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Send us Fan MailShow Notes:1:40 Markevitch's background as an Impressionist and Modernist expert 3:30 democratization of art like the music industry4:30 accessibility of art and how art makes us feel5:20 unfairness of the art industry's elitist approach 8:00 Emily Gould-inquiry on how to bring more people into the art world10:00 art world representative's narrow perspective on criteria to be an artist12:45 Markevitch's creative prompts on YouTube and Instagram14:00 Markevitch's perspective on AI and art17:25 Picasso's mantra that “bad artists copy” and “good artists steal” and his style appropriation from African art19:05 Astrologist Neil deGrasse Tyson's perspective on art and AI 21:45 ikonoTV and its purpose to share a feeling 23:00 the Slow Art Movement28:25 Gould's inquiry about the experience of art online versus with community29:00 Philosopher Walter Benjamin's 1935 essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”30:00 feedback about ikono.tv that includes giving individuals courage to go to museums34:15 placing art in hospitals 37:55 launch of ikono's meditation app: slow, feel the calm 38:55 ikono.tv's “projects we love” page, including an art survey app to develop your “emotional garden” about an event, Sentiko.app 50:00 future of ikonoTV to include all films that feature art51:45 legacy that Markevitch hopes to be making with her work: to bring art to the people52:30 Markevitch's view on the power of art: “Art is what makes us human.”53:30 Markevitch's inspiration54:00 how Markevitch defines justice Please share your comments and/or questions at stephanie@warfareofartandlaw.comMusic by Toulme.To hear more episodes, please visit Warfare of Art and Law podcast's website.To leave questions or comments about this or other episodes of the podcast and/or for information about joining the 2ND Saturday discussion on art, culture and justice, please message me at stephanie@warfareofartandlaw.com. Thanks so much for listening!This podcast and its content may not be used for training or developing AI systems without permission.© Stephanie Drawdy [2026]
The ACFM crew gather for a close reading of Walter Benjamin’s foundational contribution to 20th century cultural and media theory. Download the short text and follow along as Nadia, Keir and Jem consider The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, published in 1935. Sign up to the ACFM newsletter: https://novaramedia.com/newsletters Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media/support
The ACFM crew gather for a close reading of Walter Benjamin’s foundational contribution to 20th century cultural and media theory. Download the short text and follow along as Nadia, Keir and Jem consider The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, published in 1935. Sign up to the ACFM newsletter: https://novaramedia.com/newsletters Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media/support
Voiko generatiivisella tekoälyllä tehty taide ikinä tuntua kunnolliselta vai tuoksuuko se aina hassulta? Toimittaja-kriitikko Oskari Onninen saapuu vieraaksemme jaksoon, jossa Olli väittää kivenkovaan, että tauhkan tuoksu pilaa genAI-kulttuurituotteet keskiluokalle vielä todella pitkäksi aikaa. Panu pitää valtaosaa kulttuurista tylsänä joka tapauksessa ja Kari sanoo kulttuurielämäämme määrittävän keskiluokan sopeutuvan mihin tahansa.Pudotuspeliosiossa vastakkain asetetaan Dropbox ja Google Drive sekä ratkaistaan toisen kierroksen Android vs iPhone -ottelun kohtalo. Kerro miten taistossa pitäisi käydä esim. sähköpostilla osoitteeseen palaute@vikasietoti.la tai huutele meille muualla internetissä.Vikasietotilan Discord-keskustelu on nyt avoin kaikille kuulijoille! Chattiin pääset liittymään täältä: vikasietoti.la/keskusteleMikäli haluat kuulla Vikasietotilaa joka viikko, meillä on sinulle hyviä uutisia! Joka toinen viikko ilmestyvien ilmaisjaksojen lisäksi teemme väliviikkoina Pikasietotila-jaksoja, jotka ovat maksavien asiakkaiden lisäetu. Lisätietoja ja tilausohjeet löydät Supporting Cast -sivuiltamme. Maksulliset jaksot voi kuunnella millä tahansa soittimella – siis myös esimerkiksi Spotifystä –, mutta vaihtoehtoisesti voit tilata Vikasietotilan lisäjaksot myös suoraan Applen podcast-palvelusta.LinkitBourdieun Distinction (pdf)Benjaminin The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (pdf)What If Readers Like A.I.-Generated Fiction?SiemenholviKryptomiljonääri söi miljoonien arvoisen taidebanaaninBorn: On Musical Mediation: Ontology, Technology and Creativity (pdf)Abbing: Why Are Artists Poor? (pdf)
“We read so as not to feel alone.” — C.S. Lewis (possibly)Dan Turello is a cultural historian of medieval Italy, a much published photographer, and the author of the new Connection: How Technology Can Make Us Better Humans. I'm sceptical. Especially the promise (or illusion) of better humans. But Turello's definition of technology goes back further than most — all the way to the original fig leaf. When Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden, the first thing they did, he reminds us, was cover their bodies. Technology, then, in Turello's framing, is everything that extends beyond the human body. Clothing is technology. Double-entry bookkeeping is technology. The iPhone is just the latest chapter of our technology story that began at the beginning.His most surprising argument is that our current tech anxiety has medieval roots. St. Francis of Assisi was what he calls a trust-fund kid “avant la lettre” — his father being a wealthy 13th century silk merchant at a time when northern Italy was Silicon Valley. Francis sold some of his dad's silk, gave the money away, stripped naked before a bishop, and founded a counterculture movement. The first tech backlash, Turello suggests, wasn't against AI. It was against double-entry bookkeeping. Dante, writing a generation later, idealised an earlier, simpler Florence — what scholars call “paleolithic chic.” No makeup, no ornate clothing, no fleeing to immoral cities. Sound familiar?On AI, Turello goes a bit Saint Francis on us. Large language models, he fears, generate material without lineage — you can't trace where the ideas came from, can't triangulate the sources, can't validate against reality. Technology is about power, Turello argues — about who controls the storyline. Making us better humans, then, requires recovering a sense of agency. Thus he argues that we should stop outsourcing our thinking, our writing, our photography to machines. Dante wrote the entire Divine Comedy without Claude. These days, we can barely write an email without a little help from our friends at ChatGPT. Machiavelli donned the robes of the past to think and write. We might try putting ours on too. But then isn't that a tech solution too? Five Takeaways• St. Francis Was a Trust-Fund Kid Who Invented Counterculture: His father was a wealthy silk merchant in 13th-century Italy, at the dawn of Europe's commercial revolution. Francis sold his father's silk, gave the money away, stripped naked before a bishop, and founded an order that rejected the mechanisms of early capitalism. The first tech backlash wasn't against AI. It was against double-entry bookkeeping.• Technology Is Everything Beyond the Naked Human Body: Turello's definition goes back to Genesis. When Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden, the first thing they did was cover their bodies. Fig leaves are technology. Clothing is technology. The iPhone is just the latest iteration of a metaphysical problem that's been destabilising us since the Fall.• Dante Wrote the Divine Comedy Without Being Able to Edit: He penned an entire macrocosm of the medieval world from memory, without the ability to rewrite in any meaningful way. Turello thinks Dante would be concerned that we're losing our memories, our ability to tell a coherent narrative for our lives, and that our existence has become too fragmented. We can barely write an email without ChatGPT.• LLMs Generate Material Without Lineage: Technology is about power — about who controls the storyline. Large language models produce text without traceable sources, without verifiable origins, without lineage. You can't triangulate where the ideas came from. That's not intelligence. That's a crisis of provenance.• Agency Still Matters: Turello's hope for humanity is that we recover a sense of agency — the belief that our choices, friendships, relationships, and communities are ours to shape. The alternative is technological determinism: the machine decides. Machiavelli donned the robes of the past to think and write. We might try putting ours on too. About the GuestDan Turello is a writer, cultural historian, and photographer. A Technology and Humanity Fellow at Florida Atlantic University's Center for Future of Mind, AI & Society, his work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Connection: How Technology Can Make Us Better Humans is published by Columbia University Press.References:• Connection: How Technology Can Make Us Better Humans by Dan Turello (Columbia University Press, 2026) — the book under discussion.• Episode 2840: What Came First: Stories or Language? — Kevin Ashton on storytelling preceding language, a natural companion.• Episode 2839: Have Our iPhones Eaten Our Brains? — Nelson Dellis on memory, cognitive atrophy, and outsourcing our minds.• Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction — referenced in the conversation on technology and power.About Keen On AmericaNobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:(00:00) - Introduction: has technology made you a better human? (03:22) - The iPhone vs. the decisive moment: Bresson and photography (05:39) - The orange cushion: an ode to imperfection (06:27) - St. Francis of Assisi: the first tech critic (07:22) - 800 years of tech anxiety: from double-entry bookkeeping to AI (11:27) - Žižek, capitalism, and the love-hate relationship with technology (13:50) - Fig leaves to iPhones: technology as everything beyond the naked body (15:00) - Marinetti, Svevo, and the mammoth: technology as relationship (17:54) - Walter Benjamin, The Matrix, and who controls the storyline (20:51) - Bresson's decisive moment vs. Nietzsche's blow it up (22:25) - Agency under attack: reclaiming embodied experience (25:47) - Machiavelli donning the robes of the past (28:44) - Nost...
