Aesthetic Materialism

: Developing a methodology of praxis-based research through participatory speculative fictions

Abstract

The multifaceted crisis of society and nature is exacerbated by the crisis of imagination - what Mark Fisher called Capitalist Realism. The crisis of thinking, this thesis argues, is an objective expression of the antagonistic social relations between thinking and doing, the one person and the other. Its origins are traced to the praxis of commodity exchange, a praxis that postulates the aesthetics of abstraction, obliviousness, and egoism. These little crises are so endemic and mundane that they are perceived as no crises at all.

It is for this reason that this thesis attends to the utopian potential of the everyday, by establishing a community of cleaners, librarians, and porters at the University of Bristol. By synthesizing methodologies from social sciences and design, the community went through a process that was participatory, speculative, and open-ended. From the hidden realities of reproductive work, to postcards from the future, to science fiction hoovers, the collective creation of art mediated new sensory relations. These transcended the aesthetics imposed by the abstraction and division of waged labour, and nurtured utopian imagination.

What resulted from the fieldwork is the advancement of Aesthetic Materialism as a theoretical framework for praxis-based research, and a methodology that mobilizes it in the field. The latter comprises two foundational processes. The first concerns the use of art as the means of estrangement and the perception of reality as weird and eerie. The weird concretion becomes the springboard for the creation of a utopian vision, in a process that is termed the warm abstraction. When done well, the two processes engage in a reciprocal relation that produces practices and situations that intensify social relations. The proposed methodology aspires to be sensitive enough to move dialectically within our fragile present, yet imaginative enough to allude to the transformation of capitalist social relations.

Date of Award	18 Jun 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bristol
Supervisor	Harry Pitts (Supervisor) & Richard Owen (Supervisor)