Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference 14-17th December 2016 Program Index

endeavours, and what are the consequences and potential of collaboration with various stakeholders beyond
academia? During the last decade, a quite extensive discussion on how to expand the methodological toolbox of
cultural and social research has been developed. Non (or more-than) representational theory and methods have
suggested that we combine cultural analysis and creative practice in new ways. Entanglements between art, design,
anthropology and ethnography has been developed and discussed by various scholars. The papers in this session will
deal with the development in the intersections between academia, art and design, by taking the conceptual point of
departure in the notions of intervention and exploration. Concrete examples from projects will be discussed in
relation to broader theoretical and methodological issues.
Juan Francisco Salazar Speculative fabulation as method: researching worlds to come in Antarctica
In this intervention I reflect on my experience experimenting with speculative narratives of worlds to come
in Antarctica. The focal point is the experimental documentary film Nightfall on Gaia (2015), which, I
suggest, enacts a form of generative ethnography through which to speculate futures with. Drawing on
Donna Haraway’s ambiguous notion of speculative fabulation, I argue that the film enacts a realism of the
possible to account for how the Ice, as an everyday extreme, confronts its inhabitants with problems of
survival that make visible big quandaries about the future of habitable conditions for earthly life. Modulated
by the speculative this provocation invites a recalibration toward a future-facing cultural inquiry that enables
research to follow forked directions, to both respond to and anticipate phenomena that may not simply be
held, observed and acted upon.
Anna Isaksson Design, Critique and Creativity – Exploring norms and constructions of masculinity in the fire and
rescue service
This paper is based on a study of the Swedish fire and rescue service where norm critical design has been
used to make constraining (gender) norms visible. The norm critical design concepts problematize notions
regarding physical strength, bodies and sexuality within the fire and rescue service and question the binary
construction of women and men. They are questioning the habitual ways of doing and thinking of gender but
at the same time they are norm creative as they involve rethinking and opening up for alternative solutions
and ways of to relate to a phenomenon. This paper is just about how research through design interventions
can be both critical and creative.
Robert Willim
Following The Delta Bell – Cultural Explorations of Imaginaries, Materiality and Infrastructure
In my practice in between art, ethnography and cultural analysis I have used what I call art probes as
speculative instruments of evocation which might possibly inspire or speak back to my research practices.
One of these art probes was initialized and discharged at an event at the Museum of Ethnography in
Stockholm November 2014. The starting point was the ethnographic surrealist audiovisual performance
Possible Worlds. As part of the performance I used an object called The Delta Bell. Since then I have followed
this object. The path has lead me to several places, to an anechoic chamber and a disused nuclear power
plant. This paper is about the process and the meandering exploration of The Delta Bell.
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