Week 50 of Ted Gioia's Immersive Humanities List brings us to three mid-20th-century thinkers wrestling with art, media, and the modern world: Susan Sontag, Walter Benjamin, and José Ortega y Gasset.I begin with Susan Sontag's famous essay “In Plato's Cave” from On Photography. Writing in 1972, she asks how photography changes our relationship to memory and experience. At the time, photographs were printed objects. We saved them in albums, books, or wallets. Today we carry thousands in our pockets. If photographs once captured moments, now they seem to overwhelm them.Walter Benjamin's “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” pushes this further, asking what happens to art when it can be endlessly copied. Photography and film, he argues, transform not just art but perception itself.Finally, José Ortega y Gasset's The Revolt of the Masses explores the rise of “mass-man”—a culture where opinions are everywhere but the pursuit of truth is optional.Taken together, these essays were more uncomfortable than I expected: the problems of our modern media world may have been visible long before smartphones, if only we'd paid attention.LINKTed Gioia/The Honest Broker's 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)CONNECTThe complete list of Crack the Book Episodes: https://cheryldrury.substack.com/p/crack-the-book-start-here?r=u3t2rTo read more of my writing, visit my Substack - https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.Follow me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cldrury/ LISTENSpotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bdApple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crack-the-book/id1749793321 Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm
Giuseppe Castellano talks to writer and (sneaky) artist, Nishant Jain, about why it's okay for artists to say, “I am a creative”; how we can break free of social media prison; why one's creative practice is like an infinite game; and more.To learn more about Nishant, visit sneakyartist.com.Books mentioned in this episode include: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction and On Photography If you find value in this podcast, you can support it by subscribing to our best-selling publication, Notes On Illustration, on Substack. Among other benefits, you will gain access to bonus episodes we call “Extra Credit”. | Visit illustrationdept.com for offerings like mentorships and portfolio reviews, testimonials, our alumni showcase, and more. | Music for the podcast was created by Oatmello. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Generative A.I., once an uncanny novelty, is now being used to create not only images and videos but entire “artists.” Its boosters claim that the technology is merely a tool to facilitate human creativity; the major use cases we've seen thus far—and the money being poured into these projects—tell a different story. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss the output of Timbaland's A.I. rapper TaTa Taktumi and the synthetic actress Tilly Norwood. They also look back at movies and television that imagined what our age of A.I. would look like, from “2001: A Space Odyssey” onward. “A.I. has been a source of fascination, of terror, of appeal,” Schwartz says. “It's the human id in virtual form—at least in human-made art.”Read, watch, and listen with the critics:TaTa Taktumi's “Glitch x Pulse”Cardi B's “Am I the Drama?”“Pop Star Academy: KATSEYE” (2024)“Dear Tilly Norwood,” by Betty Gilpin (The Hollywood Reporter)Tilly Norwood's Instagram account“Holly Herndon's Infinite Art,” by Anna Wiener (The New Yorker)“2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968)“The Morning Show” (2019—)“Simone” (2002)“Blade Runner” (1982)“Ex Machina” (2014)“The Man Who Sells Unsellable New York Apartments,” by Alexandra Schwartz (The New Yorker)“The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” by Walter Benjamin“The Death of the Author,” by Roland BarthesNew episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker that explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
In Locust Radio episode #30, Tish Turl interviews fellow Locust comrade, Adam Turl, on their new book, Gothic Capitalism: Art Evicted from Heaven and Earth (Revol Press, May 2, 2025). You can order the book from Revol Press, Amazon, or find it at other booksellers.Artists, ideas, books, writers, artworks and other stuff discussed in this episode: Adam Turl, Gothic Capitalism: Art Evicted from Heaven and Earth (Revol Press 2025); Ernst Fischer, The Necessity of Art (Verso, 2020); Boris Groys, “The Weak Universalism,” e-flux (2010); Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936); Walter Benjamin, “Theses on History” (1940); John Berger, Ways of Seeing (1972); Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative (2009); Mark Fisher, Flatline Constructs: Gothic Materialism and Cybernetic Theory-Fiction (2018); Donna Harraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto” (1985); Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1848); Rena Rädle & Vladan Jeremić; Joseph Beuys; John Heartfield; Anupam Roy; Richard Hamilton; R. Faze; Born Again Labor Museum; Amiri Baraka; Omnia Sol; Sister Wife Sex Strike; Dada; Judy Jordan; Bertolt Brecht; Claire Bishop; The Sublime; “Third Places;” Fluxus; Abstract Expressionism; The Sopranos; The Wire; Surrealism; Charlie Jane Anders; Emily St. John Mandel; Pier Paolo Pasolini, La Ricotta (1963) and The Hawks and the Sparrows (1966); Boots Riley; Federal Arts Project; Luis Buñuel, The Exterminating Angel (1962); The Artists Union; Voltaire, Candide (1759); Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967); Public Enemy, Fear of a Black Planet (1989); Beethoven, Symphony #9 (1822-1824); Sam Esmail, Leave the World Behind (2023); David Cronenberg, Videodrome (1983); Richard Seymour, Disaster Nationalism (2024)Produced by Tish Turl, Adam Turl, Omnia Sol and Alexander Billet. Theme by Omnia Sol, Drew Franzblau and Adam Turl. Hosts include Tish Turl, Laura Fair-Schulz and Adam Turl.
Çerçeve'nin yeni bölümünde Mert Söyler; ETH Zürih'te doktora çalışmalarını yürüten Güney Işık Tombak ile teknoloji-sanat ilişkisini, sanat üretimini yapay zekânın nasıl etkilediğini konuşuyor.Güney'in “History in the Making: Music Production in the Age of AI” makalesi
Join hosts Fr. Wesley Walker and Dr. Junius Johnson in this engaging episode of The Classical Mind as they dive into Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' contraversial work, The Communist Manifesto. Discover the historical context of the 1848 publication, the philosophy of historical materialism, and Marx's critique of capitalism. Explore key themes like class struggle, the proletarian revolution, and the manifesto's vision for a classless society. Whether you're a seasoned reader or new to Marxist thought, this episode offers insightful analysis of one of the most influential political documents in history. Perfect for enthusiasts of philosophy, politics, and economics!End Notes* Junius: The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton * Wesley:* “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” by Walter Benjamin* Why Marx Was Right by Terry Eagleton* The Catholic Social Teaching Collection by Word on Fire Get full access to The Classical Mind at www.theclassicalmind.com/subscribe
In episode 28 of Locust Radio, Adam Turl is joined by Anupam Roy – an artist based in Delhi and member of the Locust Collective. This episode is part of a series of interviews of current and former Locust Collective members and contributors. It is being conducted as research for a future text by Adam Turl on the conceptual and aesthetic strategies of the collective in the context of a cybernetic Anthropocene. Locust Radio hosts include Adam Turl, Laura Fair-Schulz, and Tish Turl. Producers include Alexander Billet, Omnia Sol, and Adam Turl. Related texts and topics: B.R. Ambedkar, see also B.R. Ambedkar, The Annihilation of Caste (1936) (pdf); James Baldwin (writer/author); Geroges Bataille, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings 1927-1939 (pdf); The Bengal Famine (1943); Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936); John Berger (artist and critic), see also Ways of Seeing (video) and Ways of Seeing (1972) (book); Chittaprosad Bhattacharya (artist); Pieter Bruegel the Elder (artist); Claire Bishop, Disordered Attention: How We Look at Art and Performance Today (2024); Bedatri D. Choudhury, “The Artist Who Sketched a Famine in India,” Hyperallergic (April 30, 2018); Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation; Ben Davis, Art in the After-Culture: Capitalist Crisis and Cultural Strategy (2022); Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (2009); Antonio Gramsci; Institutional Critique (art); Marshall McLuhan (philosopher); Fred Morton (author); Pier Paolo Pasolini (poet and filmmaker); Platform Capitalism; Lionello Puppi, Torment in Art (1991); Kohei Saito, Capital in the Anthropocene (2020); Shulka Sawant, “Cultivating a Taste for Nature: Tagore's Landscape Paintings,” Economic and Political Weekly 52, no. 19 (2017): 57–63; Songs for Sabotage, New Museum Triennial (2018); J.W.M. Turner (artist); Adam Turl, Dead Paintings (2010-); Adam Turl interviews Anupam Roy, “We Are Broken Cogs in the Machine,” Red Wedge (May 7, 2019); Vincent Van Gogh (artist).
