Speaker, as in lecturer, recommendations
DOn't know . . . just thought I'd post this . . . following the cue from a joke in another thread:
The best lecture that I have seen recently, probably the best bar none was an art/performance/lecture by the artist Walid Raad.
In his lecture/performances he poses as the spokeman for an Archive Organization called "The Atlas Group". This organization researches things such as car bombings in Lebanon, compiles data and arcane 'facts', these are a melange of data and aesthetics. The group also exhibits various ephemera such as 'found' videos and 'anonymous' notebooks and tapes.
He shows these during the lecture (of course he actually made them) the whole thing is fascinating and he is incredibly smart and very very eloquent
. . . even the Q&A session after the lecture is staged . . . with planted and pointed questions.
Anybody see any great talks or lectures that they remember or would recommend?
What about terrible lectures?
[EDIT]
Ooops, forgot to post the Atlas Group site: ATLAS GROUP
The best lecture that I have seen recently, probably the best bar none was an art/performance/lecture by the artist Walid Raad.
In his lecture/performances he poses as the spokeman for an Archive Organization called "The Atlas Group". This organization researches things such as car bombings in Lebanon, compiles data and arcane 'facts', these are a melange of data and aesthetics. The group also exhibits various ephemera such as 'found' videos and 'anonymous' notebooks and tapes.
He shows these during the lecture (of course he actually made them) the whole thing is fascinating and he is incredibly smart and very very eloquent
. . . even the Q&A session after the lecture is staged . . . with planted and pointed questions.
Anybody see any great talks or lectures that they remember or would recommend?
What about terrible lectures?
[EDIT]
Ooops, forgot to post the Atlas Group site: ATLAS GROUP
Comments
The MJT is an almost indescribable conflation of David Wilson's imagination and the genuinely odd and mystifying. Located in an undistinguished neighborhood of LA, the museum houses exhibits that expertly mimic the pedagogical style of more conventional institutions, with wall texts, somber audio voice-overs, precisely rendered illustrations, precious objects in glass vitrines, etc.
The miraculous part is that it is almost impossible to tell where Mr. Wilson's invention leaves off and the "real world" begins. The exhibits mix historical fact, whimsy, actual personages, actual personages with some fiction, entirely fictional personages, true but unbelievable theories, fictional but entirely plausible theories, startling phenomena, startling phenomena pressed into service to buttress a larger, fictional narrative, invented startling phenomena inserted into the historical record..... by the time you leave you wonder at how the narrative of "reality" hangs together at all, or if that is even desirable.
Mr. Wilson's public speaking extends on this construct. As curator of the Museum, he presents a somewhat pedantic slide show of its prize exhibitions, dryly elaborating on the information contained therein. i suppose you could label his talks as "performance", but that misses the point, I think.
The point is that when you meet him, you realize that this project is not a "hoax" or a "parody" or anything in that range. He is a man with a unique vision, one that simply does not distinguish between the beauty of the world and the beauty of fiction. It is as if the secret and mysterious truths of the world and the secret and mysterious truths of the human power of imagination have been set to music, and the Museum of Jurassic Technology is the dance.