offered by Jeppsson and colleague (Jeppsson, 2020;Jeppsson & Lindgren, 2018), who asked pupils via surveys and interviews about their relationship with kulturskole.However, research examining pupils' self-reported experiences, feelings, and affects regarding their encounters with kulturskole is scant.This study aims to develop methods for researching with pupils to better understand their reasons for attending the kulturskole.
In the present work, we aim to create new understandings of the experience of the kulturskole and its influence on young people's lives.We do this alongside the pupils by creating research material together through dialogue and intra-action (Barad, 2007).Through intra-actions (in contrast to interaction) boundaries and properties of the phenomena become determinate and concepts or particular material articulations of the world become meaningful (Barad, 2007, p. 139).By including the pupils' perspectives in creative ways, the researcher's position can be moved to disrupt the idea of natural, representative, and valid data (Klungland, 2021, p. 72).Østern et al. offered a picture of a performative paradigm for post-qualitative research in which: Knowledge is knowledge-in-becoming as the constant creation of difference through researcher entanglement with the world.Learning/be(com)ing/knowing is performative, always in-becoming -as is the performative paradigm itself.(Østern et al., 2021, p. 7, italics in original).
In other words, knowledge is constantly becoming, and knowledge is constantly altered by the researcher's entanglement with the world.Learning is performative in between becomings, as performativity itself can also be understood.Østern et al. (2021) further posited that the researcher is never distanced, objective, or neutral but participatory and creative in the phenomenon being researched, and entangled with all its content of artifacts, humans, and more-"Trembling Moments"… Reconceptualizing Educational Research Methodology 2023, 14(1) 61 than-human entities that perform on each other, hence referred to as performative agents (Bjørkøy, 2020;Lenz Taguchi, 2012).
With this as our point of departure, we are interested in what kulturskole does rather than what it is to the pupils.Inspired by a performative research paradigm, we explore and intra-act (Barad, 2007) with the following question: How can pupils' doing with kulturskole be highlighted and explored through a performative research approach?Pupils' doings with kulturskole contain performative aspects and build on a performative understanding of existence.Hantelmann points to the term performative as a key rubric within the discourse of contemporary arts and aesthetics, highlighting its reality-producing dimension (Hantelmann, 2014, unpaginated).A performative research approach is understood as belonging to an explicit performative research paradigm and being practice-led (Haseman, 2006).Østern et al. emphasized this perspective by suggesting that: A performative research paradigm, then, ultimately produces movement.It moves from trying to stabilize knowledge towards emphasizing knowledge as fluid and complex knowledge-creation; from language to languaging, from meaning to meaning-making, from text to body, affects and materialities; from subject, identity and being to relations, entanglements and becomings; and from something pre-existing to something being enacted.(Østern et al., 2021).
To answer the research question, we explored pupils' co-creating data, or in a Baradian way "relata2 " (Barad, 2007, p.140).We had conversations with the leader of the local kulturskole regarding the project and the types of pupils we were searching for.We asked the leader and teachers in this kulturskole to look for pupils who had the ability to verbally express their interest in art and, in addition, who participated in a diversity of art subjects.Four pupils: Hein, Neven, Morten, and Muhamed were included in the research.The pupils attended classes in violin, piano, euphonium, electronic music composition, dance and theatre.Their common activity was a dance class, and thus we highlight Anttila's work (2003Anttila's work ( , 2007)), which investigates opportunities for dialogue in dance education.Her research belongs to an emerging genre of critical personal narrative and autoethnography (Anttila, 2007, p. 19).We further connect this to the field of a/r/tography (Irwin et al., 2018;LeBlanc & Irwin, 2019), described by LeBlanc and Irwin as methodology grounded in the physicality of making and creating (2019, p. 1), which relates to our approach to data creation within a performative paradigm.Anttila's research within critical educational theory gives children, teachers, and philosophy a voice.It emphasizes the importance of dialogue between teacher and pupil and that each teaching situation is unique and created in the presence of the moment.A significant but not presupposed finding in one of her studies was that "play surfaced as a significant ingredient of dialogue.The children's accounts implied that school life did not have enough space for self-initiated play" (Anttila, 2007, p. 877).We will return to this work and our understanding of "self-initiated play" in the discussion of our findings.
By exploring the pupils' knowledge of art subjects, such as dance, instruments, and rap, the research question shifted from what the kulturskole is to what it does.This shift follows Hantelmann's understanding of the notion of the performative: What the notion of the performative in relation to art points to is a shift from what an artwork depicts and represents to the effects and experiences that it produces -or, to follow Austin, from what it "says" to what it "does."In principle, the performative triggers a methodological shift in how we look at any artwork and in the way in which its produces meaning.(Hantelmann, 2014).