In episode 26 of Locust Radio, Adam Turl is joined by Omnia Sol – a comic, video, and sound artist in Chicago. This episode is part of a series of interviews of current and former Locust Collective members and contributors. This series is being conducted as research for a future book by Adam Turl on the conceptual and aesthetic strategies of the collective in the context of a cybernetic Anthropocene. The featured closing music / sound art, “Overview” and “Wilhelmina,” are from Omnia Sol's forthcoming vs. Megalon. Check out their bandcamp. Locust Radio hosts include Adam Turl, Laura Fair-Schulz, and Tish Turl. Producers include Alexander Billet, Omnia Sol, and Adam Turl. Related texts and topics: Arte Povera; Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936); Michael Betancourt, Glitch Art in Theory and Practice (2017); William Blake; Claire Bishop, Disordered Attention: How We Look at Art and Performance Today (2024); Stan Brakhage ; Bertolt Brecht - see also Brecht, “A Short Organum for the Theater” (1948); Cybernetic Culture Research Unit; Mark Fisher, “Acid Communism (Unfinished Introduction)”; Ben Davis, Art in the After-Culture: Capitalist Crisis and Cultural Strategy (2022); Scott Dikkers, Jim's Journal (comic by the co-founder of the Onion); Dollar Art House; Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (2009); Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures (2014); Mark Fisher, K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher (2019); Flicker Films; Fully Automated Luxury (Gay) Space Communism; Glitch Art; Jean-Luc Godard; Grand Upright Music, Ltd. vs. Warner Brothers Records (Biz Markie) (1991); William Hogarth; Tamara Kneese, Death Glitch: How Techno-Solutionism Fails Us in This Life and Beyond (2023); Holly Lewis, “Toward AI Realism,” Spectre (2024); Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto (1848); Nam June Paik and TV Buddha; Harvey Pekar (comic artist); Gregory Sholette, Dark Matter: Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture (2010); Grafton Tanner, Babbling Corpse: Vaporwave and the Commodification of Ghosts (2016); TOSAS (The Omnia Sol Art Show); Nat Turner; Wildstyle and Style Wars (1983 film); YOVOZAL, “My Thoughts about AI and art,” YouTube video (2024)
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most celebrated thinkers of the twentieth century. Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, critic, historian, an investigator of culture, a maker of radio programmes and more. Notably, in his Arcades Project, he looked into the past of Paris to understand the modern age and, in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, examined how the new media of film and photography enabled art to be politicised, and politics to become a form of art. The rise of the Nazis in Germany forced him into exile, and he worked in Paris in dread of what was to come; when his escape from France in 1940 was blocked at the Spanish border, he took his own life.WithEsther Leslie Professor of Political Aesthetics at Birkbeck, University of LondonKevin McLaughlin Dean of the Faculty and Professor of English, Comparative Literature and German Studies at Brown UniversityAndCarolin Duttlinger Professor of German Literature and Culture at the University of OxfordProducer: Simon TillotsonIn Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production
Glada återvänder Bitter och Tysk efter sommarledigheten och är åter redo att göra vardagen grå och deprimerande. Tysk tar upp en gammal käpphäst och Bitter är inte sen att finna nya lösningar. Spel har spelats och siffran är 31. I avsnittet nämns: 18XX 18Turkey 18Norway Vabanque Belfort Mind MGMT Kings & Things* Awful Green Things from Outer Space Ra 1828 THree Kingdoms Redux Gettysburg Confucius Cascadia Cascadero Calico Root COIN Vast: The Crystal Caverns Arcs HeroQuest Dark World
Read the Longform Article on the Blog: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/4777-2/ Navigating Uncertainty, and Finding Meaning in a Fractured World Our era is characterized by the dominance of hyper-rationality and the relentless pursuit of objective truth, production, accomplishment and consumption. The human psyche finds itself adrift in a sea of fragmented images and disconnected meanings as the previous myths that used to give us purpose are exposed as hollow or erroneous. I see patients everyday that describe this phenomenon but not in these words. It is as if they are saying that they do not know who they are anymore. Not because they have changed but because all of the nodes and references points that used to contextualize their identity are stripped away or have been made foreign and incomprehensible. However the world still looks the same to them, despite its alienating effect. It is not the aesthetics of the world that are different, but the effect that it has on us. Because the world looks the same we feel crazy. Really it is our feelings telling us that the world is crazy even though it looks the same. Effective therapy in the modern world needs to get over its insecurities of feeling or looking crazy. If we don't let ourselves as therapists admit to patients that we also feel in pain, that we also feel crazy from these same forces, then how can therapy do anything but gaslight our patients more. When I see the news I feel like I am on drugs, even though I am stone cold sober. I know that the people on tv do not believe the things they say and are not acting for the reasons that they tell me as a spectator that they are. I am not a politician or a god, I am a therapist. I am as paralyzed against these forces as my patients are and yet I must help them recon with them. I must help them reckon with them even though I do not know how to reckon with them myself. I didn't understand it at first but have come around to the line of W.H. Auden that the Jungian analyst James Hillman liked to quote at the end of his life. “We are lived by forces that we pretend to understand.” -W. H. Auden Auden's line highlights how the frameworks and philosophies we resort to for certainty and order are often little more than self-delusion. The grand meaning-making systems of religion, science, politics, etc. that have risen to such cultural dominance are but feeble attempts to exert control over the ineffable complexities of being. Yet we cling tenaciously to these conceptual constructs, these hyper-real simulations, because the alternative – admitting the primacy of ambiguity, contradiction, and the unfathomable depths propelling our thoughts and actions – is simply too destabilizing. The simulacrum proliferates these hyper-rational facades and simulated realities precisely because they defend against having to confront the “forces we pretend to understand.” The philosopher Jean Baudrillard's concept of the simulacra, or a copy without an original – a realm where simulations and representations have become more “real” than reality itself – aptly captures the sense of alienation and dislocation that pervades contemporary culture. In this world of surfaces and appearances, the depth of human experience is often lost, and the quest for authentic meaning becomes increasingly elusive. Appearance of the Unreal The simulacrum is a conceptual framework proposed by the philosopher and cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard in his book “The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact” (2005). It refers to the realm of images and representations that have become detached from reality and taken on a life of their own in contemporary culture. According to Baudrillard, in the postmodern era, images and simulations have become more real than reality itself. Images circulate and multiply, creating a hyper reality that replaces the real world. In this realm, images no longer represent or refer to an external reality but instead become self-referential and self-generating. Some key characteristics of the simulacra as described by Baudrillard: It is a realm of simulacra, where copies and simulations have replaced the original and the authentic. It is a world of appearances and surfaces, where depth and meaning have been lost. It is a realm of fascination and seduction, where images captivate and manipulate the viewer. It is a world of illusion and virtuality, where the boundaries between the real and the imaginary have collapsed. The simulacra describes a semiotic vertigo, a self-referential hall of mirrors in which signifiers endlessly circulate and proliferate, unmoored from any ultimate signified or referent in material reality. It is a world that has become untethered from the symbolic order, that transcendent horizon of meaning and metaphysical grounding which allows a culture to orient human experience within a coherent frame. For Baudrillard, the implications of this unraveling of the symbolic order are profoundly disorienting and alienating. The perpetual bombardment of images and spectacle produces a crisis of meaning and a loss of critical distance. Signs and representations become unhinged from the tangible contexts and embodied human narratives that could imbue them with authenticity and significance. Gilbert Durand's Imaginary Gilbert Durand's concept of the imaginary, as described in his book “The Anthropological Structures of the Imaginary” (1960), can provide valuable insights into the crisis of meaning in the postmodern world. Durand argues that the human imagination is structured by fundamental archetypal patterns that shape our understanding of the world. For Durand, the realm of images, symbols, and myths constitutes the collective imaginary of a culture, providing a symbolic framework through which individuals can navigate the complexities of existence. However, in the postmodern era, the traditional symbols and myths that once anchored the imaginary have been eroded by the forces of secularization, rationalization, and technological change. The result is a fragmentation of the imaginary, a loss of symbolic coherence that leaves individuals adrift in a sea of disconnected images and meanings. Durand suggests that the crisis of meaning in contemporary culture is not merely a matter of intellectual or philosophical confusion, but a profound disruption of the archetypal structures that underpin human experience. The challenge, then, is to reconnect with new symbols and myths that can restore a