Ethics, Æsthetics, Ecology, Education

Events and Archive

 

"Readings for Now" Seminar [#16]: "Ecological Violence and the Remedy of  Culture," with Dawn Herrera, University of Chicago, and Ben Helphand, NeighborSpace, Chicago
Dec
15
5:00 PM17:00

"Readings for Now" Seminar [#16]: "Ecological Violence and the Remedy of Culture," with Dawn Herrera, University of Chicago, and Ben Helphand, NeighborSpace, Chicago

  • The Oregon Institute for Creative Research (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

Dawn Herrera’s bio:
Dawn Herrera is a theorist whose teaching and writing are dedicated to the invigoration of the political imaginary. She holds a Ph.D. from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, where she completed a dissertation on non-sovereign conceptions of freedom in the work of Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault. Related research interests include the spatiality and temporality of politics, play, metaphor, violence, and the critique of political economy. Her current book project traces the genealogy of the nation-state in Foucault’s Collège de France lectures.

Ben Helphand’s bio:
For more than twenty years, Ben Helphand has focused on ways to help communities have a direct hand in the creation and stewardship of the built environment.  He is the Executive Director of NeighborSpace, a nonprofit urban land trust dedicated to preserving and sustaining community-managed open spaces in Chicago.  NeighborSpace shoulders the responsibility of property ownership for a network of flower, vegetable, and prairie gardens across the City so that community groups can focus on gardening and community building.  In addition to his work at NeighborSpace, Helphand is Co-founder and President of the Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail (FBT), an all-volunteer, community-based organization that advocated for the conversion of the under-used Bloomingdale rail embankment into a public greenway from 2002 until the project's completion in 2015.  As the official Park Advisory Council for the Bloomingdale Trail, FBT now serves as its long-term community steward.  Helphand has also served as a board member of the Active Transportation Alliance, the Mayor's Pedestrian Advisory Committee, Grow Greater Englewood, and the Chicago Housing Trust.  In 2012, he was awarded a Chicago Community Trust Emerging Leader Fellowship, and was part of Next City's 2018 Vanguard class.  Originally from Oregon, he holds a degree in the history of religion from the University of Chicago and studied at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.

Readings

Hannah Arendt, selections from The Human Condition (1998, 1958):  Prologue, 1-6; Chapter IV, 139-174
Hannah Arendt, “The Crisis in Culture” Between Past and Future (1977), 194-222

Join us via Zoom

Topic: "Ecological Violence and the Remedy of Culture" at OICR
Time: Dec 15, 2022 05:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/88042312644?pwd=ZlFFSHpoWkhvN29GMTVTZXNmb2J1UT09

Meeting ID: 880 4231 2644
Passcode: 192923
One tap mobile
+12532050468,,88042312644#,,,,*192923# US
+12532158782,,88042312644#,,,,*192923# US (Tacoma)

Dial by your location
        +1 253 205 0468 US
        +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
        +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
        +1 669 444 9171 US
        +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)
        +1 719 359 4580 US
        +1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC)
        +1 305 224 1968 US
        +1 309 205 3325 US
        +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
        +1 360 209 5623 US
        +1 386 347 5053 US
        +1 507 473 4847 US
        +1 564 217 2000 US
        +1 646 931 3860 US
        +1 689 278 1000 US
        +1 929 205 6099 US (New York)
Meeting ID: 880 4231 2644
Passcode: 192923
Find your local number:
https://us06web.zoom.us/u/kbCIX1up3s

View Event →
Nov
17
6:00 PM18:00

"Readings for Now" Seminar [#15]: Hannah Arendt's "The Origins of Totalitarianism"

  • The Oregon Institute for Creative Research (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

Readings

Selections from Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism: The Masses,” 305-326; “The Temporary Alliance Between the Mob and the Elite," 326-340; and “Totalitarian Propaganda,” 341-364



Join us via ZOOM

OICR "Readings for Now" Seminar: Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism
Time: Nov 17, 2022, 06:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84523760863?pwd=U3FEeHcxSDdhTTFXdHliTHRzVVBXUT09