Both authors of the present study are closely linked to the field of practice and are especially interested in childhood and education.We are both interested in a post-qualitative research paradigm and what research processes can do more than what they currently are, thus we decided to challenge the ways in which we think methodologically about research together with children.Our theoretical approach is inspired by feminist thinkers such as Karen Barad (2003Barad ( , 2007Barad ( , 2018) ) and Rosi Braidotti (2013Braidotti ( , 2019)).The first author has worked in the kulturskole both as a teacher and as a leader.She knows the four pupils from this work, who also know each other because they attend the same dance class.In the first author's doctoral work, she attempts to bring pupils' voices into the narrative of the kulturskole by investigating how the kulturskole influences pupils and how they, in turn, influence it.The second author has worked as an art teacher in compulsory school and in teacher education for many years.She holds a PhD degree specializing in art education and is experienced in research with children.

Ethical Considerations
Research with children challenges how we recognize and understand their status.We follow Murris in her invitation to "move away from deficit discourses about child and childhood as it decenters child as a being (with a stable personality, characteristics, and essence) whose age determines her abilities" (Murris, 2020, p. 81).We recognize that a performative paradigm with "specific use of nonhuman and human bodies helps to create an atmosphere of post-age 3 humannonhuman equality -thinking-with one another" (Murris, 2020, p. 81).She further quotes Barad that for researchers "this requires a methodology that is attentive to, and responsive/responsible to the specificity of material entanglements in their agential becoming" (Barad, 2007, p. 91).
The project was reported to Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research 4 3 Murris' proposal is that young children's philosophizing and, in particular, their animism, help disrupt the Western humanist colonizing binaries between science and religion, matter and meaning, heaven and earth, alive and dead, human and nonhuman.Doing justice to ageless animistic thinking has unsettling implications for (postqualitative) research, not only in education or the critical posthumanities but also across disciplines in higher education. 4The Ministry of Education and Research defines the following goals for SIKT: good access to high-quality infrastructure and shared services for the knowledge sector.-data-sharing within the knowledge sector to increase knowledge development, innovation and value creation should be facilitated.

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(SIKT) and approved.Ethical guidelines according to SIKT were adhered to, and we tried to be open about the power relations between us and how we understood each other's status in the project.When we started the project, we had permission to make audio recordings, and the pupils were to be anonymized.The development of the project and the introduction of a performative research paradigm gave the pupils opportunities to take a greater part in making data, including films and a rap.It also gave them another status, one which was recognized by the researchers and agreed on by the pupils which meant that anonymizing the data material was no longer possible.For the researchers, this meant reorganizing permissions with SIKT to explain the change to our project.Based on this new information SIKT gave us permission to present a new agreement to the pupils and parents (for those under 18 years) which sought informed consent.This agreement made explicit that the pupils' names and presentation of the films would render them identifiable.The four pupils (and their parents) consented to this change in our agreement and provided their signatures.The pupils have engaged with this article and the videos embedded within it; and have given further verbal informed consent for publication in an open-access journal.They articulated an understanding that they/their data-making would be publicly viewable across continents and over time.
We build upon Barad when working with the pupils' data creation and recognize that when something is included, something else is excluded.Barad discussed ethical responsibility in these situations by claiming that: Particular possibilities for acting exist at every moment, and these changing possibilities entail a responsibility to intervene in the world's becoming, to contest and rework what matters and what is excluded from mattering.(Barad, 2018, p. 237).
The processes of making data with pupils contended on multiple possibilities and moments of negotiation.What matters and what is excluded from mattering is related to ethics and a constant flow of decision making.We perform in the world through intra-actions with the situations or phenomena in which we take part.Performativity is thought of as intra-activity (Barad, 2018, p. 237).This means that we understand the world, with pupils, teacher and kulturskole in intraaction, performing on each other in entanglements creating data (and knowledge).We think of these processes as fluid, not constant.We, and especially pupils and kulturskole important in this study, are in an infinite state of becoming.A steady stream of innovations.
In the development of this article, we follow Murris who offers "a flavor of how childhood studies as a "minor science" (Braidotti, 2019, p.165) can play a part in the knowledge production of the critical posthumanities" (Murris, 2020, p. 81) and shed light on the methodological possibilities shaped when grasping the pupils' world and understanding of the kulturskole.The processes with the pupils were "constant negotiations of entangled relations, emphasizing ethical dimensions from the beginning to the end of the process" (Østern et al., 2021, p. 2).The consequence of an ethico-onto-epistemological (Barad, 2007) approach is that ethics are always present and services ensuring information security and data protection within the knowledge sector should be provided.
negotiated through all steps of the work.Barad argues that: Furthermore, I argue that ethics is not simply about responsible actions in relation to human experiences of the world; rather, it is a question of material entanglements and how each intra-action matters in the reconfiguring of these entanglements, that is, it is a matter of the ethical call that is embodied in the very worlding of the world.(Barad, 2007, p.160).