sense of coherence and purpose. Michel Serres and the Proliferation of Images Michel Serres, in his work, explores the growing influence of images and visual media in contemporary society. He argues that the proliferation of images has created a new kind of environment that shapes our perception, knowledge, and behavior. Serres's perspective highlights the way in which images and simulations have come to dominate contemporary culture. The endless circulation of images creates a sense of information overload and semiotic confusion, making it difficult for individuals to discern what is real and what is illusory. In this context, the task of therapy becomes one of helping patients navigate the world of images, to find ways of grounding their experience in authentic human relationships and chosen, not preprogrammed, narratives. This may involve a critical interrogation of the images and representations that shape our understanding of the world, as well as a renewed emphasis on the importance of symbolic meaning and archetypal structures. The simulacrum is not merely a philosophical or semiotic problem, but a profound existential challenge. It undermines the very foundations of human subjectivity, calling into question the assumptions and beliefs that have traditionally provided a sense of order and purpose to human experience. In this context, the role of therapy becomes one of helping patients to confront the radical uncertainty and ambiguity of the postmodern condition. This may involve a willingness to embrace the inherent contradictions and paradoxes of existence, to find meaning in the midst of chaos and confusion. A Heap of Broken Images in the Waste Land of the Modern The crisis of meaning that haunts the modern age is poignantly evoked in T.S. Eliot's “The Waste Land.” The poem's fragmented structure and kaleidoscopic imagery reflect the shattered psyche of a post-war generation, struggling to find coherence and purpose in a world that has lost its moral and spiritual bearings. The “heap of broken images” that Eliot describes is a powerful metaphor for the breakdown of the shared cultural narratives and value systems that once provided a sense of unity and direction to human life. This theme is echoed in the work of the Jungian analyst Edward Edinger, who argues that the loss of these collective “containers” of meaning has left individuals increasingly vulnerable to the direct impact of archetypal forces. Cut off from the mediating influence of cultural traditions and communal myths, the modern psyche is exposed to the raw power of the unconscious, leading to a range of psychological disturbances, from neurosis and obsession to psychosis and despair. At the core of the human experience lie archetypal energies, biological drives, unconscious impulses that defy rationalization. The Jungian analyst Edward Edinger highlighted how the breakdown of cultural narratives and societal containers in modernity has left the individual psyche exposed to these primordial currents without adequate symbolic mediation. We are “lived” more by these depths than by the ideological scripts we rehearse on the surface. The totalizing ideological systems and regimes of image-commodification so pervasive in late capitalism can be viewed as anxious attempts to reinstall order and stuff the denied “forces” back into an old and broken symbolic container. But as Auden intuited, and as the desolation of “The Waste Land” gives voice to, such efforts are doomed to fail in reinstating an authentic sense of meaning and rootedness. What is required is a re-enchantment of the world, a resacrilization of existence that can hold the tensions of the rational and irrational, the structured and the chaotic, in productive paradox. Rather than defensive pretense, the goal becomes to live into the mysteries with humility and openness. Only by greeting “the forces we pretend to understand” with vulnerability and courage can we hope to restore the symbolic depths modernity has paved over with hyper-rational simulations and spectacles. The Jungian idea of the tension of the opposites can help us make sense of the dichotomy between the real we we are seeing and the unreal that we are feeling. By trying to pick between these forces we have to pick between either feeling crazy and acting sane or feeling sane and acting crazy. If we are able to feel the truth of both the real an unreal, subjective and objective tension that the cognitive dissonance of the modern era is causing it will become a powerful intuition. This powerful intuition was something harnessed by the theorists and writers mentioned in this essay. It is why their work feels so true even where it might seem on the surface like madness. Such an approach does not abandon logic, analysis and differentiated understanding. Rather, it balances these with an embrace of ambiguity, a readiness to engage the symbolic potencies of the unconscious, myth and the mysteries that exceed rational categorization. The Buddhist notion of the “still point” that so haunts “The Waste Land” evokes this posture of dwelling in the creative spaciousness between conceptual fixities. For Jung, it is only through metabolizing psychic opposition that true depth and wholeness can arise. The reconciliation of conflicts within honors psyche's inexhaustible fertility, rather than defensively walling meaning off within cardboard ideological constructs. Real and Unreal Time Henri Bergson wrote that lived time (durée) is fundamentally different from the spatialized, quantified conception of time in science. He saw duration as a heterogeneous, interpenetrating flow irreducible to discrete instants. Intuition, rather than intellect, is the faculty by which we can grasp this dynamic continuity of consciousness. In Creative Evolution, Bergson proposed that evolution is driven by an élan vital – an immanent, indivisible current of life that flows through all living beings, giving rise to novelty and creative emergence rather than just gradual, continuous adaptation. Totalizing ideologies and the “regimes of image-commodification” in late capitalism are anxious attempts to reinstate a sense of order, but are doomed to fail at providing authentic meaning. What is needed is a re-enchantment and resacralization of the world that can hold the paradoxical tensions between rational and irrational, structured and chaotic. The Jungian notion of the tension of opposites illuminates the dichotomy between the “real” we see and the “unreal” we feel in the modern world. By feeling the truth of both and inhabiting that cognitive dissonance, it can become a powerful intuition – something you argue animates the work of the thinkers and writers you mention. The goal is to dwell in the “creative spaciousness” between conceptual fixities, balancing differentiated understanding with an openness to ambiguity, unconscious symbolism, and mystery. Metabolizing psychic opposition in this way allows for true wholeness to emerge, honoring the psyche's deep generativity. Bergson sits with the same Phenomenon as Eddinger. The modern mind, unmoored from traditional cultural and spiritual structures that once provided symbolic mediation and containment of archetypal energies, is more vulnerable to being overwhelmed by unconscious forces in the wake of traumatic rupture. Rebuilding an authentic relationship to meaning after trauma thus requires recovering a sense of anchoring in the living weave of the world's mystery and hidden coherence beneath the fragmenting onslaught of a hyper-rationalized, dispirited culture. Magic as Real and Unreal Intuition Bergson distinguishes between two forms of religious belief and practice: the “static religion” of closed societies, characterized by conformity to established norms and rituals, and the “dynamic religion” of open societies, driven by the creative impetus of mystical intuition. Within this framework, Bergson sees magic as a primitive form of static religion. He argues that magic arises from an extension of the “logic of solids” – our practical intelligence attuned to manipulating the material world – into the realm of human affairs. Just as we can cause changes in physical objects through our actions, magical thinking assumes that we can influence others and control events through symbolic gestures and incantations. Fabulation, on the other hand, is the human faculty of myth-making and storytelling. For Bergson, fabulation serves a vital social function by creating shared narratives and beliefs that bind communities together. It is a defensive reaction of nature against the dissolving power of intelligence, which, left unchecked, could undermine social cohesion by questioning established norms and practices. While Bergson sees both magic and fabulation as grounded in a kind of “fiction,” he does not dismiss them as mere illusions. Rather, he acknowledges their pragmatic value in structuring human life and experience. However, he also recognizes their limitations and potential dangers, especially when they harden into closed, dogmatic systems that stifle individual creativity and moral progress. In contrast to static religion, Bergson celebrates the dynamic, mystical élan of open religion, which he sees as the highest expression of the creative impulse of life. Mystics, through their intuitive coincidence with the generative source of reality, are able to break through the closed shells of tradition and breathe new vitality into ossified institutions and beliefs.Bergson's perspective on the creative, evolutionary impulse of life (élan vital) and the role of intuition in connecting with this generative force can provide a compelling lens for understanding the impact of trauma on the human psyche. In Bergson's view, intuition is the key to tapping into the dynamic, flowing nature of reality and aligning ourselves with the creative unfolding of life. It allows us to break through the rigid, spatialized categories of the intellect and coincide with the inner durational flux of consciousness and the world. Trauma, however, can be seen as a profound disruption of this intuitive attunement. The overwhelming, often unspeakable nature of traumatic experience can shatter our sense of coherence and continuity, leaving us feeling disconnected from ourselves, others, and the vital currents of life. In this state of fragmentation and dissociation, we