When I first step into Ingela Ihrman’s exhibition in Gaswork, I saw this solo video, it is displayed directly in front of every visitor at the very beginning of the exhibition. “What is this?” I generate this question without reading any information about this exhibition. On one side I wanted to achieve a more subjective sense of the author’s intentions, on the other side I didn’t do any pre-research in order to learn more from a speculative perspective.“Electronic endoscope” was the first word that came to my mind, then I thought of the inside of the human body – this soft pink flesh-like image undulating, bringing a sense of vitality, but at the same time a strong sense of vulnerability. What kind of world do the artist and Gaswork want to build for the visitor? With this question in mind, I entered the second space of the exhibition, the strong sense of vulnerability left over from earlier left me with a subjective and speculative feeling about the next works. The feathers created by the artist hang in mid-air in a decaying downward position in the dim light, and the embryos of the young birds are displayed like specimens in front of the visitors, all of these made me feel the fragility of life and an imbalance of rights between humans and animals: Were the birds’ feathers plucked off artificially? Are the embryos of young birds laid out in a way that resembles the display of a carcass? In the darkness of the space, the visitors could not help but lower their voices and remain silent.
The last space is the artist’s performance video, and through the feelings and assumptions of the previous spaces, the final video inevitably points to the imbalance of power, the conflict between the bird and the human world to me: the artist wears the costume of an adult bird but exposes human hands, and the way the young are fed resembles a form of forced stuffing rather than nurturing.
After finishing this speculative tour, I read the introduction in the guidebook and the description of the oil birds on the artist’s website and realized how Gaswork tried to make the visitors perceive the artist’s intention through the spatial arrangement successfully. The sequence of the artworks, and the lighting, all directly linked to the relationship between the oilbird and humans and the curse of the oilbird’s cave, let the visitors slowly perceive the author’s empathy and tenderness for the living creatures in the process of speculation.
I think we can also use speculation as a methodology in our research and our creative works, it can be a good way to help us advance our creative work and allow the steps to extend naturally. It also allows us to present our work in a way that leads to a better understanding of our intentions as creators by the target user/reader/visitor. When we work with our MA CCC students, we can use speculative methodology to use our theoretical supports as clues to lead to our final project.