Meeting ID: 845 2376 0863
Passcode: 577128
One tap mobile
+16694449171,,84523760863#,,,,*577128# US
+16699006833,,84523760863#,,,,*577128# US (San Jose)

Dial by your location
+1 669 444 9171 US
+1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)
+1 719 359 4580 US
+1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
+1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
+1 646 931 3860 US
+1 689 278 1000 US
+1 929 205 6099 US (New York)
+1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC)
+1 309 205 3325 US
+1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
+1 360 209 5623 US
+1 386 347 5053 US
+1 507 473 4847 US
+1 564 217 2000 US
Meeting ID: 845 2376 0863
Passcode: 577128
Find your local number:
https://us06web.zoom.us/u/kdPbmbmkbi

View Event →
Fern Thompsett reads Layli Long Soldier
Apr
25
6:30 PM18:30

Fern Thompsett reads Layli Long Soldier

  • The Oregon Institute for Creative Research (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

Fern Thompsett was raised in Gubbi Gubbi Country, also known as the Sunshine Coast, in Queensland, Australia, and is currently working on her Ph.D. in cultural anthropology at Columbia University. Her research explores ways in which people are living according to “anti-civilisation” theories based on environmental, anti-capitalist, and anti-colonial critiques of mass agriculture. She lived and worked for a decade in Meanjin, or Brisbane, where she co-founded the Brisbane Free University, co-hosted a community radio show on 4ZZZ fm, and played in several bands. With Richard Hill and Kristen Lyons, she is author of Transforming Universities in the Midst of Global Crisis: A University for the Common Good, published by Routledge Press in 2021.

View Event →
"Readings for Now" Seminar [#14]: Revisiting Jacques Ellul's Classic Study
Apr
11
6:30 PM18:30

"Readings for Now" Seminar [#14]: Revisiting Jacques Ellul's Classic Study

  • The Oregon Institute for Creative Research (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

Readings

Jacques Ellul, “The Conditions for the Existence of Propaganda,” Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes, 88-117

 Please read the entire book prior to the seminar


ZOOM INFORMATION
Topic: Jacques Ellul's Propaganda: The Revisitation of a Classic Study
Time: Apr 11, 2022 06:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87977347838?pwd=NEhBWU54RjFVdngwNmEzKzlqNUw4QT09

Meeting ID: 879 7734 7838
Passcode: 539777
One tap mobile
+13462487799,,87977347838#,,,,*539777# US (Houston)
+16699006833,,87977347838#,,,,*539777# US (San Jose)

Dial by your location
+1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
+1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)
+1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
+1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
+1 929 205 6099 US (New York)
+1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC)
Meeting ID: 879 7734 7838
Passcode: 539777
Find your local number:
https://us06web.zoom.us/u/kdhT3WdPLM

View Event →
Films for Now" Seminar [#5]: "Parasite," with Kyu Hyun Kim, University of California, Davis
Mar
28
6:30 PM18:30

Films for Now" Seminar [#5]: "Parasite," with Kyu Hyun Kim, University of California, Davis

  • The Oregon Institute for Creative Research (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

In this informal talk, we will explore together what I would like to call "not-so-visible" genealogy of the New Korean Cinema, using Bong Joon-ho's Academy Award-winning film Parasite as a prime example, but also with references to other significant titles, if possible.  This genealogy illuminates the ways in which South Korea as a nation and culture has coped with modernity in its colonial and postcolonial forms, including the supposedly hegemonic influence of the American culture (including what Christina Klein designated as "Cold War Orientalism").  Through a cursory examination of the self-reflexive positionality of major directors such as Bong and Park Chan-wook in the global network of cultural exchange as well as of select filmic texts, I would like to challenge and critique the very Orientalism embedded in the conception of South Korean cinema as "oppressed" or "dominated" by the (allegedly) cosmopolitan, universal and/or hegemonic cultural expressions from former and current empires such as Japan and the US. —Kyu Hyun Kim