may turn to various coping mechanisms and defenses that, while serving a protective function, can also further distract us from the healing power of intuition. For example, we may become rigidly fixated on controlling our environment, engaging in compulsive behaviors, or retreating into numbing addictions – all attempts to manage the chaos and terror of unintegrated traumatic memories. These trauma responses can be seen as a kind of “static religion” writ small – closed, repetitive patterns that provide a sense of familiarity and safety, but at the cost of flexibility, growth, and open engagement with the dynamism of life. They fulfill some of the same functions as the collective myths and rituals Bergson associated with fabulation, but in a constricted, individual way that ultimately keeps us stuck rather than propelling us forward. Moreover, the energy consumed by these trauma adaptations can leave us depleted and less able to access the vitalizing power of intuition. Instead of flowing with the creative impulse of the élan vital, we become caught in stagnant eddies of reactivity and defense. However, just as Bergson saw the potential for dynamic, open religion to renew and transform static, closed systems, healing from trauma involves a return to intuitive attunement and a reintegration with the generative flux of life. This may involve working through and releasing the residual charge of traumatic activation, re-establishing a sense of safety and embodied presence, and cultivating practices that reconnect us with the creative wellsprings of our being. In Jungian psychology, intuition is seen as a function that mediates between the conscious and unconscious realms of the psyche. Conscious intuition involves a deliberate, reflective engagement with the insights and promptings that emerge from our deeper layers of being. It requires an attitude of openness, curiosity, and discernment, as we seek to integrate the wisdom of the unconscious into our conscious understanding and decision-making. Unconscious intuition, on the other hand, operates below the threshold of awareness, influencing our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in ways that we may not fully comprehend. When we are cut off from a conscious relationship with our intuitive function – as is often the case in the wake of trauma – our unconscious intuitions can become distorted, projected, and misused. This might manifest as projections, where we unconsciously attribute our own disowned qualities or experiences onto others, leading to interpersonal conflicts and misunderstandings. It could also take the form of acting out, where unintegrated traumatic experiences drive us to engage in compulsive, self-destructive behaviors. Or it might express itself through somatization, where the body carries the unresolved trauma that the conscious mind cannot bear. As we develop this more conscious relationship with our unconscious intuition, we can begin to discern the difference between reactive, trauma-based projections and genuine intuitive insights. We can learn to trust and follow the deeper wisdom of our psyche, while also maintaining the boundaries and discernment necessary for healthy functioning. Nietzsche saw logic as a form of insecurity In his writing Friedrich Nietzsche saw clearly that the philosophical and scientific works of ultra logical men were not dispassionate, rational examinations of truth, but rather deeply personal confessions that reveal the innermost fears, anxieties, and desires of their authors. He saw the most logical minds greatest works as opportunities to psychoanalyze men who could not see the “forces” that lived through them or the ones they had repressed. Science and philosophy for Nietzsche were merely unconsciously projected psychological struggles onto the world, creating elaborate metaphysical systems and grand narratives that serve to assuage their deepest existential terrors. There is much truth in this. When I have a radically existential patient that tells that “hell is other people” I know that that person is really telling me that they, themselves, feel like they are in hell.Nietzsche viewed science and philosophy as unconscious projections of psychological struggles onto the world. Nietzsche argues that the more a philosophical work presents itself as a purely logical, objective analysis, the more it betrays the underlying psychological desperation and spiritual repression of its creator. The grandiose claims to absolute truth and certainty that characterize much of Western philosophy are, for Nietzsche, simply a manifestation of the philosopher's inability to confront the fundamental chaos, uncertainty, and meaninglessness of existence. By constructing abstract, rationalistic systems that promise to explain and control reality, philosophers seek to impose order and stability on a world that is ultimately beyond their comprehension. In this sense, Nietzsche sees the history of philosophy as a series of opportunities to eavesdrop while thinkers inadvertently disclose their most intimate fears and longings while claiming to have discovered universal truths. The more a philosopher insists on the logical necessity and objective validity of their system, the more they reveal the intensity of their own psychological needs and the depths of their existential anguish. The quest for absolute knowable truth and certainty is fundamentally misguided. The fragmentation and uncertainty that characterize the modern world are not problems to be solved through the application of reason, but rather the inevitable consequence of the collapse of the illusions and defenses that have sustained human beings throughout history. Nietzsche the Therapist Rather than seeking to impose a pre-existing framework of meaning onto the patient's experience, the therapist must work to help the individual confront and embrace the fundamental groundlessness of knowable and quantifiable existence. By learning to let go of the need for certainty and control, and by cultivating a sense of openness and creativity in the face of the unknown, the patient can begin to discover a more authentic and empowering way of being in the world. Just as philosophers have often unconsciously projected their own fears and desires onto the world, so too may therapists be tempted to impose their own beliefs and values onto their patients. When a patient comes in and says, “hell is other people,” they are really telling the therapist that they, themselves, feel like they are in hell. Ultimately, the task of healing the modern soul requires a willingness to embrace the full complexity and ambiguity of the human condition, to grapple with the shadows and uncertainties that haunt the edges of our awareness. It requires a stance of openness, curiosity, and compassion towards the multiplicity of human experience, and a recognition that our deepest truths often lie beyond the reach of any single theory or perspective. “The aim of therapy is to help the patient come to a point where he can live with uncertainty, without props, without the feeling that he must conform in order to belong. He must learn to live by his own resources, to stand on his own two feet.” -Fritz Perls Walter Benjamin is Shocking Walter Benjamin wrote in his essay “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire,” “The shock experience which the passer-by has in the crowd corresponds to what the worker ‘experiences' at his machine.” In a world where the constant barrage of stimuli, the ceaseless flow of images and information, and the relentless pace of change have become the norm, the human sensorium is subjected to a perpetual onslaught of “shocks” that threaten to overwhelm our capacity for conscious reflection and meaningful engagement with the world. This ubiquitous experience of shock, for Benjamin, is intimately connected to the phenomenon of trauma. In a world where the protective barriers of tradition, ritual, and collective meaning have been eroded, the psyche is left increasingly vulnerable to the impact of events that exceed its capacity for understanding and assimilation. The result is a profound sense of alienation, disorientation, and fragmentation – a kind of pervasive traumatization of the modern soul. Benjamin's insights into the relationship between shock, trauma, and the technologization of experience have potential implications for the practice of psychotherapy. They suggest that the task of healing in the modern world must involve more than simply addressing the symptoms of individual psychopathology, but must also grapple with the broader cultural and societal forces that shape the context of psychological suffering. In a world where the protective barriers of tradition, ritual, and collective meaning have been eroded, the psyche is left increasingly vulnerable to the impact of events that exceed its capacity for understanding and assimilation. This results in a profound sense of alienation, disorientation, and fragmentation – a kind of pervasive traumatization of the modern soul. It is all too easy for the psychotherapeutic encounter to reproduce the very conditions that contribute to the traumatization of the self. By creating a space of safety, containment, and reflection, the therapist can help the patient to develop the capacity for what Benjamin calls “contemplative immersion” – a mode of engagement with the world that resists the fragmenting and alienating effects of shock that highly logical psychoeducational or cognitive therapy might cause. For Benjamin, this loss of aura is symptomatic of a broader crisis of experience in modernity. In a world where everything is mediated through the filter of technology and mass media, our capacity for direct, unmediated experience is increasingly eroded. We become passive consumers of a never-ending stream of images and sensations, unable to anchor ourselves in the concrete realities of embodied existence. From this perspective everyone becomes a potential producer and distributor of images. We can become mindful of the images and sensations of our inner world and understand what we have internalized. This allows us to reject the empty images and symbols we still have allegiance to and to choose what we absorb from culture and what images we can create internally for ourselves. For Benjamin, the suffering and trauma of individuals