Observatory of Interspecific Relations in Extreme Contexts: systemic thinking and speculative fiction in prospections about the human and the non-human

Abstract

This article analyzes how art research, as a situated practical-reflexive construction, develops ways of thinking about the relationships between the human and the non-human. The aim is to demonstrate how speculative practice, understood as an instrument of art research, fosters interpretations of other ways of creating worlds and their possible natures. To this end, the "Observatory of Interspecific Relations in Extreme Contexts (ORICE)" is used as a case study, a fictional prospective segment developed by the author. Based on an analysis of its structure, two interrelated perspectives are identified: a systemic one, which seeks to perceive terrestrial processes in their relational complexities, and a speculative one, which acquires a narrative form through fabulation. Artistic practice is understood as a prospective resource about consensual reality and its alternative possibilities. Thinking about the human and the non-human at the interface between art and fiction affirms the role of speculative processes in reformulating perceptions and subjectivities necessary for the repositioning of the human in the face of current geological contexts.