Topic: Kyu Hyun Kim, “Bong Joon-ho's Parasite and the Not-So-Visible (But-Not-Quite-Secret) Genealogy of the New Korean Cinema”
Time: Mar 28, 2022 06:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84303079317?pwd=Qzl3UVoyOEtMS3VFM3NSYXFTRFBmUT09

Meeting ID: 843 0307 9317
Passcode: 485615

One tap mobile
+12532158782,,84303079317#,,,,*485615# US (Tacoma)
+13462487799,,84303079317#,,,,*485615# US (Houston)

Dial by your location
+1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
+1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
+1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)
+1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC)
+1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
+1 929 205 6099 US (New York)

Meeting ID: 843 0307 9317
Passcode: 485615
Find your local number: 
https://us06web.zoom.us/u/kX0nnPSm6

View Event →
“Readings for Now” Seminar #13: Plagued
Mar
14
6:30 PM18:30

“Readings for Now” Seminar #13: Plagued

  • The Oregon Institute for Creative Research (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

Readings

We’ll begin with the collection of essays on the pandemic found on the website of the European Journal of Psychoanalysis at <https://www.journal-psychoanalysis.eu/?s=coronavirus>.  The journal relies on the good will and appreciation of readers.  Donations can be made at <https://www.journal-psychoanalysis.eu/coronavirus-and-philosophers/>

Note: In accordance with an agreement reached with Routledge, many of the previously available papers that were found in these Tribunes on the Coronavirus have been permanently removed. These essays are included in the forthcoming book: Coronavirus, Psychoanalysis and Philosophy: Conversations on Pandemics, Politics and Society (Editors: Fernando Castrillón & Thomas Marchevsky).  The book can be purchased at <https://www.routledge.com/Coronavirus-Psychoanalysis-and-Philosophy-Conversations-on-Pandemics/Castrillon-Marchevsky/p/book/9780367713669>

Coronavirus and philosophers (M. Foucault, G. Agamben, S. Benvenuto):

Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, translated by A. Sheridan, 195-228. In collaboration with the journal Antinomie
Giorgio Agamben, “
The Invention of an Epidemic.” Originally published in Italian by Quodlibet
See also Giorgio Agamben, “
The state of exception provoked by an unmotivated emergency.” A translation of an article that first appeared as Lo stato d’eccezione provocato da un’emergenza immotivata,” il manifesto
Sergio Benvenuto, “
Welcome to Seclusion.”  Originally published in Italian on Antinomie
Giorgio Agamben, “
Clarifications
Sergio Benvenuto,
“Forget about Agamben

Miguel Vatter, “Stay Safe, Protect the Health System, Save Lives
Daniel James Smith, “
On the Viral Event
Achille Mbembe, Diogo Bercito, “
The Pandemic Democratizes the Power to Kill”:  An Interview.  Originally published in Gauchazh
Renato Cristi, “
Pandemics and Philosophy
Massimo Cacciari, “
Our Homes Are Hell”:  An Interview
Giorgio Agamben, “
Reflections on the Plague,” translated by Journal of European Psychoanalysis.  First published on the website of Quodlibet, translated from the Italian by Gianmaria Senia
Roberto Esposito, Francesco Borgonovo, “
Debate on the Green Pass.”  Originally published in Italian at La Verità
Duane Rousselle, “
The Lonely Anti-Racist
Patricia Gherovici, “
A Polemic on the Pandemic: Death Does Not Make Us Equal
Darian Leader, “
Some Thoughts on the Pandemic
Zsuzsa Baross, “
Philosophy in the Time of the Epidemic:  Two Transcripts
Lutz Goetzmann, “
On the Real of Plague”:  Notes from Berlin, in the Summer of Sars-CoV-2
Arka Chattopadhyay, “
Psychoanalysis, Corporeality and Haptics in Covid-19 Times

On Pandemics (Nancy, Dwivedi, Mohan, Esposito, Nancy, Ronchi). Published in Italian on Antinomie:

Jean-Luc Nancy, “Viral Exception
Roberto Esposito, “
Cured to the Bitter End
Riposte by Jean-Luc Nancy to Roberto Esposito (through email to Sergio Benvenuto)
Divya Dwivedi and Shaj Mohan, “
The Community of the Forsaken: A Response to Agamben and Nancy
Rocco Ronchi, “
The Virtues of the Virus
Massimo De Carolis
The Threat of Contagion
Shaj Mohan
What Carries Us On
Jean-Luc Nancy
A Much Too Human Virus 

See the European Journal of Psychoanalysis for other readings

If there is time, we will also revisit the resources put together by Philippe Theophanidis at Aphelis, an iconographic and text archive related to communication, technology and art: <https://aphelis.net/agamben-coronavirus-pandemic-interventions/>

View Event →
As for Squid Game, We'd Really Rather Not Talk About it
Dec
20
6:30 PM18:30

As for Squid Game, We'd Really Rather Not Talk About it

  • The Oregon Institute for Creative Research (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

An OICR Roundtable Discussion led by Vivina Rie-Boster, Art Historian; Governor, Oregon Institute


Discussants:

Michael Hurt, Cultural Theory and Art History, Korea National University of Arts
Kyu Hyun Kim, Japanese and Korean History, University of California, Davis
Chris Witherspoon, theGrio.com, NBC; Founder and CEO, PopViewers


Four experts on Korean history, culture, and popular culture discuss Hwang Dong-hyuk’s Netflix survivalist drama, situating it within a larger context of concerns, interests, and preoccupations

BIOS

Vivina Rie-Boster, born in Seoul, Korea, received a B.A. in Fine Arts and East Asian Studies from Harvard-Radcliffe College; an M.A. in East Asian Regional Studies at Harvard University, with a research thesis devoted to Sen no Rikkyu and Yanagi Soetsu; and an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School, where she focused on East Asian and Himalayan religions as well as the study of classical Mongolian.  She has served as a Teaching Fellow in Inner Asian Civilizations at Harvard, lectured on the history of Indian art at Portland State University, and sat on the boards of the Portland Art Museum’s Asian Art Council and the Oregon Korea Foundation.  Her current research interests include Korean ceramics, specifically, buncheong ware

Michael W. Hurt lives in Seoul, where he researches youth, street fashion, and digital subcultures, and lectures on Cultural Theory and Art History at the Korea National University of Arts.  His work can be described as Visual Sociology, and often involves using the camera to access and document emergent digital subcultures.  In 2006, he started Korea's first street-fashion blog, and three years later, published the first English-language book on Korean fashion.  His current research focuses on the political economy of the pay model on Korean Instagram and the analysis of the Korean Wave (Hallyu).  He holds a B.A. in History and American Civilization from Brown University and a doctorate in Comparative Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley, and has served as a consulting editor for the Korea Journal at the Korean Commission for UNESCO

Kyu Hyun Kim is Associate Professor of Japanese and Korean History at the University of California, Davis.  He holds a BA degree from Harvard-Radcliffe College and a Ph.D. in History and East Asian Languages from Harvard University.  He is the author of The Age of Visions and Arguments: Parliamentarianism and the National Public Sphere in Early Meiji Japan (Harvard Asia Center Publications, 2008), and is currently working on a book on the wartime mobilization of colonized Koreans in the 1930s and 1940s.  He has written numerous articles, book chapters, and review essays on modern Japanese and Korean history, Korean cinema and comics, and Japanese popular culture.  He is a Contributing Editor and Academic Adviser to www.koreanfilm.org, the first English-language website devoted to the subject of New Korean Cinema

Chris Witherspoon has served as an entertainment correspondent for Fandango and CNN, and was the founding Entertainment Editor for NBC’s theGrio.com.  He regularly appears on MSNBC, TODAY, The Wendy Williams Show, and NBC’s Nightly News.  Over the years, he has conducted numerous interviews with a range of personalities, including Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Oprah Winfrey, Will Smith, Viola Davis, Hugh Jackman, Denzel Washington, Harrison Ford, and Kerry Washington.  An alumnus of Ohio University and the NBC Page Program, he got his start as an intern at ABC’s Good Morning America

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

ZOOM INFORMATION

Topic: OICR Roundtable Discussion [#2]: "As for Squid Game, We'd Really Rather Not Talk about It"
Time: Dec 20, 2021 06:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85863461282?pwd=cEdiWE5jUXVndlU5YmJDM1IwVlNDQT09

Meeting ID: 858 6346 1282
Passcode: 581074
One tap mobile
+13462487799,,85863461282#,,,,*581074# US (Houston)
+16699006833,,85863461282#,,,,*581074# US (San Jose)

Dial by your location
    +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
      +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)
        +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
        +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
        +1 929 205 6099 US (New York)
        +1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC)

Meeting ID: 858 6346 1282
Passcode: 581074
Find your local number: https://us06web.zoom.us/u/kevhG5YHI

View Event →
Pat LeGates presents paper on Gilles Deleuze at the 2021 Conference of the Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy, Bond University,  Gold Coast, Australia
Dec
8
to Dec 10

Pat LeGates presents paper on Gilles Deleuze at the 2021 Conference of the Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy, Bond University, Gold Coast, Australia

  • The Oregon Institute for Creative Research (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

“Dark World, Growing Desert: Towards a Desert Symptomatology in Deleuze & Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus”

In a 1989 television interview, part of L’Abecedaire de Gilles Deleuze, Deleuze comments on rich and poor cultural periods, describing the conditions that make the present moment a cultural desert—a period marked by the disappearance of culture (specifically in the forms of film and literature) and a general lack of creativity. Though he maintains that poor periods are not permanent, that they inevitably give way to rich periods, here, over thirty years later, the symptoms of desert periods persist and in many cases have worsened. A new desert symptomatology is required in order to navigate these persistent and growing deserts of the present epoch. I begin to establish such a symptomatology with a more relevant model of the desert, one borrowed from Deleuze’s 1972 Anti-Oedipus, the first of his works to be co-authored with Félix Guattari. Unlike the periodic desert of L’Abecedaire, the desert in Anti-Oedipus grows ceaselessly, existing as a central ecosystem inhabited by the text’s concepts. As part of this new desert-centric reading of Anti-Oedipus, I extrapolate upon three other concepts from the text—the body without organs, schizophrenia, and desert-desire—as examples of three species who can thrive in the desert. Beyond explicating the concepts’ suitability for the desert, I offer tendencies of Deleuze & Guattari’s creative philosophy as alternatives to the desert-thinking of the present era, so as to ultimately reposit the authors’ optimism that one day the earth will become a place of healing, even in a desert period operating on different terms.

View Event →
The OICR Living Forest Initiative, After Akira Miyawaki
Nov
29
6:30 PM18:30

The OICR Living Forest Initiative, After Akira Miyawaki

  • The Oregon Institute for Creative Research (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

Readings and Videos

The Global Forest Goals Report 2021, United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs
https://www.un.org/esa/forests/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Global-Forest-Goals-Report-2021.pdf

Elizabeth Hewitt, “Why ‘Tiny Forests’ Are Popping up in Big Cities” (Community forests the size of a basketball court can make an outsized difference, providing shade, attracting plants and animals, and even storing a bit of carbon), National Geographic, June 22, 2021
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/why-tiny-forests-are-popping-up-in-big-cities

Clara Manuel (for Urban Forests), “The Miyawaki Method—Data & Concepts,” Urban Forests Company, 2020
http://urban-forests.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Urban-Forests-report-The-Miyawaki-method-%E2%80%93-Data-concepts.pdf
The Urban Forests’ website contains a trove of information

Wageningen University and Research, “Tiny forest Zaanstad: Citizen scientist and determining biodiversity in tiny forest zaanstad”
https://edepot.wur.nl/446911

IVN Natuureducatie. Maarten Bruns, Daan Bleichrodt, Essi Laine, Karin van Toor, Wim Dieho, Louwra Postma, and Marten de Groot (PEFC), “Handbook, Tiny Forest Planting Method”
https://www.ivn.nl/tinyforest/tiny-forest-worldwide/resources-and-downloads