cannot be understood in isolation from the broader social, economic, and political forces that we internalize as inner images that effect our experience of an outer world. Therapists who are informed by Benjamin's ideas may seek to help individuals not only heal from their own traumatic experiences but also to develop a critical consciousness and a sense of agency in the face of collective struggles. This agency in the patient can start with simply acknowledging these realities in therapy as forces that still do effect us. All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace In an era where the dominant paradigm asserts that everything can and should be understood through the lens of rigid science and radical logic, we find ourselves grappling with a profound sense of meaninglessness. The emergence of conspiracy theories like Q Anon can be seen as a manifestation of our unconscious collective yearning for a coherent narrative that explains the invisible forces that shape our lives. In a world where the true levers of power often remain hidden from view, these folk mythologies provide a sense of order and purpose, even if they are ultimately illusory. One way to avoid not only destructive conspiracy theories, but also being manipulated by cults and advertisements, is to bring these hidden needs and pains to the surface of the psyche in therapy. If we make them know to ourselves they will not be able to hijack our emotional systems and manipulate our behavior. Viewing ourselves as purely rational and intellectual beings is what leaves these drives for comprehension, stability, inclusion, importance and purpose ripe for exploitation. Overly cognitive or intellectual therapy can leave these forces dormant as well or worse repress them further beneath the surface of the psyche. As Adam Curtis critiqued in the documentary “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace,” the notion that humans are merely computers that can be programmed and optimized is a seductive but ultimately flawed worldview. If we think that we are computers then will be driven mad by the dreams within us that cannot find expression through a binary choice. In the face of this existential uncertainty, psychotherapy must evolve to help patients cultivate a different kind of knowledge—one that is rooted in intuition and inner wisdom rather than intellectual mastery. This is not to say that we should abandon empiricism altogether, but rather that we must recognize its limitations and embrace a more humble, open-ended approach to understanding ourselves and the world around us. The poem “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace” by Richard Brautigan, which inspired Curtis's documentary, envisions a future where humans and nature are harmoniously integrated with technology. While the poem's utopian vision may seem naive in retrospect, it speaks to a deep longing for a world in which we are not alienated from ourselves, each other, and the natural world. In the context of psychotherapy, this means helping patients to cultivate a sense of connection and meaning that transcends the narrow confines of intellectual understanding. All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace I like to think (and the sooner the better!) of a cybernetic meadow where mammals and computers live together in mutually programming harmony like pure water touching clear sky. I like to think (right now, please!) of a cybernetic forest filled with pines and electronics where deer stroll peacefully past computers as if they were flowers with spinning blossoms. I like to think (it has to be!) of a cybernetic ecology where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by machines of loving grace. -Richard Brautigan Re-visioning Psychology James Hillman, a prominent post-Jungian thinker, presented a radical re-envisioning of psychology in his seminal work, “Re-Visioning Psychology” (1975). His main arguments challenged the prevailing assumptions of modern psychology and proposed a new approach rooted in the imagination, mythology, and the archetypal dimensions of the psyche. The “Soul” as Central: Hillman argues for a psychology centered on the “soul,” which he understands not as a religious or metaphysical entity, but as a perspective that deepens and “pathologizes” our engagement with life. He critiques modern psychology for reducing the psyche to the ego and neglecting the imaginative, poetic, and mythic dimensions of experience. Archetypal Psychology: Drawing on Jung's concept of archetypes, Hillman proposes an “archetypal psychology” that sees the psyche as inherently plural and polytheistic. He argues that psychological experiences and symptoms are best understood as expressions of archetypal patterns and images, rather than as personal pathologies to be cured. The Primacy of Image: For Hillman, the image is the primary mode of psychic reality. He emphasizes the need to attend to the autonomous, living images of the psyche – as expressed in dreams, fantasies, and symptoms – rather than reducing them to concepts or interpreting them in literal, personalistic terms. Pathologizing: Hillman challenges the medical model of psychology, which sees psychological distress as a disorder to be eliminated. Instead, he advocates for a “pathologizing” approach that honors the soul's need for depth, complexity, and engagement with the full range of human experience, including suffering and shadow aspects. Psyche as Story: Hillman sees the psyche as inherently narrative and mythic. He argues that we need to engage with the archetypal stories and patterns that shape our lives, rather than trying to “cure” or “solve” them. This involves cultivating a poetic, imaginative sensibility that can embrace paradox, ambiguity, and the unknown. Ecological Sensibility: Hillman's psychology is deeply ecological, recognizing the interdependence of psyche and world. He argues that psychological healing must involve a reconnection with the anima mundi, the soul of the world, and a re-ensouling of our relationship with nature, culture, and the cosmos. Critique of Individualism: Hillman challenges the modern ideal of the autonomous, self-contained individual. He sees the psyche as inherently relational and context-dependent, shaped by the archetypes, myths, and collective patterns of the culture and the wider world. Throughout “Re-Visioning Psychology,” Hillman argues for a psychology that is poetic, imaginative, and soulful, one that can embrace the full complexity and mystery of the human experience. His work has been influential in the fields of depth psychology, ecopsychology, and the humanities, offering a rich and provocative alternative to the dominant paradigms of modern psychology. The days of psychoanalysis, which sought to dissect every aspect of the psyche in an attempt to achieve total comprehension, are indeed over. Instead, mental health professionals must focus on helping patients to be at peace with uncertainty and to develop the resilience and adaptability needed to navigate an ever-changing world. This requires a shift away from the pursuit of mastery and control and towards a more fluid, dynamic understanding of the self and the world. The Post Secular Sacred: In his book “The Spirituality Revolution: The Emergence of Contemporary Spirituality” (2004), David Tacey, an Australian scholar in the fields of spirituality, religion, and depth psychology, presents a compelling argument about the emergence of a “post-secular sacred” in contemporary culture. Tacey observes that while traditional religious institutions and beliefs have declined in the modern West, there has been a simultaneous resurgence of interest in spirituality, particularly among younger generations. He argues that this “spirituality revolution” represents a shift towards a new, post-secular understanding of the sacred that transcends the dichotomy between religious and secular worldviews. Critique of Secular Materialism: Tacey argues that the dominant paradigm of secular materialism, which reduces reality to the objectively measurable and dismisses the spiritual dimension of life, is inadequate for meeting the deep human need for meaning, purpose, and connection. He sees the rise of contemporary spirituality as a response to the existential emptiness and ecological crisis engendered by a purely materialistic worldview. Re-enchantment of the World: Drawing on the work of thinkers such as Carl Jung, Mircea Eliade, and Thomas Berry, Tacey argues for a re-enchantment of our understanding of the world, one that recognizes the presence of the sacred in nature, the cosmos, and the depths of the psyche. He sees this as a necessary corrective to the modern disenchantment of the world, which has led to a sense of alienation, meaninglessness, and ecological destruction. The Sacredness of the Ordinary: Tacey emphasizes the importance of discovering the sacred in the midst of everyday life, rather than solely in the context of religious institutions or transcendent experiences. He argues for a democratization of the sacred, where individuals can cultivate a sense of the numinous in their relationships, work, creativity, and engagement with the natural world. Spirituality as a Developmental Process: Drawing on the work of psychologists such as Jean Piaget and James Fowler, Tacey presents spirituality as a developmental process, one that unfolds in stages from childhood to adulthood. He argues that the emergence of post-secular spirituality represents a new stage in this process, characterized by a more integrative, pluralistic, and ecologically conscious understanding of the sacred. Engaging with the Shadow: Tacey emphasizes the importance of engaging with the shadow aspects of spirituality, such as the potential for spiritual narcissism, escapism, or the abuse of power. He argues for a grounded, embodied spirituality that integrates the light and dark aspects of the psyche and is committed to ethical action in the world. Ongoing Dialogue between Spirituality and Religion: While affirming the value of post-secular spirituality, Tacey also recognizes the ongoing importance of traditional religious traditions as sources of wisdom, community, and ethical guidance. He advocates for a dialogue between contemporary spirituality and religion, one that can lead to a mutual enrichment and transformation. Post-Jungian