Investigative Aesthetics

As part of the DIU’s major lectures, Matthew Fuller will be speaking on 17th March  at the Maison de la Recherche at Paris 8 on the subject of ‘investigative Aesthetics’.

 

This talk will reflect on some of the key aspects of the book, Investigative Aesthetics by Matthew Fuller and Eyal Weizman (Verso, August 2021). Investigations often start from a site or a specific point: a controversy, a local debate, an incident, an accident, a detail. From this point of individuation an investigation follows different threads that lead outwards along complex paths of causality. Disentangling these threads needs different forms of knowledge, experience and expertise.  These may for instance be computational and procedural or spatial, social, or analytical.

Investigative aesthetics is, in part, a process of collectively assembling accounts of incidents from media flotsam. It involves tuning into and interpreting weak signals and noticing unintentional evidence registered in visual, audio or data files or in the material composition of our environment, itself understood as a mediating condition. It also refers to the use of aesthetic sensibilities in assembling cases, in editing material into effective film and videos or installations. In these constructions, each found element is not a piece of evidence in itself but rather an entry point to find connections with others, a part in a heterogeneous assemblage that allows for navigation across and the weaving together of disparate elements.

This lecture will draw on specific examples of artistic and research practices developing investigative aesthetics.