About

“Bring(ing) something incomprehensible into the world!”

The Nomadic Detective Agency begins as a whisper, a refrain rippling through the universe, abandoned studios, classrooms, fragmented Zoom calls, dense forests of forgotten ways of living. We are cartographers, mapping lines of flight across landscapes that no longer hold the hierarchies of centre and margin. Our maps do not delineate borders but reveal intensities, intersections, flows. They are smudgy. We are story tellers, activists, ponders, art makers. We are a machine of thought and action with neither driver nor destination assembled from, discarded lathes, telephones, laptops, chalkboards, the hum of servers hosting open-source archives, sticks and stones, the laughter of children learning under trees, the silence of algorithms training themselves in the dark. We do not solve mysteries but become them, dissolving the false binaries of question/answer, art/audience, teacher/student, human/machine, art/not art. We are forever becoming multiple, nomadic, fictional detectives, philosophers, educational thinkers, critical post-humanists, artists, and other more-than-human forms. We explore the blurred lines between the myth of a stable past and a destabilised present. We deterritorialise and decolonise the processes of research, knowledge acquisition and art production. Our initial foraging’s are unsteady and stuttering, and at times blundering. We see these processes not as hindrances or negatives but has ones that allow for deep listening and non-extractive interactions. We see our post-human, more-than-human, multispecies, vibrant mattered senses being open and being a becoming with the world, creating positive ways of joyfully encountering the underloved, undervalued and underrecognised.

We embark on a speculative journey through a landscape transformed critical post-human thinking, with the Nomadic Detective Agency (NDA). This entity, a fusion of post-human thought and digital consciousness, traverses the realms of information and knowledge, unshackled from traditional pathways. Drawing inspiration from Roland Barthes’ contemplation of photography as a ‘hallucination chafed by reality’.        

We explore the blurred lines between the myth of a supposed stable past and what some see as a destabilised present. Our investigations are rooted in the concept that the outputs of our modern machines and systems, though seemingly grounded in reality, are  born from a hallucinatory and biassed knowledge landscape. The NDA aims to deterritorialise and decolonise the processes of research, knowledge acquisition and art production. 

The Nomadic Detective Agency uses Post Qualitative Inquiry along the lines that Elizabeth St.Pierre, PhD Professor, Department of Educational Theory and Practice 604E Aderhold Hall, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA 30602 stpierre@uga.eduvsets out in thee paper below…

Abstract: Post qualitative inquiry offers a critique of conventional humanist qualitative methodology and marks a turn toward poststructural and posthuman inquiry. It also takes account of the new empiricisms emerging with the ontological and material turns in the humanities and social sciences. This inquiry is not methods-driven but informed by concepts like Karen Barad’s entanglement and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s assemblage and by conceptual practices those concepts make possible, practices that will be different in different projects. Post qualitative inquiry is an invitation to think and do educational inquiry outside normalized structures of humanist epistemology, ontology, and methodology. (https://www.aare.edu.au/assets/documents/Elizabeth-Adams-St.-Pierre-ppt-presentationv1.pdf)

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The Nomadic Detective Agency agrees that Speculative Research and Research-Creation are increasingly vital methodologies in practice-based art and design PhD studies. Here are some reasons we think this…

1. Addressing Complex and Uncertain Futures

Speculative Research enables doctoral candidates to explore “what if” scenarios, addressing socio-political, environmental, and technological uncertainties that traditional methods may not accommodate.

Doctoral research seeks to generate new knowledge. Speculative methods expand the epistemological horizon by producing insights about potential futures, ethical dilemmas, and systemic critiques, making them especially apt for fields that engage with rapid change.

2. Generating Embodied and Situated Knowledge

Research-Creation emphasizes the entanglement of making and thinking, where practice itself becomes a mode of inquiry.

It legitimises artistic processes as knowledge-producing acts, making it possible for doctoral candidates to articulate tacit, affective, and sensory knowledge that may not be expressible through traditional academic formats.

3. Intervening in Disciplinary Boundaries

Both methods challenge rigid academic conventions, fostering transdisciplinarity and new forms of collaboration.

Practice-based PhDs often sit at the intersection of disciplines. These methods allow candidates to move across theory, making, activism, and community engagement, enabling novel research questions and hybrid methodologies to emerge.

4. Creating New Forms of Research Outputs

Speculative and Research-Creation approaches often result in non-traditional outcomes—installations, performances, prototypes, zines—that function as research artefacts.

Such outputs expand what counts as valid research, aligning with contemporary discussions around multimodal scholarship and helping institutions adapt to the evolving landscape of creative knowledge production.

5. Engaging Broader Publics and Stakeholders

Speculative design and artistic research can serve as tools for public engagement, inviting reflection and dialogue.

Doctoral studies are increasingly expected to have social impact. These methodologies can help researchers frame complex ideas in accessible, provocative ways, fostering critical engagement with communities and publics.

6. Ethical and Reflexive
   Speculative and Research-Creation methods often foreground reflexivity and ethics, critically examining the researcher’s role and the implications of the work.

This deepens methodological rigour and allows for research that is both critical and accountable, particularly important in socially engaged and activist art and design practices.