PARAMANCY: VOLUME I was an immersive reading room and collaborative zine dedicated to speculating on energy futurity through the trope of the -mancy: think cartomancy (divination through the interpretation of cards); arithmancy (divination using numbers); or necromancy (communication with the dead, especially in order to predict the future). Riffing on this form of speculation, the project developed its own strange divination strategies by attuning to the tellings of various materials and phenomena that make up today’s petrocultural milieu. The strategic conjurings in this installation included, for instance, speculative practices of infernomancy, or “divination from overwhelming fire once all hope is lost”; plastiglomerancy, or “divination from ‘in situ’ and ‘clastic’ geologic densities forsaken in the rock by late capitalism’s plasticity”; and turfomancy, or “divination from lawnscape fever-dreams of suburban subjection and longing.” Through the creation of an immersive space where participants could gather under the banner(s) of petrocultural speculation, this project experimented with playful modes of “telling the future” as just one way to interrogate and interrupt the mediating forces that limit possibilities for speculating otherwise.
Paramancy uses strange vantage points and weird temporalities to call into question clichéd climate imaginaries.
