Vortragsreihe "Kunst - Forschung - Geschlecht"
Julia Grillmayr
No motorway through Danubian wetlands, or: How to speculate against the probable
Mittwoch, 30. November 2022
18:00 - 20:00 Uhr
Auditorium| Vordere Zollamtsstraße 7, 1030 Wien | Ground floor
© Sophia Rut, Ein Ohr in der Au, 2022
In “Wondering about Materialism“, Isabelle Stengers underlines the importance to connect the philosophical considerations that are undertaken under the label of materialism to concrete material struggles. Her article is part of the influential anthology The speculative turn – and it stands out, not only because out of 25 contributions, it is the only one written by a woman, but also because of its political stance amidst a largely abstract school of thought. As becomes clear from this book, “speculation” can mean very different things. Starting from this insight, and in a string figure play with my colleagues and friends, the artist and ecologist Christina Gruber and the environmental historian Sophia Rut, I attempt to contribute to the concrete “speculation against the probable” that is currently going on under the formula: “Lobau bleibt!” Karin Harrasser writes about this kind of speculation that Stengers proposes: “Speculation, in this sense, is not about the extrapolation of the present or betting on probable processes; it has to do with a retroactive allegiance, an operation in Future II: Speculative thinking has to measure up with the possibilities that it will have brought into being.“
Julia Grillmayr is a Vienna- and Linz-based cultural studies scholar, journalist, radio maker and science communicator. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Vienna. At the University of Art and Design Linz, she explored the relationship between contemporary SF literature and futurological scenarios. Her research interests are speculative (eco)feminist philosophy and cyberpunk. She is creator of the radio broadcast Superscience Me on Radio Orange, she works for the public radio channel Ö1, and podcasts for the Austrian Academy of Science. The rest of the time, she spends in muddy danubian wetlands and in tap shoes.
https://juliagrillmayr.at/ // julia.grillmayr@kunstuni-linz.at