Assem Hendawi ~ EDGE CONDITIONS - Speculation as Method, and Contemporary Art as an Epistemic Apparatus

This thesis argues that speculation is a method of knowledge production, and that contemporary art is one of the places where this method becomes visible enough to be analyzed and formalized. Speculation, as understood here, is not prediction or fantasy. It is a structured way of engaging with what cannot yet be known, drawing on philosophy, feminist science and technology studies, and the epistemology of scientific models to build a working account of how speculation operates as a legitimate epistemic practice.

The argument is developed through three case studies. Jonas Staal's organizational art constructs political infrastructures through fiction and assembly, building the conditions under which excluded political actors can appear. Forensic Architecture's counter-forensic investigations produce evidence through spatial modeling, reconstructing events that states have denied or concealed. Lawrence Abu Hamdan's sonic investigations generate knowledge at the limits of verification, where evidence has been destroyed and testimony cannot be confirmed. From these practices, three speculative operations are extracted: worlding, modeling, and rupture.

The thesis synthesizes these operations into a speculative protocol, a modular method that articulates how speculation can be conducted rigorously within and through artistic practice. The protocol is not a formula but an invitation, offered to artists, researchers, and thinkers who wish to work in and with the unknown. It concludes that art's epistemic value lies in what it constructs: the frames, models, and procedures through which possible realities become available for inhabitation and contestation.