Exta (haruspex remix)

Abstract

Abstract Exta is a curatorial project consisting of a ‘primer’ exhibition of artists’ film and sculpture, two forthcoming exhibitions, and a film currently in production. The project traces the speculative activities of haruspicy, the divination of future events from the reading of entrails gathered from a sacrificed entity. Here, we expand on this mystic act as a ‘somatechnic’ ritual: how the artworks and our curatorial narrative work towards an imagined future populace divined from the entrails of a dead body-politic. With reference to Jon Abbink’s studies of contemporary haruspicy and some of its precedents in ancient practices, we situate Exta as a publicdivinatory reading that conjures a vision of an alien, future populace. We compare this to popular methods of articulating and narrativising post-human futures, by describing a mode of speculation inscribed with the occult potencies of haruspicy and, referring to Reza Negarestani, how it operates as a vector of decay in its monstrous corruption of such idealised narratives.