Edge.org
July 2, 2014
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THE THIRD CULTURE
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"One of the things that Julia Peyton-Jones and I try to do with the Serpentine Gallery Marathons, on which we've collaborated with Edge many times, is to provide a format that isn't like a normal conference: it takes place over 24 or 48 hours. And it happens in the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, so this creates a connection between art and architecture. And then one connects to all the other disciplines through the invited speakers. It's a kind of knowledge festival. The marathon is a hybrid. It's a group show, because artists are doing performances, but they're given time and not space. But it's also a conference because there are lectures and presentations. This year's Marathon, which takes place at The Serpentine Gallery the weekend of October 18-20, will be about 'Extinction'."
EXPANDED CURATION
A Conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist
Edge Video
[37:55 minutes]
Introduction
Hans Ulrich Obrist is Co-director of the Serpentine Galleries, and the initiator of numerous international art projects and exhibitions. One example is the current Serpentine event (through August 14th), a new durational performance by Marina Abramović entitled "Nothing" in which the artist is in residence for 512 hours.
It is for this kind of signature event that, in 2009, HUO was ranked #1 in ART REVIEW's annual "Art Review Power 100" list of the contemporary art world's most powerful figures, and #2, #2, #5, in 3 out of the past 4 years. It is a measure of his unique stature, that in today's contemporary art world, one that often seems dominated by money, HUO, who, in the 25 years I've known him, has never mentioned money, prices, or the art market, is arguably the contemporary art world's most influential figure.
"I don't talk about the art market", he explains, "as I don't know much about it. It's not part of my work. I have always worked on public exhibitions towards the end of making the best work accessible for everyone. As Gilbert and George say, 'art for all'."
What interests him is the exhibition as ritual. "A crowd of people is not a crowd but rather a number of individuals gathered in a space who are, contra the experience of an opera or a theatrical performance, not subject to a collective control of attention....Attention is neither monopolized nor homogenized. The exhibition is a very democratic and liberal ritual where the viewer decides the duration of his or her stay. "
I recently visited HUO at his office at the Serpentine Gallery to talk about the forthcoming "Marathon" on "Extinctions," an event that bridges the humanities and the sciences alike. "The spectre of extinction looms over the ways in which we understand our being in the world today," he says. "In response, artists and writers embed these concerns into the products of their creative endeavours. Environmental degradation, genocide, atomic weapons, threats to small, isolated communities, threats to languages, global warming economics and extinction, catastrophes in nature, life wiped out by disease and hunger—the constellation of topics around extinction is ever-expansive and as urgent now as ever before".
Some of the questions on the agenda for the participants to explore include "What is extinction and what are we losing? How do we understand loss and endings? How can an individual understand themselves in relation to a collective responsibility? What is the artist's role in responding to mass extinction? What happens after the end has come and gone? How can artists, scientists and thinkers imagine new visions of the future? How has the spectre of extinction come to inform artistic and literary practice?" Edge once again plans to be there, collaborating with HUO as in previous marathon events: Maps For The 20th Century, Information Gardens, Formulae For The 21st Century, Table-Top Experiments Marathon.
Writing in SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG, Feuilleton (arts & culture section) editor Andrian Kreye noted the following about this ongoing collaobration:
"[It] not only represents a collaboration by Brockman and Obrist's of their own work; it is also a continuation of a movement that began in the '60s on America's East Coast. John Cage brought together young artists and scientists for symposia and seminars to see what what would happen in the interaction of big thinkers from different fields. The resulting dialogue, which at the time seemed abstract and esoteric, can today be regarded as the forerunner to interdisciplinary science and the digital culture."
—JB
HANS ULRICH OBRIST is the co-director of the Serpentine Gallery in London. He is the editor of A BRIEF HISTORY OF CURATING, FORMULAS FOR NOW and the author of several books including, HANS ULRICH OBRIST: SHARP TONGUES, LOOSE LIPS, OPEN EYES, EARS TO THE GROUND, A BRIEF HISTORY OF NEW MUSIC, and WAYS OF CURATING.
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EXPANDED CURATION
I have always worked on public exhibitions towards the end of making the best work accessible for everyone. As Gilbert and George say, "art for all".
