Field Ontology
An ontological disposition characteristic of extitutional space, in which attention and operative preeminence shift according to the contingency of the encounter, rather than being fixed in advance by categorical hierarchies inherited from institutional structures. Field ontology favors interrelation, intersubjectivity, and codeterminacy over static discrete objects — consistent with the technical sense of “field” in physics, where properties are distributed across continuous space rather than localized in isolated particles.
Field ontology is adopted from the phrase “field causality” used by Forensic Architecture and affiliated projects, and is identified as one of three characteristic practices of extitutional space (alongside horizontal scaling and open protocolization). Where administrative institutions impose categorical hierarchies on their systems — hierarchies often inherited from the State and mutually reinforced through concealment — extitutional space allows ontological assumptions to shift with the terrain.
Practically, field ontology means attending to what exists in relational, atmospheric, or processual form, not just what can be discretely measured or legally recognized. Extitutional practitioners find in their everyday work that the practical knowledge of their domain tends to point in the direction of interrelation and codeterminacy — field ontology is a formalization of this tendency.
Field ontology is closely related to Flat Ontology (the equal reality of all categories of being) and to the virtual (the processual underside of all actual things). Together, they constitute an ontological orientation adequate to the complexity and entanglement of urban, ecological, and social life.