IVN Natuureducatie, “A Little Bit of Nature, a Big Influence”
https://www.ivn.nl/tinyforest/tiny-forest-worldwide/resources-and-downloads

Design-Essentialz, “Miyawaki Method of Plantation I Afforestation I Akira Miyawaki I Man Made Forest I urban forest”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5jtg2q1gnU&t=1s

Shubhendu Sharma, “How to Plant a Tiny Forest near You”
https://www.ted.com/talks/shubhendu_sharma_how_to_plant_a_tiny_forest_near_you?language=en

Shubhendu Sharma, “An Engineer’s Vision for Tiny Forests Everywhere”
https://www.ted.com/talks/shubhendu_sharma_an_engineer_s_vision_for_tiny_forests_everywhere?language=en

IVN Natuureducatie, “Tiny Forest Documentary about the Effects of the Miyawaki Method in the Netherlands”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyHVQtDtlMk

Dialynn Dwyer, “The first Miyawaki forest in the Northeast was planted in Cambridge. Organizers hope it’s just the start”
https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2021/10/20/miyawaki-forest-danehy-park-cambridge/

USA TODAY, “First Miyawaki Forest planted in the Northeast in Massachusetts”
https://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/weather/2021/11/02/first-miyawaki-forest-planted-northeast-massachusetts/6242473001/

Mirrornownews, “Forests grow 10x faster and 30x denser: What is the "Miyawaki method" that is restoring native forests and greening urban Mumbai?”
https://www.timesnownews.com/mirror-now/in-focus/article/forests-grow-10x-faster-and-30x-denser-what-is-the-miyawaki-method-that-is-restoring-native-forests-and-greening-urban-mumbai/830228

Azeem Samar, “Karachi municipality to grow 300 Miyawaki forests”
https://gulfnews.com/world/asia/pakistan/karachi-municipality-to-grow-300-miyawaki-forests-1.83524816

DeccanChronicle, “TUDA plans more Miyawaki forests in Tirupati rural”
https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/current-affairs/131021/tuda-plans-more-miyawaki-forests-in-tirupati-rural.html

Wire, “Miyawaki-style mini forest to be planted in Nottingham city park”
https://westbridgfordwire.com/miyawaki-style-mini-forest-to-be-planted-in-nottingham-city-park/

Manisha Lal Arora and Ramesh Sable, “Mumbai suburbs get ‘urban forest’ with Miyawaki method”
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/videos/toi-original/mumbai-suburbs-get-urban-forest-with-miyawaki-method/videoshow/87568047.cms

Himanshu Nitnaware, “26-YO Creates 8 Miyawaki Forests on Dry Land, Helps 1200 Farmers Boost Their Income”
https://www.thebetterindia.com/263797/rajasthan-miyawaki-forest-how-to-grow-dry-land-farmer-increase-income/

To Save the World, “80 Miyawaki Forest”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfPw5VTNZr4

Frome Town Council, “Tiny Forests—Presentation and Q&A”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVWUBCRYad0

For further readings on trees and forests, see OICR “Readings for Now” Seminar [#7]: “What Would a Bird Be without a Tree, a Tree without a Bird? & the Involuntary Whispering of the Trees” and “Readings for Now” Seminar [#8]: “Why a Forest Should Never Be a Laboratory (With a special note to Colleges of Forestry: Please stop trying to turn forests into laboratories)”





View Event →
Romeo Oriogun's "Cotonou" published in The New Yorker
Oct
25
5:00 PM17:00

Romeo Oriogun's "Cotonou" published in The New Yorker

  • The Oregon Institute for Creative Research (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

Cotonou

By Romeo Oriogun


1. THE MEETING PLACE OF BIRDS

In some folklore, birds would always meet at the edge
of a town. It was how they knew they were on a journey
to save themselves from the sudden loss of a season.
At the intersection of three busy roads, two buses broke down
and spilled us out, humans tired of the road.
We watched the beauty of the Presidential palace.
I wondered how many days of sweat went into the earth
to produce such beauty. While smoking, I met a man called Trolley,
named for his expertise in flinging humans across borders.
His works of terror were suffering in the coldness of brothels
across Bamako, across Tripoli, across Mauritania, and on the red sand of Kayes.
He watched his girls drink gin on the sidewalk.
I asked him, Do you feel shame?
He answered, I desire beauty. In its pursuit there is no end,
only ruthlessness.
The road sang a dirge, the girls danced in sadness.
There, on the road that is no home, I looked into his eyes
and saw the terror of exploitation.
A leaf fell from a tree nearby
and again I was reminded of the endless movement
of the world, of the girls dancing, of the sadness of my fingers obeying
the call of my body’s addiction to nicotine,
as a bird sang of leaving the world as it is,
a terror, a war we are still living in.

2. ADVERTISEMENT

A sign on the road read:
Buy handmade drums
and beat the wildness of your soul.
What is the sound of all our sorrow?
Years after a war, a veteran went crazy
from hearing in his head
the wailing of a thousand women
who gave up peace to sing their dead
sons to the afterlife.
Is this not a kind of wildness?
Music breeds its own fear,
a song leads us to our loneliness
as the spools of a cassette turning
in a radio render us into an animal
dying in an empty lair.
What is the ache of the night?
What is the emptiness of a city
full of voices?
The voice of exile is the dying voice
of a wounded angel.
I beat the drum of my life
and the angel and I dance
to its wild sadness,
even God ran away from this rhythm.
Look around you, we are left
alone with the mud of creation
and maybe that is all there is to life,
the creating of a new way of living,
but God! Where do we hide the violence?

3. VOICES

The driver says, in the dark of the night,
when every passenger is asleep,
he hears the true language of the road.
He says he hears the voices of cities
thousands of miles away.
The voice of exile
is a murmur crossing rivers and sea,
crossing empty roads until it washes
over a man, a baptism of loss.
If the road and the driver could speak to each other,
what will be this language born out of friction?
Would it be the hum of sleep
in the bodies of exhausted travellers?
Would it be the bristling of biscuit wrappers?
The driver’s eyes are full of dreams,
full of the excitement of new cities.
He could be the poorer incarnate of Mansa Musa
who instead of pouring gold dust into air
pours stories to compete with sand,
stories of nomads, people running in
and out of cities. Perfect gold, this human scroll
of chronicles. Even Bessie Head, giant of letters,
who battled sands for stories, would be proud
of this precision of narrative, this perfect bridge
of the imagined and the songs of mothers rocking babies
as countries cut through their bodies.

4. HOTEL DU CHIRURGIE

Our bus parked beside a water fountain,
a cherub spilled water from pouted lips.
Across the hotel park, there were oysters
heaped on enamel trays, fried behind walls,
they were offered to us as secrets
of the sea. Behind this market of oysters,
there was once a market for flesh,
in Ouidah, in rooms filled with Black flesh
in chains, branded like cattle, herded into pens
by other Black men paid in clear bottles of gin.
The sea crashed on naked stones
and we ran into the hotel bar.
Perched on a three-legged stool,
an old Black woman sang the fable of siblings
lost at sea, she was a lamp attracting us as moths.
There were opened windows, sunflowers in broken pots,
curtains made out of beads sang in the wind,
birds flew in and out.
Smoking a carefully rolled blunt, I listened to this place,
a silent television played a Nollywood movie.
We were trapped in time, in the commodification
of flesh, saints without the gift of ablution.
In some other world, I am guilty of silence,
just as I am in this one.
Do not forgive me. It was dawn
and I walked toward the bus
as the sea received into its bosom
the memory of a ship
travelling to a new world.