Ever since childhood I have been fascinated by the critical ritual of the modern era, the exhibition. The great German art historian Dorothea von Hantelmann writes wonderfully about the exhibition as a ritual. A crowd of people is not a crowd but rather a number of individuals gathered in a space who are, contra the experience of an opera or a theatrical performance, not subject to a collective control of attention.
Attention is neither monopolized nor homogenized. The exhibition is a very democratic and liberal ritual where the viewer decides the duration of his or her stay. There are, however, limits to the ritual of the exhibition. As Margaret Mead pointed out, exhibition doesn't address all the senses. Two examples are a Medieval Mass or a Bali ritual. Mead points to a lack of connection and this might explain why the average amount of time spent in front of works of art is minimal—two seconds in front of the Mona Lisa, for example.
The questions raised by Mead were brilliantly addressed by Cedric Price, the visionary English urbanist in his early 1960's Fun Palace project that I curated at this year's Venice Architecture Biennial and which is now being shown in the Swiss Pavilion.
Our goal was to develop a choreography to present the dynamic not in a frozen way but to keep it alive throughout the six month duration of the Biennale. Thus, the Swiss Pavilion becomes a hybrid between an exhibition and an event space. As Dorothea von Hantelmann summarized it: the key question of the project is how to create a ritual that is able to create ties while still remaining democratic and liberal.
We've just started another exhibition, a show in three chapters, in Arles. It's part of Maja Hoffmann's LUMA Foundation and the new institute in Arles, designed by Frank Gehry, the LUMA Parc des Ateliers. At the center of the show, which is called Solaris Chronicles, will be large-scale models of Frank Gehry's works, but then a lot of other things will happen around them. Frank has always had many connections to art, to music, to literature, to science. He's good friends with a lot of composers, and he often works with scientists. The idea was to get all of these different disciplines involved. Philippe Parreno, Liam Gillick co-curated the show, and we also invited Tino Sehgal and Asad Raza. Liam and Philippe came up with the idea that the models should be in a state of permanent movement. … [MORE]
PERMALINK: http://edge.org/conversation/expanded-curation
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"Following the trend of literary science writing, more and more scientists in the frontline of new thinking write for the general public. Their works embody the spirits of the third culture: probing the eternal mysteries of life through science."
THE THIRD CULTURE: THE FRONTLINE OF GLOBAL THINKING
By Hong-Shu Teng
HONG-SHU TENG is Assistant Professor in the Department of English, National Taitung University, Taiwan.
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THE THIRD CULTURE: THE FRONTLINE OF GLOBAL THINKING
In his new book THE MOST DANGEROUS BOOK: THE BATTLE FOR JAMES JOYCE'S ULYSSES published on June 12, Harvard history/literature scholar Kevin Birmingham points out that it was syphilis that caused the modernist maestro's decaying eyesight and paralysis. When Joyce's fans celebrate Bloomsday on June 16 in memory of ULYSSES, Birmingham's work offers them an uneasy glimpse into the novelist's dark life.
That Joyce probably had syphilis was nothing new, because it had been rumoured since the writer's lifetime. Mainstream critics and biographers largely ignore it perhaps because it suggests celebrity gossip.
Birmingham found from Joyce's 1928 letters that the novelist received unusual injections made of arsenic and phosphorus compound. He further found that, at the time, there was only one little-known medication called Galyl that went with the description—a prescription specifically for syphilis patients.
Medical knowledge leads this history/literature scholar to present irrefutable proof to solve a mystery whose key lies beyond the reach of literature scholars. The case is arguably closed.
The importance of being ill
What is the fuss about the great writer's illness? Didn't the godfather of literary criticism, Derrida, tell us that "there's nothing outside the text"? "Syphilitic Joyce": isn't such a title only fit for tabloid headlines rather than an academic paper?
Take for example Joyce's short story collection DUBLINERS, whose first story "The Sisters" introduces "paralysis" as the keyword to his work. The city of paralysis embodies the overall sickness of a nation. If the reader approaches such image only from the symbolic meaning, only half of the story is revealed.
"The Sisters" describes how a young boy copes with the death of a friendly priest. He visits the dead priest's house, learns about the secret of his shadowy death from the sisters' chatter, and finally encounters the paralyzed world of the adult.
From a medical perspective, "paralysis" in "The Sisters" depicts the clear and concrete symptom of a disease—syphilis—that brings about a deep sense of guilt in western society. In 1974, an article in the Annals of Internal Medicine showed that when Joyce revised the story in 1905, he deliberately implied syphilis to be responsible for the priest's paralysis. Moreover, as Joyce would have known, doctors at the time saw "paralysis" and "paresis" (general paralysis) as interchangeable terms. What Joyce had in mind was more than the symbolic play of the word: he knowingly inscribed the disgrace of a paralyzed nation in vivid descriptions of its tertiary syphilis sufferer. Only when literary study is infused with scientific perception can the "3P" orgy among priest, paresis, and paralysis be exposed.
Regrettably, crucial medical details in Joyce's story elude most literature scholars who have been preoccupied with textual interpretation for a long time. Even psychoanalysis, the most "scientific" of all literary criticism, devotes its efforts to divulging the subconscious of the author and his text. Scientific interpretation of literature has long been treated as unorthodox, even detrimental to literary meaning. The publication of The Most Dangerous Book shows that time is finally ripe to incorporate scientific sensibility into literary study. Such effort may not be as dangerous as some literature professors might think.
Eclectic scope of the third culture
C. P. Snow, English novelist and physicist, found the continual opposition between science and the humanities alarming. In THE TWO CULTURES, he forewarned of the conflict in disciplines, a division unfavourable to the cultivation and expansion of knowledge. When the book went into the second edition in 1963, Snow indicated the inevitability of integration, and predicted the coming of "a third culture."
After years of fermentation, the third culture finally yielded superior results in the 1990s. In 1996, John Brockman, American author and founder of the famous knowledge platform Edge.org, published THE THIRD CULTURE, a compilation of top scientists' reflections on and explanations of the mysteries of life, formally declaring the arrival of the third culture.
These emerging new scientists, combining scientific acuteness with literary sensitivity, intervene in those areas traditionally guarded by the humanities scholars. In the age of the third culture, scientists also want to explore the meaning of life and its ultimate secret. More and more scientists write for the general public. Their works embody literary science writing, distinctly exemplifying the spirits of the third-culture: the exploration of the eternal mysteries of life through scientific probing.
A prominent representative of this trend is the two-time Pulitzer prize winner E. O. Wilson, American biologist. His ON HUMAN NATURE draws ideas from evolutionary biology to inspect humanity; CONSILIENCE: THE UNITY OF NOWLEDGE demonstrates the splendour of interdisciplinary synthesis. Wilson writes in the elegant style of an essayist, and argues in the wise tone of a philosopher, thoroughly illuminating the eclectic scope of the third culture.
Another notable emissary of the third culture is the English zoologist Richard Dawkins, whose acclaimed THE SELFISH GENE describes in novelistic details how to see life in the tiny grain of the gene. This modern classic in evolutionary biology is the canonical model for contemporary literary science writing. In THE BLIND WATCHMAKER, Dawkins powerfully defends Darwinism in virtuosic persuasion that wins admiration from all sides of the debate.
Dialogue between science and the humanities
The third culture fosters the emergence of "the new humanist"—science-wise thinkers in the frontline of global thinking. American psycholinguist Steven Pinker's THE LANGUAGE INSTINCT; Portuguese-American neuroscientist Antonio Damasio's DESCARTES' ERROR, examining body and mind via cognitive science; American physiologist Jared Diamond's GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL, on the evolution of history and society: these eminent works of interdisciplinary study surpass the common category of popular science. The depth of writing makes these works "literature-like"; the complexity of their inquisition conjures up philosophical rumination. Their impact on global thinking is as substantial as prominent works in the humanities.
As English novelist Ian McEwan notes, since we live in the golden age of science, we must feel strongly about science issues. Science, like literature, seeks to understand human nature. Scientists and novelists, therefore, "should have a lot to say to one another." Deeply influenced by the third culture, McEwan writes many memorable works on science and humanity such as THE CHILD IN TIME, ENDURING LIVE, and SOLAR. Contemporary novelist Kazuo Ishiguro also responds to science in NVER LET ME GO, which, dealing with human cloning, is as poignant as The Remains of the Day.
"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born." This passage is not from Joyce, but from Dawkins's UNWEAVING THE RAINBOW. This modern protégé of Darwin borrows Keats's lines on accusing science of ruining nature's beauty in order to reveal in turn the beauty in science and the aesthetics of scientific endeavours.