Thus, when we intra-act in worlding the world or co-creating data with pupils, teacher and kulturskole, ethical considerations are always present and intra-acting with the process.This position calls upon us to be response-able (Barad, 2017, p. 85) i.e. when revealing the pupil identities.We follow Jamouchi's (2023, p. 52) understanding of 'response-able' as the ethical will to engage in a productive discourse, also when we see, or risk to create, dissonance.We have often returned to the issue of making known the identity of the pupils which was discussed it with them, because as adults we see dissonance in the act of making young people visible.We have exercised an ethical respons-ablity in this respect throughout the research process.The pupils gave their permission and declared that should be included in the way that they have in this article.Including them, with their identities, in the discourse is also to consider them able (Murris, 2020, p. 81).In other words, ethics are always present, and we engage in response-able ways with the ethical obstacles we meet during the work.

Theoretically and Methodologically Framing the Picture: A performative approach
Performativity -Trembling Relations Performative research is described by Haseman as an explicit paradigm, in addition to qualitative and quantitative paradigms."Its plurivocal potential operates through interpretative epistemologies where the knower and the known interact, shape and interpret the other" (Haseman, 2006, p. 104).Performative research is also practice-led, according to Haseman, and "research outputs and claims to knowing must be made through the symbolic language and forms of their practice" (Haseman, 2006, p. 4).In this study the pupils` music and dance as symbolic languages are of special interest.Barad proposed "a posthumanist account of performativity that challenges the positioning of materiality as either given or a mere effect of human agency.From an agential realist account, materiality is an active factor in processes of materialization" (Barad, 2018, p. 237).The actions of the researcher and the pupils, the surroundings, the equipment, and instruments are active factors in the materialization of new perspectives.
We understand a performative research paradigm to be interpretative, intra-active, and embodied in an ethico-onto-epistemological understanding derived from posthumanists, such as Barad. Østern et al. (2021) explains performativity and the non-representative as an onto-epistemological understanding derived from different feminist theorists (Barad, 2007;Braidotti, 2013;Deleuze, 1994;Deleuze & Guattari, 1988;Haraway, 1988Haraway, , 1992)).Barad suggested that the ontological and epistemological can be woven into an ethico-onto-epistemological entanglement (Barad, 2003(Barad, , 2007)).To create knowledge (the epistemological understanding), relationships are the smallest Methodology 2023, 14(1) 65 and most central entity on which to build.This understanding frames the entire article.The world and being in it is a constant flow that is performative and becoming.
Knowledge is developed in material-discursive entanglements (Barad, 2003(Barad, , 2007)).This means that humans and more-than-human entities are equally important in processes in which meaningmaking and knowledge are created.The research position is tangled in the material-discursive aspect, and the researcher body is a necessary resource for understanding and interpretation.This is about new understandings being created through the researcher's senses and feelings, as well as rationalizing through thinking.We as researchers are entangled with the pupils, research questions and processes.Barad argued that researchers cannot stand outside and reflect on a research object kept at a distance (2007, p. 87).In their "agential realism," knowledge production is understood as working with and through a phenomenon and thus being part of it, in constant creations in new entanglements in the phenomenon (Juelskjaer, 2019, p. 59).Methodologically, this can be described as a turn away from the reflexive into the diffractive (Barad, 2007, p. 88).
The process of co-creating material with pupils in the kulturskole offers other and different possibilities.The performative paradigm and new material thinking rest on approaching the world in an affirmative way.

Affirmative Approach -A Positive Ontology
The concept of the affirmative is also an important term in addressing the research questions presented in this article.We understand a performative research paradigm as resting in constantly becoming, with "knowledge-in-becoming as the constant creation of difference" (Østern et al., 2021, p. 7, italics in original).The fact that the phenomenon of co-creating material and we as researchers are entangled with and create each other, makes the process constant in creating new knowledge.It is an affirmative approach to research and can be understood within Deleuze's positive ontology: Deleuze's work is often applauded for the "positive ontology" it pursues.By this, scholars acknowledge that Deleuze is concerned with the unfettering possibility to experiment with what a life can do and where a life might go […].There is in this a radical affirmation of possibilities for becoming that we cannot think of in logical or moralistic terms: becomings that can only be felt or sensed or conjured, that require us to take risks and experiment in ways that affirm the vitality, the energies and the creative animations of a life.(Sotirin, 2014, p. 117) Deleuze explained the affirmative with "desire."He further explained the concept via Freud and his Oedipus complex (May, 2019;Sotirin, 2014).We, as living beings, are fundamentally set up with a desire that can never be fully satisfied.This desire is not about shortcomings, but about opportunity and production.The desire for possibilities is what is essential in life.Working with pupils within art expressions (like music and dance) offers possibilities for artistic and embodied answers, maybe both unpredictable and creative.This Deleuzian desire produces the becomings and thus the unpredictability of the world (May, 2019).The driving point of Deleuze's desire is that it is creative according to Sotirin (2014).The world is becoming in an affirmative way.

