“Though reality may seem to be opaque, there are privileged zones - signs, clues - which allow us to penetrate it.”

— Carlo Ginzburg, “Clues: Roots of an Evidential Paradigm” (1989)

In his article on the theory and history of knowledge and its relationship to power, Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg establishes the value of conjecture as an alternative to scientific approaches. Many methodologies entail filling in for irretrievable evidence or making generalizations. As a result, speculation creeps into archival research, uses of critical theory, and writing techniques. However, speculative practices need not be regarded solely as deviations from purportedly rigorous epistemic paradigms. Whether adopted as an artistic or historical methodology or taken as an object of study, the idea of speculative forensics can help investigate the interplay of evidence and interpretation as well as the politics of scholarship. Where do speculation and forensics converge in art history and artistic practice, and what does this convergence mean for the ways objects tell us about the world and the world tells us about objects?

The 55th Annual UCLA Art History Graduate Symposium, Speculative Forensics, presents an opportunity to address some of these questions by gesturing toward conjectural elements stowed away in a range of art historical methodologies. In our current context defined by the struggle for Black liberation, what does it mean to link art history and criminology? Can we reckon with art history’s own overreliance on methods and institutions that developed around the need to value and protect property, from connoisseurship to museum collections of looted objects? Can we abolish forms of policing within our discipline?

Speculative Forensics will take the form of an open workshop and discussion conducted via Zoom over two days. On Friday, November 6, participants organized in panels will deliver 10 minute presentations with UCLA students and a keynote speaker serving as respondents. On November 7, keynote speakers will give presentations followed by an open discussion drawing on the previous day’s activities.

• Fiction, parafiction, narrative, and counternarrative

• The virtual and the real

• Built and ecological environments

• Activism and research-based art practices

• Historiography and art historical methodology

• Play, chance, and contingency

• Anachronism, presentism, and temporality

• Memory and mourning