thinkers who have advocated for a “post-secular sacred” have argued for a kind of scientific empiricism that is infused with a sense of humility, wonder, and openness to the unknown. This perspective recognizes that there are limits to what we can know and understand, but it also affirms the value of subjective experience and the power of intuition and imagination. In practice, this could lead to new forms of psychoeducation and therapy that emphasize the cultivation of inner wisdom, self-compassion, and a sense of connection to something larger than oneself. Rather than striving to achieve perfect understanding or control, patients would be encouraged to embrace the inherent uncertainty of life and to find meaning and purpose in the present moment. This is no easy task for therapists. To be truly helpful guides on this path, we must have the honesty to admit that we too are adrift in a sea of uncertainty and fragmented narratives. The solid ground of empirical certitudes and secular meaning systems has receded, leaving us to navigate by situational awareness and intuition. Instead, we must develop a new kind of post-secular faith – not in final truths, but in the intuitive process of sense-making itself. We, as therapists, must be honest with patients, but in doing so we run the risk of seeming stupid, unqualified or crazy. We don't know how to do this as therapists either. We don't have to know how but we have to develop the, perhaps post secular, faith that we can and the intuition to know in which directions to go. We must do all of this in a culture that gives us nothing but uncertainty and heaps of broken images. New Goals for Therapy The goals of psychoanalysis are now waiting and new goals must be determined for psychotherapy. The cognitive revolution has done so much damage putting all emphasis on changing external behavior and putting no emphasis on internal inside or capacity for reflection and the ability to “hold the energy” of being human. One thing that I try and prepare patients for as a psychotherapist is that when they get what they want out of therapy, when their behavior changes are they accomplished some goal, they won't be happy. People don't believe me they tell me how if they could just do this or just do that everything would be better. I have patients that want to get a job, want to move out from living with their parents, want to learn how to be in a relationship, want to attain friendships, a higher salary, any number of things. When they actually do accomplish these goals they realize that the emotions and the hurt and frustration that made these things seem so unattainable are still there even after those things have been attained. My point is that psychotherapy is a process of growth and that when you get what you want you don't feel better because you've grown and you now have a new goal. We need to deal with the way that we feel and the restlessness that not having the goal creates. These are the tensions that make us human and the real reason that wee are in therapy. Viewing psychotherapy as a means to accomplish something is not going to get us anywhere good. We do accomplishing things in therapy, quite a few things, but we have forgotten that was not the point. For the postmodern self is indeed “lived by forces we pretend to understand.” The archaic currents of archetypal life perpetually destabilize our rational narratives and identities. Yet these are not obstacles to be mastered, but the very raw material and creative thermals we must learn to surf upon. Therapy becomes an art of presencing the interplay of potencies – metabolizing their inexorable unfoldings with radical lucidity and compassion. Ultimately, the goal of psychotherapy in a post-secular, post-empirical world is not to eliminate suffering or to achieve some kind of final, absolute truth. Rather, it is to help patients develop the capacity to face the unknown with courage, curiosity, and compassion. By embracing a more humble, intuitive approach to mental health, we can help individuals to find meaning and purpose in a world that is always in flux, and to cultivate the resilience and adaptability needed to thrive in an uncertain future. If you are scratching your head that is fine. I don't know how either but I still know that we can. I have a faith that I feel is more real than what my intellect allows. The future has always been a copy without an original. The past is built on copies of the inner images that others have externalized consciously or not. All we can learn is to recognize the images inside and outside ourselves to discard the unreal and find the more than real. Our lives are an interplay of forces and we cannot prevent or defeat that. We can only learn to build behavior and cultural machinery to handle the dynamics of their flow. We are lived by forces that we pretend to understand. At times these forces seem unbearable or impossible to live with, but we must remember also that these forces exist through us and bring that tension into awareness. When I spent time as a patient in psychotherapy I encountered a lot of drowning and swimming metaphors from my therapists. Perhaps the seas are too rough now to teach patients to swim. Perhaps we need to teach patients to sail a boat. Together we can build a culture than can sail ships again. Freud thought he was a mechanic fixing the boat engine in the patients head but it is time to forget all that reductive scientific positivism. We need to remember to breath and remember how to use the wind. The watchers' eyes now give out light. The light's receiver- flower coiled up behind their nosebones changes place. It crawls out through their pupils. The bundled nervy flowers make a circuit be- tween each other. Bolts the color of limes boil forking through the busy air. Their brains are still inside them. But the sundown's made to simmer with a brain that none of them quite have alone. Each one has something like it. Facets of the brain's shelled diamond. The cage-strumming man strings out his carousel of shapes while catgut thrums out slippery chords. And the people watching him are in the circuit of an ancient battery that sleeps behind their eyes. None of them will know how to tell what's happened. But every one will know that it can happen again. They'll variously say: I was a tree. I was a vine that sucked the brasswork. I was an ivy knot that lived on milk of stones. – Michael S Judge, Lyrics of the Crossing References and Further Reading: Baudrillard, J. (2005). The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact. Berg Publishers. Benjamin, W. (1969). The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In H. Arendt (Ed.), Illuminations. Schocken Books. Brautigan, R. (1967). All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace. In All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace. The Communication Company. Curtis, A. (2011). All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace [Documentary series]. BBC. Edinger, E. F. (1984). The Creation of Consciousness: Jung's Myth for Modern Man. Inner City Books. Eliot, T. S. (1922). The Waste Land. Horace Liveright. #eikonosphere #eikon Frankl, V. E. (1959). Man's Search for Meaning. Beacon Press. Jung, C. G. (1968). The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (2nd ed.). Princeton University Press. Judge, M. S. (2014). Lyrics of the Crossing. Black Ocean. Nietzsche, F. (1974). The Gay Science (W. Kaufmann, Trans.). Vintage Books. Nietzsche, F. (1989). On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo (W. Kaufmann & R. J. Hollingdale, Trans.). Vintage Books. Romanyshyn, R. D. (2007). The Wounded Researcher: Research with Soul in Mind. Spring Journal Books. Tacey, D. (2004). The Spirituality Revolution: The Emergence of Contemporary Spirituality. Routledge. Taylor, C. (2007). A Secular Age. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Yalom, I. D. (1980). Existential Psychotherapy. Basic Books.
The internet is in decay. Do a Google search, and there are so many websites now filled with slapdash content contorted just to rank highly in the algorithm. Facebook, YouTube, X and TikTok all used to feel more fun and surprising. And all these once-great media companies have been folding or shedding staff members, unable to find a business model that works.And into this weakened internet came the flood of A.I.-generated junk. There's been a surge of spammy news sites filled with A.I.-generated articles. TikTok videos of A.I.-generated voices reading text pulled from Reddit can be churned out in seconds. And self-published A.I.-authored books are polluting Amazon listings.According to my guest today, Nilay Patel, this isn't just a blip, as the big platforms figure out how to manage this. He believes that A.I. content will break the internet as we know it.“When you increase the supply of stuff onto those platforms to infinity, that system breaks down completely,” Patel told me “Recommendation algorithms break down completely. Our ability to discern what is real and what is false breaks down completely. And I think, importantly, the business models of the internet break down completely.”Patel is one of the sharpest observers of the internet, and the ways technology has shaped and reshaped it. He's a co-founder and the editor in chief of The Verge, and the host of the “Decoder” podcast. In this conversation, we talk about why platforms seem so unprepared for the storm of A.I. content; whether an internet filled with cursory A.I. content is better or worse than an internet filled with good A.I. content; and if A.I. might be a kind of cleansing fire for the internet that enables something new and better to emerge.Mentioned:Help us win a Webby Award“Scenes from a dying web” by Casey Newton“The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” by Walter BenjaminBook Recommendations:The Conquest of Cool by Thomas FrankLiar in a Crowded Theater by Jeff KosseffSubstance by Peter HookEverything I Need I Get From You by Kaitlyn TiffanyExtremely Hardcore by Zoe SchifferBeyond Measure by James VincentThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Claire Gordon. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing from Isaac Jones and Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show's production team also includes Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.