In contrast to the eloquent new humanist, traditional humanities scholars and authors are in danger of being marginalized. In May, English writer Will Self gave a talk in Oxford entitled "The novel is dead (this time it's for real)," clearly echoing the predicament of contemporary humanities writers. Following the 20th Century legacy of public intellectuals like Edward Said, we must take the next step forward to encourage a new generation of 21st Century literary scholars to embrace science-wise knowledge in order to lead the humanities into participation in cross-boundary dialogues in the third culture. While science sparks the rainbow of knowledge, there must be clouds on both sides of the rainbow bridge that, however evanescent, await our attention, and need to be narrated.
PERMALINK: http://edge.org/conversation/the-third-culture-the-frontline-of-global-thinking
[ED. NOTE: Originally published in The China Times Book Review, June 21, 2014. Translated for Edge from Chinese by the author.]
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SUMMER READING 2014
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Our annual beach reading special! Books by . . .
Daron Acemoglu, James Robinson, Adam Alter, Erez Lieberman Aiden, Nick Bilton, Paul Bloom John Brockman, Nicholas G. Carr, Tyler Cowen, John M Coates, Richard Dawkins, Stanislas Dehaene Jared Diamond, Daniel C. Dennett , Elizabeth Dunn, Michael I. Norton, Nicholas Epley, Amanda Gefter Gerd Gigerenzer, Joel Gold, Ian Gold, Daniel Goleman, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, A. C. Grayling Joshua D. Greene, Brian Hare, Vanessa Woods, Sam Harris, Bruce Hood, Walter Isaacson Kevin Kelly, Daniel Kahneman, Matthew D. Lieberman, Daniel Lieberman, Jaron Lanier, Armand Marie Leroi Marcelo Gleiser, Ian McEwan, Walter Mischel, Sendhil Mullainathan, Eldar Shafir, Nathan Myhrvold John Naughton, Evgeny Morozov, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Svante Pääbo, Alex (Sandy) Pentland, Cass R. Sunstein, Leonard Susskind, Charles Seife, Lee Smolin, Max Tegmark, J. Craig Venter, Juan C. Zarate
PERMALINK: http://edge.org/reading-list/summer-reading-2014
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EDGE BOOKS
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"THE UNIVERSE" - The latest offering in "THE BEST OF EDGE" series. On Sale July 8th.
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IN THE NEWS
http://edge.org/edgenews
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THIS COLUMN WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE: HOW TO THINK ABOUT WRITING
By Oliver Burkeman
The Guardian [6.2.14]
"The idea is to help readers discern something you know they'd be able to see, if only they were looking in the right place."
What's the secret to writing well? As I've said previously here, an awful lot of people seem to think they know, yet their "rules for writers" are almost always (pardon the technical linguistics jargon) bullshit. For example, "Show, don't tell" is frequently bad advice. In the right context, the passive voice is fine. Elmore Leonard's most famous rule, "Never use a verb other than 'said' to carry dialogue", is sheer silliness. Even the sainted Orwell's rules are a bit rubbish: the final one is, "Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous", which means his advice is really just "Don't write barbarically". So it doesn't bode well that the psychologist Steven Pinker is to publish his own advice book, The Sense Of Style, later this year. Judging by a recent interview at edge.org, however, this one might be different. Writing, Pinker points out, is inherently a psychological phenomenon, "a way that one mind can cause ideas to happen in another mind". So one place to begin is with actual psychology.
The key thing to realise, Pinker argues, is that writing is "cognitively unnatural". For almost all human existence, nobody wrote anything; even after that, for millennia, only a tiny elite did so. And it remains an odd way to communicate. You can't see your readers' facial expressions. They can't ask for clarification. Often, you don't know who they are, or how much they know. How to make up for all this? …[MORE]
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THE THIRD CULTURE GENERATION
By Serdar Turgut
HABERTURK [6.26.14]
Recently, the much-debated concept of the global level "third culture" (third culture).
In Germany and America many articles written on this subject in the university environment have been seriously debated. With complete peace of mind I can recommend a site —"www.edge.org" where I also read an extremely interesting article I read about it on Tuesday.
"Third culture", in fact, is an answer to the question: "Globalism, how can be truly global in this century?"
Subject to the risk of simplification, I will try to describe the third culture. ….[MORE]
http://bit.ly/1m5FnxZ
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