Weaponising Speculation Conference

national | arts and media | event notice Thursday February 21, 2013 01:35 by Michael O'Rourke - DUST (Dublin Unit for Speculative Thought)

This gathering is the signature event organized by D.U.S.T (Dublin Unit for Speculative Thought), an art/theory collective recently founded by Michael O'Rourke, Paul Ennis and Fintan Neylan. The primary aim of DUST is to stage conversations between disparate groups of people—artists, aestheticians, philosophers, non-philosophers, theorists—who find themselves at the fringes of academic institutions and disciplines and who are also broadly interested in speculative realism and post-continental philosophy.

Weaponising Speculation Conference

2-3 March, Independent Colleges, 60-63 Dawson Street, Dublin 2.

This gathering is the signature event organized by D.U.S.T (Dublin Unit for Speculative Thought), an art/theory collective recently founded by Michael O'Rourke, Paul Ennis and Fintan Neylan. The primary aim of DUST is to stage conversations between disparate groups of people—artists, aestheticians, philosophers, non-philosophers, theorists—who find themselves at the fringes of academic institutions and disciplines and who are also broadly interested in speculative realism and post-continental philosophy.

“Weaponizing Speculations” is a non-traditional assembly which has as its impetus the opening up of a dialogue between artists, para-academics and the Speculative Realist “community” here in Dublin and elsewhere. Here is the description:

“Distinct from the norm. Distinct even from the academic norm. Twice removed the para-academic is doubly unwanted. The ones you have trained are set loose and they know your secrets. They are pests and they want to be armed. The contemporary para-academic is untethered. Promises have gone unfulfilled and yet avenues have opened up elsewhere. To the artists, to the creators, to the fringe, wherever the real can be captured. It is in these topoi that the real work happens.

Speculation: to think the world of experience, beyond such experience. But how to seize this reality, how to speculate upon that which the academy has prohibited? Before the storms the para-academic needs to equip herself. Not only with tools, but weapons.

‘Weaponizing Speculation’ is an exploration of the various expressions of DIY theory operative in the elsewheres,the shafts and tunnels of the para-academy. We seek those thoughts that go beyond the institution, beyond the linguistic, beyond the human, to the far reaches of the incommensurate and the extinct; we seek conceptual armoury which will aid thinkers in the siege to reclaim the real.

We invite papers from those lost at sea”.

Those lost at sea are:

Saturday 2 March

Independent Colleges, Room 101

10.00-10.15 Introductory remarks: Paul Ennis, Fintan Neylan, Michael O’Rourke

10.15-11.00 Session 1: Robert Jackson, Rebecca O’dwyer

11.00-11.15 Break

11.15-12.15 Session 2: Nick Srnicek, Dylan Trigg

12.15-13.00 Session 3: Erin Stapleton, Alice Rekab

13.00-14.00 Lunch

14.00-14.45 Session 4: Francis Halsall, Alan Boardman

14.45-15.30 Session 5: Isabel Nolan, Sergey Sistiaga

15.30-15.45 Break

16.00-16.45 Session 6: MOUTH (Edia Connole, Scott Wilson) with Pat Zaidan, Mairtin Mac Con Iomaire, Kathy Tynan

20.00-22.00 Opening of Weaponising Speculation Exhibition, BLOCK T Gallery, Smithfield, Dublin 7

Sunday 3 March

Independent Colleges, Room 101

10.00-10.45 Session 7: Ridvan Askin, Ciara McMahon

10.45-11.30 Session 8: John Ryan, Ciara Griffin

11.30-12.30 Lunch

12.30-13.15 Session 9: Rob Murphy, Andy Weir

13.15-14.00 Session 10: Dock Currie, Sam Keogh

14.00-14.15 Break

14.15-15.15 Session 11: Teresa Gillespie, Ben Woodard

15.15-16.00 Session 12: Karen Dewart McEwen, Scott Wilson

16.00-16.15 Closing remarks: Paul Ennis, Fintan Neylan, Michael O’Rourke

18.00-20.00 Weaponising Speculation Exhibition, BLOCK T Gallery, Smithfield, Dublin 7