Erik and Pills read Walter Benjamin's most famous essay (and perhaps the most famous essay of critical theory), The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Get this episode and all other exclusive episodes at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills
"Let the red dawn surmise / What we shall do, / When the blue starlight dies / And all is through." This short poem, an epigraph to "The Yellow Sign," arguably the most memorable tale in Robert W. Chambers' 1895 collection The King in Yellow, encapsulates in four brief lines the affect that drives cosmic horror: the fearful sense of imminent annihilation. In the four stories JF and Phil discuss in this episode, this affect, which would inspire a thousand works of fiction in the twentieth century, emerges fully formed, dripping with the xanthous milk of Decadence. What's more, it is here given a symbol, a face, and a home in the Yellow Sign, the Pallid Mask of the Yellow King, and the lost land of Carcosa. Come one, come all. Join JF's upcoming course (https://mutations.blog/kubrick)on the films of Stanley Kubrick, starting March 28, 2024. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! REFERENCES Robert W. Chambers, The King in Yellow (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781840226447) Weird Studies, Episode 100 on John Carpenter films (https://www.weirdstudies.com/100) Algernon Blackwood, “The Man Who Found Out” (https://algernonblackwood.org/Z-files/The%20Man%20Who%20Found%20Out.pdf) Susannah Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781635576726) Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/benjamin.pdf) Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater, Thought Forms (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781909735996) Weird Studies, Episode 140 on “Spirited Away” (https://www.weirdstudies.com/140) Vladimir Nabokov, Think, Write, Speak (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781101873700) Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780674986916) David Bentley Hart, “Angelic Monster” (https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2017/10/angelic-monster) M. R. James, Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to you my Lad” (https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/jamesmr-ohwhistle/jamesmr-ohwhistle-00-h.html) William Carlos Williams, The Red Wheelbarrow (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45502/the-red-wheelbarrow)
Walter Benjamin born in 1892 was a German Jewish philosopher and cultural critic. Renowned for his essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," he explored the impact of mass media on art and culture. Benjamin, associated with the Frankfurt School, engaged deeply with Marxist theory and surrealism. His works often blended philosophy, literary criticism, and historical analysis, reflecting a unique interdisciplinary approach. Fleeing the Nazis, Benjamin died by suicide 1940 at the Spanish-French border, leaving an influential legacy in critical theory and cultural studies. In this presentation, we delve into the ethical and political dimensions of Walter Benjamin's curated selection of private letters from the nineteenth-century archives. Initially published in a daily newspaper in 1930 and later compiled into the book "German Men and Women" during his exile in France in 1936, Benjamin's strategic dissemination of these letters, accompanied by commentaries, serves as a focal point for analysis. In this episode of BIC Talks, Professor of German Language and Literature, Columbia University, Dorothea von Mücke, unravels the nuances of Benjamin's publication strategies, illustrating how they offer alternatives to the construction of a national character. The following discussion between Prof. von Mücke and author and translator Prashant Keshavmuthy particularly emphasises Benjamin's intervention in the political philosophy of history, exploring how his approach informs our quest to perceive, model, and document humaneness in behaviour and character. This is an extract from an in-person session that took place in December 2023 at the BIC premises. Subscribe to the BIC Talks Podcast on your favourite podcast app! BIC Talks is available everywhere, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Overcast, Audible and Amazon Music.
CritRPG - A Podcast about LitRPG, Progression Fantasy, and their authors
Hey hey everyone,today we welcome madness with open arms
Oh boy we've got something special! We're joined again by laborkyle to talk about Walter Benjamin and his essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Also AI, fascism, and dreams. Kyle's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/laborkyle Profane Illuminations: Theology for Militants https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeV314axro4 All Gamers Are Bastards: https://soundcloud.com/agabpod Media mentioned https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068327/ Discord: https://discord.gg/2CNQgjwgR
The Drunk Guys love beer two times this week when they read The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng. They also love beer madly, including Couch Surfer by Torch and Crown, Desperate Egos by Root + Branch Brewing, and The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Come fly away with us and Alain de Botton (sorry but he's coming too), and take a trip on Venga Airways - but we're not leaving the ground: you're trapped with us in the departure lounge, for ever. Are airports the most cursed spaces in the modern world? Liminal spaces between nations and cultures, a surveilled, high-security purgatory, with access to Oliver Bonas. Why the hell are Gen Z *choosing* to hang out there, for fun? And are personalised gifts like our Cursed Objects Toblerone the last gasp of late-period consumer capitalism? FULL EPISODE HERE >> ONLY £4 A MONTH for this and 20+ more bonus episodes, AND a free Cursed Objects sticker pack! https://www.patreon.com/posts/work-of-in-age-85132408 Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford
In this episode, recorded downwind from an increasingly immolated Canada, we interview Alexander Billet, author of the book, Shake the City: Experiments in Space and Time, Music and Crisis from 1968 Press (2022). We discuss music, the city, cultural fragmentation and the accelerated alienation of neoliberal culture, the “blue note,” Fred Ho's concept of kreolization, the digital algorithm as capitalist standardization of music, sound as social control, music as a potential tool of social revolution, crackle and anachronism, acid communism, and getting “left behind” by the bourgeois rapture. Alexander Billet is a member of the Locust Collective who has written numerous articles and reviews for the Los Angeles Review of Books, Salvage, Jacobin, and the Radical Art Review. Readings in this episode: “Feet Firmly Planted on the Earth,” by the late Iranian poet and Marxist Ahmad Shamlou, from the collection, Aida, Tree, Dagger, Memory (1963), republished in English in Locust Review 9 (2022), translated by Saman Sepheri; a selection from Sound, a serialized novella by Tish Turl, published over several issues of Locust Review (starting with Locust Review #2 in 2020). Music featured in this episode: Enchanters, “Missing Mountains” and “Unlikely Windows” from Post-Harvest; Diamond Soul, “Screens,” from Maya-mi; and Omnia Sol, “Security to Section 3,” from X-Mas Miracle 2. Artists, art, musicians, books, and articles discussed in this episode: Theodor W. Adorno, “On Jazz,” Discourse Vol. 12, No. 1 (Fall-Winter 1989-90), 45-69; Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” (1936); John Berger, Ways of Seeing (book, 1972), and Ways of Seeing (BBC documentary, 1972); Alexander Billet, Shake the City: Experiments in Space and Time, Music and Crisis (London: 1968 Press, 2022); Cynthia Cruz, The Melancholia of Class: A Manifesto for the Working-Class (London: Repeater, 2021); Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology, and Lost Futures (London: Zero Books, 2014); Mark Fisher, “What is Hauntology?” Film Quarterly Vol 66. No. 1 (Fall 2012), 16-24 (University of California Press); Fred Ho (American jazz musician, composer and Marxist, 1957-2014); Henri Lefebve, The Right to the City (1996); Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844); Tish Turl, Sound (novella serialized in Locust Review, 2020-present); Tish Turl and Adam Turl, Born Again Labor Museum (conceptual art installation and project, 2019-present) Locust Radio is hosted by Tish Turl, Laura Fair-Schulz and Adam Turl. It is produced by Omnia Sol.
Maybe you're into art or NFTs or both. Maybe you could give two shits about art. Well, this conversation is broader than just art or just NFTs, and delves into Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Benjamin saw the writing on the wall when it came to this new industrial age he found himself in. His views were reflexive of being a German intellectual in juxtaposition with the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany. Jesus, it just always goes back to the Nazis in this podcast, doesn't it? If you find robot Benjamin unintelligible, the transcript for the episode can be found at www.studiouspodcast.com. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/studiouspodcast/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/studiouspodcast/support
Hear more on the SLEERICKETS Secret Show!Wear SLEERICKETS t-shirts and hoodies. They look good!Some of the topics mentioned in this episode:– On Writing and Failure by Stephen Marche– Carmine Starnino– Before the Law by Franz Kafka– The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges– The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter BenjaminAlice: Poetry SaysBrian: @BPlatzerCameron: CameronWTC [at] hotmail [dot] comMatthew: sleerickets [at] gmail [dot] comMusic by ETRNLArt by Daniel Alexander SmithOther ratbag poetry podcasts:I Hate Matt WallVersecraft
Mandy is back to help me dissect this beloved classic book "Ways of Seeing" 1972 (and BBC TV show) by John Berger. Welcome back, Mandy! And, as always on Book Talks, much art-nerdery was indulged. Come along with us as we consider Berger's thoughts on Art: aka How it was changed by the age of reproduction, How the Nude functions as a tool for the Male Gaze, and How art is used as a status symbol for the wealthy, and in advertising to create Glamour. "Ways of Seeing" was created mainly by John Berger (writer/host), