Opening a research project designed for the consideration of open questions regarding the relation between aesthetics (broadly construed), and new forms of realism within post-Continental philosophy (influenced by, though not limited to positions identified with 'Speculative Realism').

Participants: Ray Brassier, Mark Fisher, Robin Mackay, Reza Negerastani, Benedict Singleton, Nick Srnicek. James Trafford, Alex Williams, Ben Woodard, Tom Trevatt, Amanda Beech.

As space is limited, attendance is by invitation only. Proceedings of the round table discussion will be transcribed and made available on-site, and will form a part of a future publication. Contact office@urbanomic.com for further information.

We think that it is necessary to develop a serious understanding of the ramifications for aesthetics that bypasses the cultural faddishness of OOO, whilst also facing up squarely to arguments that such realism indexes a kind of scientism that may ultimately come undone, because it leaves open no space for aesthetics (or, potentially, politics). Given that much of this emerging strand of realism is concerned with the impugning, and potential displacement, of human experience, we appear to require novel modes of thinking aesthetics that refuse to hypostatize human experience as the master-category through which the world is to be interpreted.

To this end, the speculative dimension regarding aesthetic thought may well involve a productive tension between the levels of phenomenal experience, metaphysical speculation and scientific description, whilst, nonetheless, refusing a return to naive realism, reified subjectivity, or (new) materialisms. For example, in terms of the aesthetic dimension of politics, we take it that hype, hyperstition, SF, cosmism and so on, are as important as the critical-analytical dimension of scientific rationality.

March 4, 2013, 1-5.30pm
Artworkers Guild, London