Specology

The concept of speculation has only recently emerged in the field of aesthetic practice. It is, however, having a remarkable impact and giving rise to a new form of creative, artistic, provocative, and experimental production and aesthetic research. A new understanding of collective, risk-taking, hybrid practice is taking shape. This development leads to Specology.

With Specology as a new aesthetic science, we can enter a tableau that is as imaginary as it is productive, where practices and methods of cognition and creation (ways of walking), forms of insight (arrangements), as well as media and materials (constellations of things), chronopolitical fields of research (Ancient Futures), and mentalities (Magical Expertise) intermingle.
The aim of this book is to capture the potentials and challenges of and for speculative-aesthetic research and to make them open to discourse—not only on a conceptual level, but across many levels of aesthetic and critical practice. The publication takes up the discourse on speculative design that has been ongoing since the mid-2000s, approaches it critically, and provides points of connection for practices of knowledge and thought across various artistic, design, philosophical, cultural-theoretical, and even entirely non-academic fields.

The publication was developed, curated, overseen, compiled, edited, refined, and shaped at Speculative Space by the research collaborators Anke Haarmann, Alice Lagaay, Tom Bieling, Torben Körschkes, Petja Ivanova, Frieder Bohaumilitzky, and Barbro Scholz, in collaboration with the graphic designers at distaff studio, and set to music in cooperation with Stephan Kraus.