Difference and Diffraction
In Barad's (2007) theory of science (agential realism), diffraction is offered as a way for phenomena in the world to materialize.The concept of diffraction introduced by Donna Haraway (1997) and elaborated by Karen Barad (2007) is the theoretical concept we (re)think with, as a method proposed by Jackson & Mazzei (2011).What characterizes diffraction within physics is the formation of specific patterns (Juelskjaer, 2019, p. 58).Barad claims that "we can understand diffraction patterns -as patterns of difference that make a difference -to be the fundamental constituents that make up the world" (2007, p. 72).This understanding is built on her insight into quantum physics and explains that a diffraction pattern arises from a state where all possibilities are trembling, and where and when "quantum leaps will take place" is undecided (Juelskjaer, 2019, p. 61, our translation).This ontological indeterminacy is central to the thinking of diffraction as the production of differences.Juelskjaer (2019, p. 66) described how this means that all other possible versions are contained in what is realized, and thus co-exist with the realized.Differences are affirmative possibilities and desires for opportunities that can take place.This generates "beings in continuous, unique, and unpredictable encounters.As I rely on the other to generate me, the difference of the other then, becomes positive" (Rautio, 2013, p. 5).Being in encounters with the pupils, along with the difference of the pupils, becomes an affirmative phenomenon that creates happenings and further material or data.We co-create possibilities out of an infinite number of possibilities, and further offer suggestions more than answers.
Barad writes further: "I elaborate on the notion of diffraction as a tool of analysis for attending to and responding to the effects of difference" (2007, p.72).Diffractive analysis is about exploring patterns of differences and examining how something takes shape over something else (Juelskjaer, 2019, p. 69).In our study of pupils doing with kulturskole, diffraction is an important theoretical term, and we adopt it as a concept and method in our analysis (Jokinen & Murris, 2020, p. 57).In our analysis we looked for diffractions or moments that made a difference (Barad, 2007).The description of what happened when the pupils were invited to create data takes the form of a diffractive analysis.Moments of difference during our co-work are realized, studied and diffracted (Barad, 2014).Four moments are realized and are accounted for in the following sections.Through the following entanglements of material, analysis, findings, and discussion, we offer insight into how they entangle and become phenomena or moments.This happens by tracking connections (Juelskjaer, 2019) and showing how the moments are entangled in a material-discursive practice (Barad, 2003(Barad, , 2007)).
Our theoretical and methodological approach builds on the concepts of performativity, affirmativity, difference and diffraction.The performativity entangles us with the world, we work with and through pupils, knowledge and kulturskole.An affirmative approach builds on a positive ontology.The becoming of the world, and knowledge of the world, are realized out of multiple possibilities, where we as researchers, the pupils, the teacher and the kulturskole are created in this material-discursive practice and at the same time participate in the creation.In these practices we are interested in differences and what they do to the pupils and to the kulturskole.As researchers we then diffract these moments exploring patterns and entanglements, into possible new understandings and knowledge.

Entanglements of Materials, Methods, and Analysis
The following section is entanglements of materials and methods that include concurrent analytical processes and traces of discussion.All these parts of the research process entangle and thus mutually affect each other.This is how the process flows and how we understand it to evolve new methodological understandings in which pupils are to be heard and understood in research projects.

Researchers Create Material That Creates Researchers
The research material was created by the first author, by intra-acting with pupils in the kulturskole.Researchers, pupils, teachers, and materials such as space and time are woven into each other in the processes (Østern et al., 2021).The pupils are thus made co-creators (Ellingson & Sotirin, 2020) and not objects for observation.Within a performative research paradigm the performative agents (Bjørkøy, 2020;Lenz Taguchi, 2012) are entangled and non-representing (Østern et al., 2021).In this part of the text, the voices of the first author and the pupils are heard.
The second author is nevertheless present in that she has had access to and commented on the material and thus is a part of both the analysis and discussion.In these discussions, between the two authors, four moments became important.They appeared in the material as trembling moments that caused a shift or something new and unforeseen.The moments are illuminated and diffracted (Barad, 2007), and new understandings appear, and thus new knowledge on methods of co-creating material with pupils.The diffracted parts are like waves meeting and making new, not yet known waves.This is an image of how we understand diffraction and diffractive analysis.

Four Multitasking Boys
We invited three of the boys, Hein, Neven, and Muhamed, to a first meeting.The boys attended the same dance group.One of them played the violin and the piano, another played the euphonium and composed music in a music technology class, and a third was active in the local youth theatre that collaborated with the kulturskole.Thus, the work covered several of the kulturskole's subject areas described in the framework plan, which states: "The school's subjects are primarily music, dance, theatre, visual arts, and creative writing" (Kulturskoleråd, 2016, p. 10, our translation).The last pupil, Morten, who came into the process later, took part in dance classes but often played the drums in music lessons at compulsory school.The four pupils had been attending the same dance group for several years, along with about ten girls.They were between the ages of 16 and 19 and could be described as advanced pupils with many years of participation in the kulturskole.
