“A number of groups and some individuals were given a large piece of a grid map to create their unique interpretation of the neighbourhood.”

I like the idea to put a group of people in front of a map and to ask them to enrich it. The exercise is easy to understand, relatively easy to do, but offers still plenty of space for creativity and expression. This makes it ideal for community projects. I also like the decision to assemble the maps on a giant grid; it makes you realize the many different ways a single area can be perceived by its inhabitants. These techniques could be used in conjunction with the subjective maps workshop manual that I wrote few months ago, at the occasion of a research in the Finsbury Park area.

Regarding the exhibition itself, I found it very informative but was surprised that it didn’t exhibit examples of contemporary digital mapping. A lot has been made recently in digital cartography, which is as subjective as its ancestors. By not mentioning them, the exhibition might give the impression that subjectivity in cartography belong to the past, which is far from being true.

Here is the stuff that caught my attention this year.

“A Child’s Grove” by Neha Choksi, Project 88,2009

The way the trees reflect nature and people’s activity around them.

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“Your Fade to Light”, Random International, Carpenters Workshop Gallery

Ok, new media art seems out of fashion this year and this work is not even at the Frieze Art Fair, just in the Pavilion of Art and Design annexe event. But the piece is brilliantly executed and the way you see yourself in the ‘pixels’ when you move is very smart.

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This installation was also presented, from Conrad Shawcross.

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The canvases by Erwin Wurm were original and lead to interesting questions. (picture from Frieze 2008, but it’s more or less the same)

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See here plenty of beautiful and poetic paintings by Aya Takano.

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Congratulations to the curators of the greengrassi and Maureen Paley galleries. They managed to make me stop walking for a while with their sensitive selection of art works.

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the BBC

I just launched my new project, “curated matter” and defined its mission, vision and core values. I had the idea in March 2008 but it took months of passive reflection to come up with its final definition. The good thing about defining the mission of a venture beforehand is that you can then  easily understand what the goals and priorities are.

What interests me in defining a mission is that the final statement looks the same whatever the size of your project, or its nature. A mission statement should be as simple for a multibillion company than for a non-profit association of 5 people. This apparent simplicity is what makes the intellectual work so interesting. Here are some examples: the BBC, Coca-Cola, Starbucks coffee, HP. You can read more missions on WikiAnswers. It is not easy information to find though. I think it should be on the website of every organization, and I mean not a customer friendly version, the real missions.

The mission of curated matter sounds maybe a little too exoteric  and is not that clear, compare to the BBC for example. But I wanted something playful and exciting for the imagination.

To show how much a mission statement is important, here are some thoughts about the one of the BBC. I went to their tour last week, and even if it was at the end more for kids, it put me in the mood.

The BBC mission is “to enrich people’s lives with programmes and services that inform, educate and entertain.” No mention is made on which of the three aspects is more important: inform, educate or entertain. This leads to the recurrent debate on how much BBC should entertain. After all, private broadcasters do already entertain people. It remains that you can clearly see that the BBC portfolio strictly follows this mission: inform, educate and entertain.

The vision of the BBC is “to be the most creative organisation in the world.”. It seems to me a strange vision. Is it really what people want above all from the BBC? And is the BBC best placed to be the most creative, with its duty to inform and educate? Obviously,  that creativity is arguably important to inform and educate. And that the BBC without creativity is dead. But I’m still wondering what this vision actually means in terms of ambition and actions. I think this is eluding the central question of what is the most important to broadcast. Nobody could however deny that the BBC is genuinely trying to achieve this vision, with frequent new programs, some very ambitious in terms of creativity.

Then, the BBC values are listed. I just have one remark for the fun. It states “Trust is the foundation of the BBC: we are independent, impartial and honest” and that “Audiences are at the heart of everything we do.”. But putting audiences at the center, is that not a form of dependence? Some facts or programs might not please an audience but still be genuinely important. It is the dilemma between encouraging people to watch a program and remain impartial on what is shown, even if boring or disturbing. Again, the BBC’s values don’t provide any answers. Imagine for example what would happen if the second value was “Getting audiences knowledgeable and providing them with the most refined entertainment is at the heart of everything we do”.

I should say that most of those remarks are addressed in the Public Purposes of the BBC Trust. I would however question why they are not at the same level of importance than the BBC overall mission.

Any mission statements you would like to share? What are your thoughts on the mission, vision and values of the BBC?

A model of London

The New London Architecture, at the Building centre, is an initiative that seeks to highlight the level of development either planned or currently underway in London.  ”Digital Cities, London’s future” was their latest exhibition. It highlights some of the resources and technologies which designers can use in the development of the city and explores areas of debate that arise alongside the opportunities of this new digital world.

The exhibition was packed with fascinating glimpses of the future.

Oxford Circus is one of the busiest spaces in London. It is negotiated by over 43,000 people and 2000 vehicles per hour (I like this use of ‘negotiated’). Any pedestrian having been there on a Saturday know it is a nightmare. People, barricades, cars, Tube entrances, everything stops you going where you want.  The solution of Atkins? Give back the freedom to move. This ambitious statement is in my opinion an excellent example of what experience design is about, brilliantly illustrated by Designhive. Some nice simulations from Aedas( I believe) were also demonstrating that a road can be shared in some cases by cars and pedestrians, without delimitations. Which is unconventional but at the same time very interesting to analyze.

Crown fountain in Chicago

There was also a presentation by UrbanBuzz on how media screens can be used in public spaces as a medium for communication. They took among other the example of the Crown fountain in Chicago, a video sculpture designed by the Catalan artist Jaume Plensa. Their point is that there are no clear guidelines on who can install big screens on the public space and how. “We will hold workshops to bring artists, planners and local policy makers together to debate and discuss the issues. We need to understand how screen technology can be implemented and to establish potential funding models.” I still wonder if the relative absence of rules and studies doesn’t benefit more to refreshing artistic approaches. Are there any mature media escaping the monopoly of advertisement?

The RUDI annual publication available for free at the exhibition is its perfect continuum, with inspiring articles in between urban design and digital technologies. Two disciplines I predict to be more and more interwoven as the Internet of Things is slowly emerging along with context aware technologies such as mobile geo-location.

The building centre has five galleries. I was much impressed by the way they were curated. I’m not sure if this is on purpose, but things were displayed in such a simple and unusual way. Some galleries looked like an architecture fair, with stands, one per company, showcasing materials, power point presentations and videos. Except that no sales representatives were there, only a desk at the end of a corridor representing all the featured fabricants.  The atmosphere was strange but I felt it was working pretty well. I could concentrate easily on what I saw. Next to those spaces were pictures of ambitious new buildings and various innovations. I liked this poster showing how much space a same number of people can take if they are driving cars, bicycles, if they are in a bus or simply walking. How things could be explained clearer than that? Here is the making-of video.

Room To Breathe

Those are just few examples of how urban design could be revolutionized in the coming years. What do you think could be the most exciting urban innovation of the future?

Recycling campaign by the tfl

The Transport for London are currently running a campaign to encourage their passengers to recycle the free newspapers they get at tube stations.  This seems like a good initiative. But is it really? I commute every day and never take the freesheets that distributors literally put on my face when I approach a tube station. I know that there are plenty of London Lite, thelondonpaper and metro left in the carriages anyway.  The tfl is arguing that we protect the environment if we take our newspapers with us, so that we can recycle them. But obviously, more the passengers take the newspapers with them, less likely they will find newspapers left in the transport, more they will pick up new newspapers at station entrances. Where is the contradiction?

I think the answer lies both in the tfl key performance indicators and in the consumerist philosophy of recycling.

A great thing about the Transport for London is that you can consult their strategy, objectives and results online. Here is their environment strategy for 2008 – 2013. The objective is to “understand, manage and effectively control the impact our business has on the environment”. So far, so good. The fact that the tfl has an environment strategy is in itself very positive. The flaw of the strategy starts a little later in the document: “Although we have limited control over the waste our customers leave on our trains and in stations, we will work with Metronet and Tube Lines to consider systems for improving how we manage this waste.” This is where everything goes wrong. The tfl has a huge influence on what their customers leave on their trains. In the case of freesheets, it has a huge influence on what they consume in the first place. Assuming the opposite is reducing considerably the actions that could be taken.

The tfl strategy leads to the following recycling KPI to be minimized: “Proportion of station, depot and office waste recycled (%) “. No mention is made on reducing the consumption of paper by passengers. Which is logic if you follow the previous assumption. The fact that people might get twice more newspapers is not important, as long as they recycle few more percents of them. On page 46 of the environment results of 2008, you can see that the percentage of recycled waste has been improved even though the total amount of waste never stopped increasing. The recycling campaign says it all: ” 1.6 million newspapers are given out in London every day.”

Did the tfl have an interest on narrowing down their environment actions? Their campaign is promoted pretty well on the News International and Associated Newspapers freesheet publications. People taking home their newspaper might read it a little more or share it with their family. More copies would have to be printed out but it would not impact that much the readership ratio (number of times a newspaper copy is read), so ad revenues would increase. This would mean more money for the London Underground, who gets free annual payments from the publishers.

The tfl recycling campaign also reveals an important fact: “Help us to recycle by taking yours with you”.  I would have thought quite naturally that the London underground recycled all the newspapers left in the carriages. They represent the vast majority of waste left by passengers. But by reading the tfl reports, I discovered they don’t. The total amount of recycled waste is 40%. It has been considerably improved during the last years but this is clearly not enough yet.

The actions of the tfl don’t explain everything though. I have surfed quite a lot on the blogosphere and there seems to be a genuine belief in the public that it is better to recycle than reuse. The argument is that:

-          people tend to throw away freesheets on the streets, limiting any reuse

-          it is a myth that a freesheet you leave is read by someone else

-          It is not respectful for the tfl personal who has to clean it up everyday

I saw some posts from people saying that they leave their freesheet so that someone else can read it. But they get back tens of accusations of laziness or stupidity. I keep wondering why. I like to share magazines when I’m in the waiting room of a doctor. Why could it not work on the underground? Those considerations might seem unimportant but they lead to an essential aspect. Recycling can be seen as another form of consumerism and individualism. If the goal of a society is to consume products. It is then of the society interest to recycle as much as possible, because too much trash would block further consumption. An individualistic society will also always prefer to rely on everyone recycling its OWN trash than to share its assets.  Recycling freesheets favours consumerism: it is good for the publishers, for the consumers, for the tfl. Don’t get me wrong, I’m usually in favour of recycling and am a big recycler myself. But I can also see when it is not the optimal solution, when it actually promotes what it should fight against.

Let me give a final example to demonstrate that  things could be different. What if the tfl decided to guarantee its passengers they will find left freesheets on any carriage? Freesheet distributors would dispose their papers on carriages at some key stations. They would not distribute it directly to the public anymore (surveys would be used to figure out which publication is the most popular so that they could still get ads). Campaigns would encourage passengers to leave their papers in carriages, which should not be too difficult knowing it is the most common behaviour. The tfl would in fact present the freesheets as a service to their customers. Let’s say the total journey of a underground train is two hours. The average time for someone to read his freesheet is 20 minutes. So, a freesheet could be reused 6 times. Thus publications could be cut by 6. And the employees who would otherwise distribute newspapers could largely suffice to recycle old newspapers at end stations.

What would be wrong with this idea? What do you think of tfl’s position? Is it uncivil to leave your newspaper on a train’s blanket or is it an act of sharing? Feel free to post your point of view.

Painting of M. F. Husain outside the Serpentine.

“Some of the artworks in the exhibition have been selected for their connection to the theme of Indian Highway, reflecting the importance of the road in migration and movement and as the link between rural and urban communities. Other works make reference to technology and the ‘information superhighway’, which has been central to India’s economic boom. A common thread throughout is the way in which these artists demonstrate an active political and social engagement, examining complex issues in contemporary India that include environmentalism, religious sectarianism, globalisation, gender, sexuality and class.”

And here are some blogs about the exhibition:

-          http://engineersdaughter.typepad.com/engineers_daughter/2008/12/art-exhibition-highlights-indian-highway-at-londons-serpentine-gallery.html

-          http://stillred.com/2008/12/adrian-searle-on-the-serpentine-gallerys-indian-highway/comment-page-1/

-          http://artradarasia.wordpress.com/2008/12/18/mixed-reviews-for-serpentines-indian-highway-show-in-london-evening-standard-independent/

I don’t understand some of the discussions. First of all, why should an artist necessary reflect the artistic, political or economical situation of his country? We are in a global age and it is more and more awkward to classify an artist by his geography. Is it because I live in London that I should share the concerns of other artists living in London? Secondly, an exhibition is not a documentary. There is not such things as a good or bad representation of art from a region. It is only about selecting pieces of art for display. Who has the authority to say they represent a country of 1 billion people? Not the Serpentine nor the critics. This leads to merely debates of taste. Anyway, here are my comments on the artworks and how they were exhibited, NOT what Indian contemporary art should be.

Many curators, from UK and India, collaborated on this exhibition. The approach is free of formal conventions: wall paintings are extending the paintings on canvases, reproductions of paintings are exposed outdoor, variety of media are used. I don’t know if this is because of an ‘Indian way ‘ to exhibit, it is probably only the Serpentine way.

I would like to concentrate on the videos. The Raqs Media Collective asked documentaries to revisit videos they  made over the last two decades, “revisit these images and produce a landscape that provides a unique vantage point from which to think through the present conditions of turbulent anxiety, visceral conflict and unprecedented opportunity.” They commissioned Hirsch and Müller to build the space. The result is quite interesting, not because of their shiny  ladders representing ‘states of being between things’, it is a little bit cliché… But because of the way they put the videos at different height and angles in a very small space. You tend to look at multiple videos at the same time, discovering new ones on your way, and being immersed by them.

Ghost/Transmemoir from Bose Krishnamachari also offers to the public an interesting way to relate with videos. You enter a room with tens of suspended cans, used by the city’s dabbawalla lunch delivery system (pem). In each of those cans are small video screens. The installation is noisy as you hear the comments made by citizens of Mumbai in each can. On some of them are headphones you can use to concentrate on one sound at a time. The installation gives  a sense of Mumbai’s effervescence.

I also saw a video which is on a highway next to Kashmir. It is looking at the window of a car with sounds from the radio in the background. Each time a soldier appears, the video breaks for few seconds. I liked the effect because it feels like an ideal situation of comfort broken by disruptive glances of something wrong. But I cannot tell you who did the video, because I could not get the information back. I wanted to get a short description of the artworks that were displayed, so that I could remember the names of the artists and artworks. I purchased the little Serpentine Highway book called ‘Indian highway’. I couldn’t find back in the book nor the Serpentine website the titles of everything I remembered, because the pictures were not of what I saw and the descriptions not what I read.  A little more effort to promote the artworks and artists online and on paper would be sensible.

I don’t know about Indian art but I enjoyed some of the videos displayed at the Serpentine, related to daily lives, politically charged. Indian Highway is held at the Serpentine gallery until the 22^nd February 2009.

Does it make any sense to attempt making a ‘snapshot’ of what India’s contemporary art is? Feel free to comment!

Work of Michaela Melián at Cubitt

We went to the Cubitt to speak with the curator Bart van der Heide. The Cubitt is an independent organization controlled by artists. It is not a commercial gallery, which is noticeable in a country where most of the art is privately subsidized. There is a big gap in London between institutions like the Tate modern and commercial galleries. The Cubitt offers a unique 18-month curatorial rotation. They change of curator once every 18 months, acting as a career launch pad. The gallery is currently exhibiting the first international exhibition of the German artist Michaela Melián. I found that the space was particularly respectful of the artist work and of the diversity of the media used.

The Mask II from Ron Mueck, British Museum

Statuephilia at the British museum is an exhibition featuring statues from some of the most famous contemporary artists in UK. It doesn’t challenge at all the institution of the British Museum: a representation of (colonial) power, of what is considered important and how it should be classified. Lack of criticism (positive or negative) is perceived by most of the London art community as a curatorial failure. That being said, I found ‘Case for Angle 1′ from Antony Gormley and ‘Dark Stuff’ from Tim Noble and Sue Webster meaningful, even though they didn’t challenge the institution. The exhibition wasn’t always convincing in terms of relation to space. I think about The mask from Ron Mueck which was placed a little randomly within the room of the South Pacific. Finally, I would classify the Kate Moss statue of Marc Quinn, entirely in gold, as another example of bling-bling art. If someone is ready to pay for such a gold statue, can it really be a criticism of the cultural superego, or is it its bold celebration ? But maybe this work, like the Crystal skull from Damien Hirst (not part of this exhibition even if you can see another of his skull obsession), will have an historical value one day, as a testimony of the vain generation of golden boys from the City, now hopefully over.

Frequency and Volume from Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Barbican

I liked the curved exhibition space of the Barbican, the fact that it is not a closed showroom, but a passage, a corridor. And really the ‘Frequency and Volume’ installation from Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is working this way. The shadows of walking people capture waves from radio, television… changing our perception of space.  It is a good example of how contemporary curators exhibit not only objects, but also spaces and situations.

The reason why I went to this course is because I want to make an exhibition of video art in few months. The curation practice is I think very interesting because of its duality: it is philosophical, artistic while being also practically involved in how culture is evolving and disseminated. I truly appreciate the sophistication of the discourse in this area. But at the same time, I don’t want to do another white cube exhibition, or another curatorial criticism of art. I don’t have the right background anyway. I need to write down exactly what is my approach. I think it will be very challenging to position it back to the contemporary themes of curation, and to the high expectations of the art audience. But that’s probably why I want to do it. There would be no point if I had nothing special to say…

Christophe Bruchansky

The idea of those videos came to me a little less than a year ago. It started when I was on my way back home at the North Greenwich station. I had a vision of someone looking at a still creature, seat on the roof of the London’s O2 Dome.  I tried to understand what this vision meant. I slowly realized that this creature of my imagination was in fact a representation of a mood, a state of consciousness, seated between the character and the object of his brief attention.

I then had the same vision but at different times of the day, different locations. It was something following me. Though with an important exception, the creature faded away when I was not alone, in action, in a communication with someone, totally emerged in the instant.

It took me a while to translate those feelings into a storyboard. I progressively abandoned the idea of a creature to keep the essential, a minimalist representation of the consciousness: a colour, a movement. My technique to build a storyboard is to start imaging a scene, then see if I can find what will be the next, and the next. I know I found the right angle when each new scene I think of makes me more excited than the previous one, and when everything seems to flow easily, consistently, at all levels.  It’s an intense moment of satisfaction.

Once the storyboard drawn, I took videos with my Canon Ixus 80, of motorways in Greenwich, buses, trains and stations of the London public transports, offices and few other places. Then followed as often a predictable and quite boring stage of production: the video selection, edition (I used Sony Vegas), the digitalization of my draws and so on. The most difficult part is when I put everything back together and compose the soundtrack. It is at this stage that what I imagined is confronted with the material I have a front of me. It takes a lot of time, and my full concentration to shape a video which is genuinely close to my feelings, consistent but still fresh. It is only possible if the initial vision is truly important to me, at multiple levels. Otherwise, the narrative doesn’t work, things don’t get together. But when this difficult task is done, comes my biggest joy. Looking back at my work, I can analyze it and discover all the hidden significations I didn’t realize before. And then I understand how I found the energy to make it, why it was so important to me.

This is the first project for which I’m really thinking about the installation. My experience of the past years taught me how important it is to condition an audience for the reception of a video. My videos are one the Internet so that everyone can see what kind of things I do. But I know that most people will not be receptive to my productions on a computer screen. I’m myself not often receptive to that kind of videos when I’m at home. I need to be in a special place, have the work presented in a certain way, so that I can give myself a chance to get into it. This is the kind of environment I tried to imagine for ‘Breath’.

Of course, this is just my way of inventing videos…

Breath – At the bus stop from Christophe Bruchansky on Vimeo.

Early in the debate, the distinction was made between what one could call conservative education and liberal education. The goal of conservative education being to transfer values, traditions from a generation to another. In simplistic terms, so that children learn to act like their parents. On the other side, the goal of liberal education is to enable critical thinking. It is thus more related to Socratic education, based on the idea that the teacher’s responsibility is not to give answers but to lead his pupils to their own discoveries.

“Learning without thinking is stultifying, thinking without learning is dangerous.” (Confucius)

What also generated debate was if education should serve first societies or their individuals. Do we want to pursue society’s best interest by providing well trained, well educated citizens? Or are we looking to improve lives of the students? The education seems to become more and more utilitarian nowadays, focusing on providing students a job, so that capitalism can be sustained by a qualified work force. How much should education be practical? I remember having chosen to study Science at University because I was curious to know, not because I wanted to become a scientist…

An interesting idea that came up was that the most difficult task of a teacher is to know when the student needs to be taught facts and when he is ready to question them. No point to ask a 5 year old kid to debate Shakespeare, nor even to ask him what he wants to get from his education. Proper education requires to ask the right question at the right time.

What is daunting to realize is that – beyond the practical benefits of education, such as learning how to calculate, read, get a job – our group didn’t manage to come up with a rough idea of what successful education is. The answer is probably multiple: to become a peaceful society? To make people happier? To remember what previous generations did? I have the intuition it would lead to major disagreements if it was really discussed at a community level, because it is so interlinked with the goal of a society, which is barely formulated nor debated. I personally believe education should enable critical thinking and that philosophy should be the central piece of scholarship. I’m not sure if this would necessary make people happier but it would at least give them more choice. Let’s not forget democracy is based on the assumption that every citizen is able to exert a thoughtful criticism of his environment. If not, they become merely markets to be gained with the appropriate advertisement campaigns.

“He that is not used to submit his will to the reason of others when he is young, will scarce hearken to his own reason when he is of an age to make use of it.” (John Locke)

Now, whatever the education you got. I believe it is up to you to make whatever you want with it. You might reject it, embrace it, make it completely change you or just use it as a tool to achieve your initial goals. If you read this post, it is probably because you are searching for information related to philosophy or education (I imagine your disappointment but I hope this article is giving you at least some useful links). What are you pursuing through this self-education? Material goals? Happiness? Change?

European parliament: contemporary symbol of institutionalized debate

This Saturday was held the Joe McCarney Memorial Conference at the London knowledge lab. It was organized by the Marx and philosophy society in honor of one of their lost co-founder. Here is an analysis of the first speech given by Kai Nielsen ‘Emancipatory Social Science: McCarney and Levine’.

I would sadly not be able to comment much on the content of the speech as I lacked the prerequisite knowledge on Marx’s philosophy. Except rare references to real situations, all the discourse was built on positions to other authors’ theories. This led me to think why, and more in general how a philosophical debate is constructed.

It is fundamental to understand first the goal of a philosophical debate and of its participants. I would say that the goal of a philosophical debate is to generate a dialogue between views on a subject and to redistribute the collective thoughts to its participants and audience. It’s goal is thus not to narrow options like in some scientific or social debates, e.g. Is space related to time? Is capitalism the best option for our society? This leads to an even more important dimension: what is the goal of its participants? The selfish goal of a philosophical contributor is not to give the truth that evicts any other ideas, but to deliver a pivotal idea, an idea that polarize the debate. Pivotal ideas are the only ones that stick after a debate, and provide social recognition to its contributors. It is then interesting to realize that philosophers like Marx (is he?) are not important because they gave undisputable new facts, but because their theories are still debated at events like this conference. The participants might not agree with Joe McCarney, but by accepting to centre their debate to his theory, they legitimate his role in philosophy. I don’t know really who originated the subject but the most polarizing thought at today’s debate was that history has no direction. Many participants tried to challenge the assertion by for example proposing that history always goes to more complexity because of human nature.

Goals might be very different in other types of debates. Great scientists are most of the time those who gave a new undisputed truth. Politicians are rewarded when they win a majority based on their views, not when they bring uncertainty. This distinction is however not completely true. For example, politicians running for an election need first to deliver pivotal ideas so that further election debates cannot be conducted without referencing their names.  It seems to me that both pivotal and true propositions are rewarded in any type of debates, though with different magnitudes of recognitions.

Now that I clarified the goal of philosophical debates and of their participants, I know that if I want to ‘win’, I need to deliver my ideas so that they become pivotal. I have in order to do so:

-          Recognize the ideas of others. No way for an idea to become pivotal if it excludes any other. This explains the most exceptional quality of a philosophical participant: the willingness AND ability to fully understand ideas of others. Too often in everyday’s life, ideas seem to be difficult or even impossible to exchange. It is not true, people are simply not enticed to try understanding them. Philosophical debates are thus very uplifting by restoring trust to people’s ability to understand each other.

-          Position my ideas to largely recognized pivotal ones. This is why a philosophical debate (or artistic criticism) can become impenetrable. An idea related to a famous philosopher is much more likely to become pivotal itself than one purely derived from a real life situation. This is true at least for incremental philosophy, radical new philosophies might surface without much references but they require exceptional social conditions. I must say to the benefit of philosophers that references in discourses are also necessary to elaborate from a theory that would take too long to describe otherwise. This referencing is also a condition to sustainable culture which can only work by simplification / aggregation of concepts. Even though references bring always more confusion to debates because of their interpretative nature. I should also not minimize my lack of knowledge and how useless it would be to describe every single concept that most of the audience is already familiar with. Finally, to be clear, I’m not talking here about the necessity of references, which are of course essential to civilization. I’m speaking about how a debate is conducted, from explicit ideas and thoughts (which can have implicit references written in small at the end of the page), or from explicit references (with implicit ideas and thoughts possibly reminded at the end of the page).

I’m sure much more can be said about the nature of philosophical debates but this quick analysis shows at least that diversity in debate mechanics exists. It should be promoted so that people, ideas, groups have multiple ways to exist in our societies. The conference was free, open to everyone, surprisingly well communicated on the web compare to other events of the same kind. It makes me want to study a little more Marx and capitalism, I don’t even have a clear opinion whether I endorse capitalism or not…