Dr Theo Reeves-Evison

Senior Lecturer in Theoretical and Contextual Studies

Birmingham School of Art

Email:: theo.reeves-evison@bcu.ac.uk

Dr. Theo Reeves-Evison is a writer, researcher and Senior Lecturer in Theoretical and Contextual Studies, where his research focuses on the critical imbrications of Art, Ecology and Visual Culture.

From 2018-22 he was the principal investigator on the Leverhulme funded research project ‘Speculative Natures: Contemporary Art and Interventionist Ecology’, which resulted in several publications, workshops and curated events. He takes an interdisciplinary approach to research, often collaborating across the Arts, Social and Environmental Sciences. Much of his recent work is informed by a curiosity about how environmental futures come into being through forms of planning and prediction, and the broader role of art and visual culture in how futures of climate change and biodiversity loss are anticipated.

At BCU he is the founding director, together with Prof Becky Shaw, of the Lifeworlds Research Cluster in Art and Design - an initiative that brings together researchers working on environmental themes from across the faculty of Art, Design and Media. In his current role as Theoretical and Contextual studies co-ordinator he leads several modules that embed research-led teaching and provide new pathways for practice-based research that compliment traditional written assessment tasks for critical studies.

He has published writing in a variety of forms and formats, from academic books and articles to catalogue essays, exhibition reviews and short works of creative fiction. He is the editor, together with Jon K. Shaw, of Fiction as Method (Sternberg, 2017), and has published articles in journals such as Parallax, New Formations and Critical Inquiry. In 2018 he edited a special issue of the journal Third Text on the theme of ‘ethico-aesthetic repairs’ with Mark Rainey, and his first monograph on the Ethics of Contemporary Art was published in 2020 by Bloomsbury Academic Press.

As a speaker, he has made invited presentations and chaired discussions at institutions such as the Southbank Centre, MACBA, documenta Institut and the Gerrit Rietveld Academie’s Studium Generale. Projects currently in development include a second monograph entitled The Future in Four Acts: Art and Ecology in a Warming World, a long-term research inquiry into ‘The Political Ecology of Volume’ together with Lydia Cole, Matt Barlow and Yolande Ariadne Collins, and an investigation into the visual culture of Early Warning Systems for climate change induced hazards including floods and forest fires.

Areas of Expertise

Qualifications

Memberships

Teaching

Research

Postgraduate Supervision

Publications

Publications:

2023-4	Journal article: ‘On Prospecting: Visual Culture between Extraction and Speculation’ Environmental Humanities (accepted, forthcoming). Journal article: (together with Ariadne Yolande Collins, Lydia Cole and Matthew Barlow) “‘Mine the Volume’” – Excess and the Voluminous Ecological Politics of Capitalist Frontiers’ Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space (accepted, forthcoming). Book chapter: ‘Litterfall’, in: Speculative Nature Writing, edited by Hetty Saunders and Jos Smith (Cornwall: Guillemot Press, 2023)
2022	Catalogue Essay: ‘Eukaryotic’, in A Glossary of Water: Catalogue for the 23^rd Biennial of Sydney, ed. by José Roca and Juan Francisco Salazar (2022)
2021	Journal Article: ‘The Art of Disciplined Imagination: Prediction, Scenarios, and Other Speculative Infrastructures’, Critical Inquiry, vol. 47, no. 4 (summer 2021) Catalogue Essay: Free Range / Born Slippy, in Joey Holder: Abyssal Seeker (Seventeen Gallery, April-May 2021)
2020	Catalogue Essay: ‘Walking on numbers’, in Liquid Landscapes: What if the Ground Under Your Feet Cannot be Trusted? (Santiago: Corporación Agencia de Borde, 2020) Journal Article: Theo Reeves-Evison and Josh Bowsher, ‘On Capital’s Watch: Derivative Ecology and the Temporal Logic of Biodiversity Credits.’ Published in New Formations issue 99, 2020. Book: After Transgression: Ethics of Contemporary Art (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020)
2018	Book Chapter: ‘On Freud's Trieb’, in Reading the Écrits – A Guide to Lacan’s Work, 3 vols, ed. by Derek Hook, Calum Neill and Stijn Vanheule (London: Routledge, 2018) Journal Special Issue, with extended introduction: ‘Ethico-Aesthetic Repairs’, ed. by Theo Reeves-Evison and Mark Rainey Third Text, 150, vol.32, no.2, 2018
2017	Edited Book, with extended introduction: Fiction As Method, ed. by Theo Reeves-Evison and Jon K. Shaw (Berlin: Sternberg, 2017) Book Chapter: ‘Surface Fictions’, in Futures and Fictions, ed. by Henriette Gunkel, Ayesha Hameed and Simon O’Sullivan (London: Repeater, 2017)
2016	Journal Article: ‘Deception and Fiction as Forms of World-Making in Contemporary Art’, published in Paragrana, volume 25, issue 1, Summer 2016
2015	Journal Article: ‘Rogues, Rumours and Giants: Some Examples of Deception and Fabulation in Contemporary Art’, published in Parallax, volume 21, issue 3, Summer 2015
2014	Journal Article: ‘After Transgression: Ethics Under a Different Master’, published in Contours: Journal of the Institute of the Humanities, issue 4, Spring 2014
2014	Book Chapter: ‘Internal Exiles’ in Politics by Other Means: Selected Criticism from Review 31, ed. by Houman Barekat and Alison Hugill (Alresford: Zero, 2014)

Conferences Papers, Workshops and Talks:

