Art's Speculative Perturbations

Abstract

In this paper, I consider the speculative movement of understanding performed by art. I show how the repeated coming-into-being of a work’s structure not only participates in life’s living discourse, but offers a model for how to transverse its complex, often contradictory, landscapes. Art reconfigures the edges of (un)intelligibility creating a speculative ethics that perturbs established modes of perceiving and interpreting. I conclude with a call for the necessity of art in a transient world.