Beyond hot air: Anthropocene art and speculative practice
(unpublished manuscript)
Abstract:
In this paper I focus on creative and speculative practice mobilised in response to disturbing Anthropocene forecasts. I encounter and examine the work of artist Tomás Saraceno which explores elemental forces and spatial relationships, harnessing the potentials of atmosphere in response to impending social, political and energetic challenges. Decidedly experimental, his work moves beyond representation, being overtly performative and interactive, seeking to viscerally and affectively reorient and reconnect people through multiple relational dimensions. Commonly categorised as ‘eco-art’, I argue the work is better read through a speculative lens, by which it demonstrates ‘polyarchic’ capacities of creative experimentalism, provoking both imaginative and political possibilities for planetary dwelling and, indeed, being. While not without limitations, such work shows not only how speculative methods can be employed as catalyst for change, but can do so in highly generative ways.
Note: this paper was accepted by Global Discourse for a special edition focused on speculative practice, which, however, was disrupted by Covid in 2020, and the paper was not published.