Abstract/Summary

Speculative Matters as they might relate to DIALOGUES: The term ‘speculative’ implies uncertainty as opposed to absolute knowledge. A central premise of Speculative Matters is that this uncertainty is an essential tool or characteristic of Fine Art practice, as if uncertainty might be the one thing about which it is possible to be certain. In other words, the speculative (or uncertain) is a matter of significance. The speculative matters. Fine Art allows that which is not yet known to be investigated, proposed or considered for reflection and discourse. Stuff matters. A second premise of Speculative Matters concerns the uncertain nature of matter itself – whether material or immaterial. A number of contemporary philosophers (loosely associated with Speculative Realism and Object-Oriented Ontology) have been suggesting that thought and knowledge have for too long been centred on the human being or human body rather than being oriented on the complex world of things, matter and systems. It is time, they say, to think of human beings as only one object/system among many, thus human beings as not being at the centre of that which matters. Rather than identifying what things and matter mean to us, the premise is rather to consider what it is like to be some form of matter or thing other than ourselves. Speculative Matters concerns a de-centering of the subject, and a space for objects, things, sounds, systems and matter to interact with one another in a myriad of speculative and not-yet-known ways, with uncertainty of outcome as a valid ‘rationale’, unmediated by human experience.