2024	‘Seeing with Sediment: On Deep-Sea Mining and the Aquatic Perspective’, presentation at The Aesthetics of Geopower: Imagining Planetary Histories and Hegemonies, April 4-5, University of Amsterdam
2023	‘ Speculative Infrastructures of Climate Change’, Art and Post-Capitalism series, November 20, Documenta Institut, University of Kassel, Germany.
2023	‘An Ocean without Dimensions: On the Visual Culture of Deep-Sea Mining’ STS Italia: Interesting Worlds to Come. Science & Technology Studies Facing More-than-human Challenges, June 28-30 2023, Bologna
2023	‘Toward a Political Ecology of Volume’, panel organiser at RGS-IBG Annual Conference, London, August 29 - September 1, co-organised with Ariadne Yolande Collins, Lydia Cole and Matthew Barlow
2023	‘Governance and the Voluminous Commons - Summer Seminar Series’, co-organised with Ariadne Collins, Lydia Cole and Matt Barlow [online]
2022	‘Mutation / Resilience’, workshop co-organised by Nottingham Contemporary and Delfina Foundation, November 21, 2022, Nottingham
2022	‘Engineering the Future: On Climate Modification and the Macroscopic View’, EASST: Politics of Technoscientific Futures, July 6 - 9 2022, Madrid
2022	‘The Infrastructures of Prediction and Visual Culture’, podcast Interview for The Art and Artifice of Prediction, May 2022
2022	Symposium Organiser: ‘After Growth: A Symposium on Post-Capitalist Imaginaries’, March 2022, Nottingham Contemporary
2021	Seed Casino (Performance Lecture), Autumn 2021, Loughborough University
2021	Ecological Futures in the Making: Broadening the Art of Speculation, 3–7 August 2021, STREAMS: Transformative Environmental Humanities, Stockholm. [online]
2020	‘Thoughts Thinking Thoughts: From Systems Ecology to the Financialisation of Nature’, 18 November 2020, Loughborough University [online]
2020	‘Speculative Degrowth’, presentation at Inland: Centro de Acercamiento a lo Rural, Madrid
2020	‘Patch Dynamics and Infrastructures of Speculation,’ invited presentation at Memories of the Future, 13 January 2020, University of Oslo
2019	‘Trees with Benefits: Derivative Nature, Neoliberal Conservation, and Contemporary Art,’ paper presented at The International Association for Environmental Philosophy Twenty-third Annual Meeting, 2-4 November 2019, Pittsburgh
2019	‘Agrarian Imaginaries and Speculative Cultures of Degrowth,’ paper presented at Productive Futures: The Political Economy of Science Fiction, 12-14 September 2019, Birkbeck, University of London
2019	‘Infrastructures of Speculation in Art, Finance and Public Policy,’ paper presented at Forming the Future: An Interdisciplinary Conference, 2-3 September 2019, University of Plymouth.
2019	‘On Capital’s Watch: Derivative Nature and the Temporal Logic of Biodiversity Credits,’ paper jointly presented with Josh Bowsher at Risk and Uncertainty in the Anthropocene, June 26, Goldsmiths, University of London.
2019	‘Infrastructures of Speculation in Art, Politics and Green Capitalism,’ invited talk at School of Architecture, University of Sheffield, 27^th April.
2019	‘Great Expectation Machines in Art, Ecology and Green Capitalism,’ Study session as part of the Calculative Environments series, Nottingham Contemporary, 26^th February
2019	‘Privatised Futures and the Art of Speculation,’ invited presentation at Studium Generale, Gerrit Rietveld Academie Amsterdam, 13^th February
2019	Invited discussant, Repair Acts, 7^th February, Create, Spike Island, Bristol.
2019	‘Social Ecologies of Speculation,’ paper presented at Mutating Ecologies in Contemporary Art III, January 30, Museum of Contemporary Art Barcelona (MACBA).
2018	‘Nature in the Bank: Speculative Temporalities, Restoration Ecology and Ecosystem Service Commodities’, paper jointly presented with Josh Bowsher at Futures of Finance and Society, December 6-7, University of Edinburgh
2018	‘The Time Landscapes of Intervention Ecology’, paper presented at Manchester Centre for Political Theory Workshops, September 10-12, University of Manchester
2017	‘Ludic Surfaces: Camouflage and the Ethico-Aesthetics of Play’, paper presented at Performance Philosophy Conference: How does Performance Philosophy Act? Ethos – Ethics – Ethnography, June 22-25, Prague Academy of Performing Arts
2017	‘Ethico-Aesthetic Repairs’, paper presented at Midlands 3 Cities Art History Research Day, 5^th June, Barber Institute of Fine Art, University of Birmingham
2015	Conference organiser: Fiction as Method: A Conference of Counterfactuals and Virtualities in Art and Culture, October 17, Goldsmiths College, University of London
2015	‘Deception and Fiction as Forms of World-Making in Contemporary Art’, paper presented at F(r)ictions of Art, June 25-27, Freie Universität Berlin.
2014	‘Ethics at a distance: On Omar Fast’s ‘5,000 Feet is the Best’, paper presented at As Above, So Below: A Colloquium on Drone Culture, 24^th May, University of Lincoln, U.K.
2014	‘A Thousand Paths: Critical and Creative Aspects of Dissimulative Art Practice’, paper presented at Critical Practices and Experimentation: A workshop hosted by the European collaborative project Culture@Work, April 24-25, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
2013	After Transgression: Ethics Under a Different Master’, paper presented at LaConference 2013. Sixty years after Lacan: On the Symbolic Order in the Twenty-First Century, June 1-2 2013, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver