Reverse Xenoarchaeology: Speculative Fabulation Suspended Through Digital Debris
Reverse Xenoarchaeology is grounded in the paradox of communicating in absence. The project constructs a future archaeological site where the excavators are not human, but an extraterrestrial intelligence attempting to decipher the digital and material traces left behind by a vanished 21st-century humanity. Through an installation, a live lecture-performance, and a speculative report, we seek to interrogate what it means to be “suspended in language” when the fundamental frameworks for making meaning become radically heterogeneous. This project is a case study employing “speculative fabulation” (Haraway 2016) as its core methodology. Here, intermedial storytelling serves as the ultimate form of fabulation’s manifestation. We see SF not only as an engine for creativity but also as a tool for critical thinking. We are concerned with both its aesthetic efficacy and its methodological utility as a framework for collaborative co-creation—one through which individual artistic research can intertwine with collective efforts, allowing each collaborator to trace unexpected pathways back to their own practice and uncover new insights for their personal artistic research in music. Our research questions include: 1.To what extent does the interdisciplinary collaborative construction of storytelling effectively showcase integrated yet distinct expressions of individual craft? 2.In what ways does speculative fabulation function as a methodological framework for facilitating meaningful dialogue and collaborative creation among artists? 3.On the individual level, can new artistic techniques/approaches emerge through such collaborative efforts, and can their existing craft benefit and evolve from the collaboration? This project directly responds to several sub-themes of the call. It artistically renders the state of suspension by weaving a relational web between descriptive language, the failure of communication, performativity, human technology, and materiality. Within this co-creative practice, the authentic identities of the two artists are likewise suspended by language-based and non-language-based storytelling. Instead of absurdity or nihilism, language affords us an external perspective—a vantage point from which we may explore the humor, elasticity, and latent, unknown forms of knowledge hidden within the familiar terrain of everyday life.