Video 1: Meet the pupils: Neven, Hein, Muhamed, and Morten.This is how they decided to greet the first author after a dance class in the kulturskole.We had an appointment for our research project.They created the jumping and brought the sword (found amongst the costumes) on their own while waiting for the author.Working with them was a constant flow of new ideas and becomings in playful ways.
In the following section, we describe the different steps and take the reader into "trembling moments" in which the process changed and the participants with it.
The first formal meeting -Why are they so silent?
The first author conducted an introductory meeting with the pupils in one of the municipality's meeting rooms.This first meeting was quite formal, and we sat around a table, as if in a meeting.
The author explained the project and that her wish was that they would think about the question, "What does the kulturskole do to you?" and that they would then create their own data material that answered this question.The pupils were given the task to write or record thoughts about the kulturskole the next week.The first author strongly sensed a suppressed mood, and that the conversation was stilted.They were holding back for some reason.When the formal meeting ended, something unexpected happened.In her log notes, she wrote the following: "I turn off the recording, and the guys get up.Then, they start talking and asking.

Neven wonders if they should document what the kulturskole is, and I say yes.
Muhamed says he is getting so many ideas."We have to record the conversations we had after dancing, Neven".Then turning away from Neven and towards me: "We saw a dance performance at Røros, and we talked all the way in the car up to Røros".Muhamed beams and says he's looking forward to it.
Neven is also more comfortable and talks to Muhamed.Hein joins in the conversation, and the three of them talk while I say you can "dance the kulturskole" as well, or Hein you can play the kulturskole."Yes, improvise somehow," Hein answers.
A diffractive moment happened at the point of turning off the recording and simultaneously as the boys got up from the table.When the boys started talking and asking, getting so many ideas, diffraction happened, and a new phenomenon materialized (Juelskjaer, 2019, p. 58).Turning off the recording and leaving the table realized a diffractive moment, then a new pattern materialized when we, as researchers, made a connection to the silence in the formal meeting and experienced a difference in mood.
Both the cell phone and a formal meeting setup as more-than-human entities were equally important in the process where meaning-making and knowledge were created (Barad, 2018, p. 237).This observation made the researcher wonder whether she had presented this work with an adult approach through setting up a formal meeting around a table and, in a traditional researchway, making a recording, and that this had created an expectation of seriousness in the pupils.When the pupils had the chance to elaborate and interpret how they could engage through the symbolic language of music and dance (Haseman, 2006) or, according to Deleuze, "experiment with what a life can do and where a life might go" (Sotirin, 2014, p.117), something new materialized.An affirmative (Deleuze & Guattari, 1988) approach towards the task was established.
Knowledge developed in material-discursive entanglements (Barad, 2003(Barad, , 2007) that entangled the pupils, the cell phone, the awareness of recording, the formal placement around the table, the pupils' memories, the researcher, questions, and wonderings.All of these entanglements acted like waves influencing each other and created new diffracted patterns (Barad, 2007) and knowledge both in the situation in a change of mood, and in the analysis of the happening when we acknowledged the change.
With this new knowledge and uncertainty about whether the task was clear and interesting to them, the first author asked them to meet again in the library the following week.The library was chosen to create a more informal meeting place.The first author also asked for permission to enter their instrumental and dance lessons the following week.This was done to get to know the pupils and their activities in the kulturskole.They all agreed to this.

The Library and a Bowl of Soup -Engagement
Just over a week after the first meeting, we met in the library's reading room.The pupils were asked to bring what they had created, and the first author promised them tomato soup and conversation.Introducing a meal is both a nice gesture towards pupils who are meeting right after school, but it is also an experiment with materiality.The soup (materiality) is "an active factor in processes of materialization" and "challenges the positioning of materiality as either given or a mere effect of human agency" (Barad, 2018, p. 237).We humorously call this meeting a "soup council"5 .The room used was less of an office and more of a hall/studio than the first room in which we met.For the first twenty minutes, the conversation between us revolved around reflections about me entering their classes the previous week.Then, we talked about the data they had created themselves.Creating in the form of writing seemed difficult and less interesting to them; they had very little to present.What they had made were short films of themselves alone or in conversation with one another in the group.In these films, they walked and talked about what it had been like at dance today and how they felt at that moment.
The soup council became a diffractive event (Barad, 2018, p. 230).We considered the soup council a diffraction of the soup, the room, the researcher's thoughts about the lack of written material, and the pupils responding with video films.One phenomenon that materialized in this diffraction was a researcher gripped by the pupil's eagerness to join the different directions the conversation took.