To hear the poet read his own poem, see the October 25 (online) issue at <https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/11/01/cotonou>

View Event →
OICR poets read from their work at the 2021 Airstream Poetry Festival  — Chibụìhè Obi Achịmbà, Emma Biggerstaff, Annelyse Gelman
Oct
23
to Oct 24

OICR poets read from their work at the 2021 Airstream Poetry Festival — Chibụìhè Obi Achịmbà, Emma Biggerstaff, Annelyse Gelman

  • The Oregon Institute for Creative Research (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

Chibụìhè Obi Achịmbà, Literary Arts Program, Brown University; Summer 2020 OICR Visiting Artist

Emma Biggerstaff, OICR Research Cohort

Annelyse Gelman, 2021-2022 OICR Poet-in-Residence

CT+CR Collective:

Anne-Marie Oliver
Barry Sanders
Chibụìhè Obi Achịmbà
Crystal Otero
Erika M. Anderson
Emma Biggerstaff
Hallie Campbell
Joseph Phillips
Laura Grace Dodd
Leif Shackleford
Nic Tarter
Trace Fleeman y Garcia
Vivina Boster

View Event →
Jul
26
to Jul 29

Trace Fleeman y Garcia selected to make a poster presentation at the 21st Annual International Gatherings in Biosemiotics Conference, Stockholm, Sweden, July 26-29, 2021

  • Google Calendar ICS
Madras, Oregon (2019)

Madras, Oregon (2019)

“The individual biology seeks is the subject: Constructing a semiotic theory of individuality”

References

Krakauer, D., Bertschinger, N., Olbrich, E., Flack, J. C., & Ay, N. (2020). The information theory of individuality. Theory in Biosciences, 139(2), 209-223

Maran, T., Martinelli, D., & Turovski, A. (Eds.). (2011). Readings in zoo semiotics (Vol. 8). Walter de Gruyter

Favareau, D. (2010). Essential readings in biosemiotics: Anthology and commentary (Vol. 3). Springer Science & Business Media

For the full schedule of presentations, see https://www.2021biosemioticsgatherings.com/

Conference schedule

View Event →
"Readings for Now" Seminar #11:  IMAGES AND OTHER ACTS
Apr
23
5:00 PM17:00

"Readings for Now" Seminar #11: IMAGES AND OTHER ACTS

  • The Oregon Institute for Creative Research (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS
RFD_IMAGES_AND_OTHER_april_30.png

Readings

Gaston Bachelard, “The Dialectic of Imaginary Energies: The Resistant World,” Earth and Reveries of Will, 13-26
Henri Lefebvre, “Image,” Critique of Everyday Life: Foundations for a Sociology of the Everyday, 287-290
Susan Sontag, “
The Image-World,” On Photography, 153-182
Giorgio Agamben, “
The Face,” Means without End, 92-99
Georg Simmel, “
Aspatial Gaze,” Rembrandt: An Essay in the Philosophy of Art, 98-100
David Summers, Selections from Real Spaces: World Art History and the Rise of Western Modernism: 1. “
The Origins of Images," 251-252, 4.2 “Realities of Images," 252-254, and 4.3 “Images and Cultural Difference," 254-255
Hans Belting, Selections from Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art:
The Images’ Loss of Power and Their New Role as Art,” 14-16, and “Why Images: Imagery and Religion in Late Antiquity,” 30-46
Vilém Flusser, Selections from Writings: “
Line and Surface,” 21-34; “The Codified World,” 35-40; “Orders of Magnitude and Humanism,” 160-164
Vilém Flusser, “
Why a Philosophy of Photography Is Necessary,” Towards a Philosophy of Photography, 76-82, and Lexicon of Basic Concepts, 83-85
Hito Steyerl, “
Ripping Reality: Blind Spots and Wrecked Data in 3D,” Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War, 190-205

View Event →
"Readings for Now" Seminar #10: HOUSE HISTORY MANNERS
Apr
16
5:00 PM17:00

"Readings for Now" Seminar #10: HOUSE HISTORY MANNERS

  • The Oregon Institute for Creative Research (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS
HOUSE_HISTORY_MANNERS_PNG.png

READINGS

Selections from Norbert Elias, The History of Manners: “On Behavior at Table,” 84-129, and Appendix 1: Introduction to the 1968 Edition, 221-263

Philippe Braunstein, “Toward Intimacy: The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” in A History of Private Life, Volume II: Revelations of the Medieval World, ed. Georges Duby, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (series eds: Phillippe Ariès and Georges Duby), 534-630


View Event →