Event overview
Visual Cultures Public Programme lecture with Theo Reeves Evison
Contemporary art and visual culture are brimming with images of a future shaped by environmental destruction, technological innovation, and new forms of sociality. This talk traces the genealogy of some of the tools and techniques that underpin such creative practices, isolating a series of ‘speculative infrastructures’ that shape and script the way environmental futures are constituted as objects of imagination and experience. Looking at speculative and anticipatory practices as underpinned by infrastructures—both material and discursive—has the potential to shed light on the forms of power embedded within them, but it also points to the ways in which they can fall prey to lock-in processes and path-dependencies. Framed in this way, the junctures where lock-in processes begin to take hold can be seen as points at which artistic projects oriented towards environmental justice can productively intervene. Artworks not only have the capacity to generate alternative images of the future, this talk will argue but also rework the infrastructures by which such images are conceptualized and produced.
Theo Reeves-Evison is a writer, researcher and Senior Lecturer at Birmingham School of Art. From 2018-22 he led the Leverhulme-funded project Speculative Natures, which investigated the critical imbrications of ecology, visual culture, and climate futures, and resulted in several publications and curated events. He is the co-editor of Fiction as Method (Sternberg, 2017), and has contributed to publications including Third Text, New Formations, Critical Inquiry and Environmental Humanities. Current projects in development include a second monograph entitled Futures in the Making (MIT Press, 2026) and a collaborative research project on the ‘Political Ecology of Volume’ together with Lydia Cole and Yolande Ariadne Collins.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 4 Dec 2025 | 5:00pm - 7:00pm |
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