The diffracted event uncovered that writing was difficult, but filming seemed easier.This meeting was much more relaxed and the pupils' ability to concentrate on the soup removed some of the tension experienced in the first meeting.This can be heard on the recording where they speak freely and enthusiastically, without the author conducting or controlling the conversation.The soup as materiality had an effect on the pupils who spoke more freely when concentrating on the soup instead of focusing on the first author and her research questions.Thus, the soup holds power and it highlights the position of materiality (Barad, 2018), the soup changes the conversation.The soup, the room, the first author's thoughts about the lack of written material, and the pupils' responding with video films were all active factors (Barad, 2018, p. 237) in diffractions, meeting like waves to make new diffraction patterns.
As she listened to the recordings of the soup council afterwards, the first author acknowledged that the talk had flowed so freely that she had let herself be gripped by their eagerness and there and then joined the different directions that the pupils took in the conversation.The questions posed up front by the author were suddenly less interesting than the conversation going on amongst the pupils.This made her realize that she was a part of the group, and that all the participants mutually affected each other in the conversations.This is an example of how the researcher is never distanced, objective, or neutral but participatory and creative in the phenomenon being researched (Østern et al., 2021), and of how all of its content of humans, and more-than-human entities are acting as performative agents (Bjørkøy, 2020;Lenz Taguchi, 2012).
The participatory and creative phenomenon makes the pupils both co-creators and researchers.
Another diffraction pattern revealed that written approaches might not correlate with how the pupils could make data their way.They brought little written material, but instead video films where they walked and talked.The pupils chose embodied languages to express "outputs and claims to knowing" (Haseman, 2006, p. 4).Acknowledging this new knowledge about the importance of the symbolic language and forms that the films offered, we looked closer into the film material made by the pupils.

The Film Made Walking Home from a Dance Lecture -Embodiment
The third diffractive event is a film recorded on a cell phone by one of the two pupils having a conversation on the way home from the dance session.This event consisted of entangled words and conversations between the pupils, moods, and materials (i.e., the cell phone, the snow, and winter surroundings) performed on each other (Østern et al, 2021) in diffraction (Barad, 2007).The pupils' mood and enthusiastic association with what the dance class did to them, their embodied engagement in the walk and talk situation, and the winter wonderland surroundings made the researchers realize that a performative approach to making data is 'a difference that makes a difference' (Barad, 2007, p. 72).When we watched the film, the snow falling, and the dark evening mood did something to us.The surroundings performed on us and made a diffraction pattern (Barad, 2007) that created new knowledge that aimed to let the pupils make data as a "Trembling Moments"… Reconceptualizing Educational Research Methodology 2023, 14(1) 71 performance.
In this video, the pupils were excited and enthusiastic.The following is an excerpt from the conversation: Video 2 Neven and Muhamed walk home from dance class.
M: (with an excited voice) Oh, shit, I don't understand why I'm so … (laughing) I'm just so … N: It's just that dance; it 'stokes' the shoes M: Yes, right!And then I'm kind of so motivated now.I went to dance today and thought I was ready to.I'm so ready to dance, and then it'll be just like I expect.
N: There's just something about that dance and that dance group.
M: Yes, I like that we're so few boys.
N: Yes, it gives a brotherhood.
M: That "vibe" and that fraternity.
N: We do such stupid things, but they're such good stupid things.
M: Yes! It´s just something else.
In this excerpt, it becomes clear that there are more unforeseen or other possible realities (Lenz Taguchi, 2012, p. 267) to grasp in the moment.We link the excitement in their voices and expressions, like "I'm so ready to dance, and then it'll be just like I expect" and "There's just something about that dance and that dance group", to an affirmative approach (Sotirin, 2014, p. 117) to making data (Ellingson & Sotirin, 2020).The pupils talk about "vibe" and "good, stupid things" with eagerness and vitality in their voices and we link these as "becomings that can only be felt or sensed or conjured, that require us to take risks and experiment in ways that affirm the vitality, the energies and the creative animations of a life" (Sotirin, 2014, p. 117).It can, following Sotirin's reading of Deleuze, "be understood as a radical affirmation of possibilities for becoming that we cannot think of in logical or moralistic terms" (Sotirin, 2014, p. 117).The pupils let the conversation drift and follow up on each other's suggestions.We can't predict what will come next, a laugh, a dance step, or a new thought.This leads to performative understandings and methods that can be brought to the front or open for another and deepened understanding of the moment.Muhamed, holding the phone, laughs as he glimpses into the camera and films the dance in the background.The phone plays an active role in the conversation; hence it is an "active factor in processes of materialization" (Barad, 2018, p. 237).It is snowing around them, and they seem far more liberated in the conversation about what kulturskole does and means by filming and talking than when the first author asked questions in a meeting room.If we, as researchers, are to be able to intra-act with the pupils' experiences and understandings, we must be able to acknowledge the entanglement of humans and more-than-humans in material-discursive practices that also rests on affirmative approaches (Østern et. al, 2021;Sotirin, 2014).

