From platforms to architectural objects, from attachments of heritage to imaginaries of the future, from dreams to derivatives, emergent forms of collectivity are entangled with different infrastructures of speculation upon social and cultural life.

In this talk VYJAYANTHI V. RAO explores the emergence of speculation as a powerful, transversal force, embodied in urban collectivities. The labor of speculation has become more or less distributed across social divisions and is embodied visually in spatial forms, products and projects. This labor is performative and calculative, hedging and leaping across fields of complex interdependencies, simultaneously fostering and mitigating uncertainty, demanding further speculative labor. What is the nature of value/values that derive their force and energy from uncertainty? What forms of social hope might be fostered without recourse to redemptive historicism? Presenting a few illustrations drawn from her own fieldwork in informal settlements, artist studios, schools of architecture and exhibitionary complexes over the course of two decades, VYJAYANTHI V. RAO traces the increasing relevance of the labor of speculation in understanding forces of change in contemporary practices of inhabitation.