ABSTRACT
This essay outlines a method of creative practice I have been developing called Bardhek Practice. Bardhek Practice orchestrates a place in which to perform site work while exploring alternative modes of being with land. Emanating from the intersection between speculative realism and speculative fiction, the subsequent mesotopian event generates pieces which provoke discussions and further inter-group collaborations. By invoking the terminology of speculative realism, this particular approach moves towards reifying the topos. Speculative realism is a philosophical movement which decentres the human subject and proposes a more vibrant metaphysical realism; in particular, Graham Harman and Timothy Morton argue in favour of an object-oriented ontology which imbues objects with qualities that remain hidden. Bardhek Practice is an exercise in non-proprietorial mapping. I propose that post-postcolonial strategies, which retrieve pre-colonial attitudes towards land, affect individual and collective identities which result in a subtle queering of pre-existing nomenclature associated with articulating complex ecological systems. I have included brief readings through this lens of examples of work made by movement practitioners, sculptors, and curators of multimedia installations.