The growth of a performative approach and understanding
The three moments describe differences that made a difference (Barad, 2007) and create endless knowledge-in-becoming (Østern et al., 2021, p 7, italics in original).Out of these processes, a desire emerged around the prospect that the pupils themselves could create material using dance, memories, instruments, and creative play-that is, to develop a method of making data beyond what was planned.The pupils were asked in a follow-up conversation if they could help develop this idea further, and they found this exciting.In these conversations, it emerged that there was a fourth boy at their dance party, and when asked if they thought he would like to participate as well, they said that they thought so because he often asked them about this research project.Therefore, Morten was invited to participate in the project, and he accepted the invitation.This can be understood as a turning point or moment of vibrations for the pupils-a moment that "arises from a state where all possibilities are trembling" (Juelskjaer, 2019, p. 61, our translation)as they decided to invite a peer into the group because of an ongoing process.The pupils are acknowledged as co-researchers and are given power to co-create the research process.
In this process of creation, the dance teacher was contacted and asked to participate as a mentor to keep an eye on the processes and on the pupils participating.In the previous shown film that the pupils made before we decided to make a performance, they directly said that they made "stupid things," but that they were "good stupid things."This suggests the possibility that they could easily get carried away and that they might need an adult who they were confident in and who knew their creative expression.By inviting the dance teacher into the group, our hope was that she could help "create an atmosphere of post-age human-nonhuman equality -thinking-with one another" (Murris, 2020, p. 81).She knew the pupils and assumed a professional position with them.Given these positions, we did not expect her to become an obstacle to the unfolding but to act as a support and facilitator in the pupils' creative processes.
The dance teacher knew about the project, and the first author had already been present in her dance class.She found the project exciting, and together with the pupils, they worked out memories and experiences, from their being in the kulturskole, that they would then put together.They worked out the memories by mixing conversation and reincorporating old steps into music that evoked strong memories for them.This happened in the dance hall with mirrors, where they usually had their dance lessons-that is, in their familiar dance environment.These were processes in which the boys used their bodies to bring about memories that they associated with their relationships with the kulturskole.The work went on for six weeks, with one meeting per week.The processes were characterized by conversations and spontaneous dance/movement that evoked memories and working with these memories as a group.The memories were essentially pieces of music they enjoyed playing, choreographies they especially liked, and music they had experienced and talked about in the dance classes, throughout their years in the kulturskole.In one of the conversations, the first author asked the pupils whether they had any other forms of expression that they wanted to add to their project.Muhamed offered to create a rap.After less than a week, he presented it as a video.
"This is me" -A rap that wraps up conversations, moments, and motions This rap, made and presented by Muhamed, is the fourth and last diffractive moment.Here, in this intra-action we experience bodily expressions, words, the beat, the cell phone, and the room around him (Barad, 2018, p. 237).When all these entities diffracted, a new diffraction pattern became clear to the researchers: he was making data through an art expression (Haseman, 2006, p. 4).The following is a presentation of the rap.The rap captures parts of the conversations, both in the beginning (the two meetings) and during the work.The whole rap is a phenomenon that holds different intra-actions within.The words are central, and he expresses the story through words.This is a tough but playful way of using words.
He twists and turns around to find rhyme and rhythm.His understanding and knowledge are being rhythmized and rhymed in a rap.Rapping is a youth language and a way of expressing oneself.
Rhyming and finding rhythm with words are symbolic language, and rap as a concept is a youth "practice" (Haseman, 2006, p. 4).
Muhamed had little trouble talking in the group; he was verbally strong.Some of the others leaned towards him in conversations, agreed with him, and let him talk.In the rap, he included the opinions offered by the others in the group.Another diffraction was his bodily expressions of being satisfied with the performance.The data he made could be felt, sensed, or conjured.He took risks and experimented in ways that affirmed the vitality, energies, and creative animations of life (Sotirin, 2014, p. 117).This is an affirmative and vital approach to making data performative.This (Deleuzian) vitality is driven by creative desire and produces unpredictable and new knowledge; the cell phone played an important role and was a significant wave, as a concrete part of performance and the material-discursive entanglements (Barad, 2003(Barad, , 2007)).When we saw the video, Muhamed seemed to communicate with the phone in a way that made us perceive that he communicated with us as an audience.The phone materialized as a conversation partner.
The fourth diffraction pattern created different and unique understandings of the phenomenon of pupils doing with the kulturskole.It is an understanding that includes bodily expressions, language, and material-discursive entanglements with the human and more-than-human.

Concluding Perspectives
In the beginning we raised the research question: how can pupils' doing with kulturskole be highlighted and explored through a performative research approach?The process of co-creating data brought us closer to a performative paradigm.
The diffractive events created new possibilities that drove the process further.In the first moment, a new phenomenon materialized when we, as researchers, made a connection to the silence in the formal meeting and experienced a difference in mood in the room.
In the next event, the researcher was gripped by the pupils' eagerness and joining in the different directions the conversation took, and how easily they spoke, contrary to written reporting.In the third moment, the diffraction pattern was new knowledge that produced a wish to let the pupils make data as a performance.From their work with creating this performance grew the final moment -the rap.We realized that the pupils made data through artistic expression.
Moving the research approach from a qualitative approach to a performative paradigm provided access to many more languages.In our first conversations with the pupils, understanding of

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knowledge and what research and material could be, was limited.As the pupils came to play with format and "symbolic language and forms of their practice" (Hantelmann, 2014, p. 4), the material and opportunities changed.There was a richer supply of possibilities, which in turn offered a richer supply of interpretations.A performative approach to research does not necessarily give more concrete answers, but perhaps this approach in data-making with children can provide different and unforeseen answers, answers that bring out the pupils' narratives of entangling and doing with the kulturskole.A contribution to the field that gives children's stories a voice and a body.
This contribution is grounded in affirmative thinking and in the desire to make data with pupils.In inserting affirmative thinking and desire into the context of research and co-creation with pupils, processes that are perceived as becomings can produce unpredictable and new knowledge, such as when Muhamed suggested making a rap.Conceptualizing learning as exclusively reproduction is unlikely to find space within the theoretical universe that we present in this article.By inviting pupils to express themselves through art as a material-discursive practice where desire is activated, the performative paradigm is linked to the affirmative in Deleuze's theoretical plateaus (Deleuze & Guattari, 1988).These processes involve the pupils in making data, and they open for elaboration on a different understanding of what data are or can be.When they walked and talked, the weather became a part of the data material in intra-action with the oral and embodied conversations between the two boys (Barad, 2018, p. 237).The snow created a specific atmosphere, and this pointed the first author towards thoughts of a performance answering the research question.The pupils took up this idea and created a performance.Parts of this performance will be included in a future video article.
By making his rap based on the foregoing processes, Muhamed created something self-initiated.He grappled with the material and crafted something new and unforeseen through self-initiated play (Anttila, 2007).His work with creating a rap was a desire based on opportunity and production, following Deleuze (May, 2019).We diffract this through an understanding that rap was not something he did as as an organized activity in the kulturskole; rather, he was driven by self-initiated opportunities.This supports the finding in Anttila's (2007) study that "play surfaced as a significant ingredient of dialogue".Further, Anttila's finding that children experience school life as not having enough space for self-initiated play (Anttila, 2007, p. 877) stresses affirmative thinking with unpredictability and knowledge as becomings (Østern et. al, 2021), hence learning that is never to be exclusively reproduced.The process of co-creating material grew into an affirmative thinking about creating an artistic answer, further, to creating a performance, and, finally, into an unpredictable phenomenon such as the rap.
As researchers, we stayed with the trouble (Haraway, 2016) and extended the processes with cocreating data together with the pupils.This led us deeper into the research processes and expanded the development of the material.We were taken deeper still when we started the process of making data with the pupils.The methodological process opened different languages, for instance embodied and artistic languages, hence richer possibilities in understanding how to make data and what data can be.Both the walk and talk video and the rap are examples in this regard.These further created possibilities for richer interpretation and opened for self-initiated play with data and a research format for the pupils.A format where data are closer related to Barad's "relata" (2018).
There have been many critical aspects within the project and throughout we have tried to act response-ably when meeting obstacles (Jamouchi, 2022).For example, there were no female pupils in the group, as it seemed more response-able to let the already established group continue, than to introduce new people.We acknowledge that the outcome of our research rests on the trust within the group of pupils.To gain such trust with pupils who did not know each other would have taken a long time, and it may not have been possible.This is also about understanding the pupils and their abilities (Murris, 2020).As a group of pupils, trusting each other, they can exercise "thinking-with one another" (Murris, 2020, p. 81).In the future, we would like to work with younger pupils (these pupils are in their final years in the kulturskole) and a more diverse group.Presenting the material without the pupils present also became an obstacle.The embodied materiality is hard to present in written language only.We elaborated amongst us as researchers, with the pupils, their parents and with Sikt.Then we decided to include the pupils as co-creators and with full identity.This calls for response-ability towards the pupils, and they have seen, read, and commented on the text and video included.Hopefully, they will appreciate the article now and in the future.This is a trembling moment and something that both puzzles and frightens us as researchers.We believe we have intra-acted with them in a respectful and sustainable way.This is a material-discursive, affirmative, and performative contribution to the field.The trembling moments are four possibilities out of many (Barad, 2018).Possibilities that are not definite answers, but understandings based on what we see in the process and in the material.
After performing the rap, Muhamed jumps up from his chair and leaves the picture.We can hear It starts with Muhamed explaining in his own words what he has made: "OK, this is the finished rap now.Now, I'm happy with the length of it.I don't want to write anything more, because the way it is now; this is the rap about the kulturskole, what I have on my mind": Video 3 Muhamed performs his rap.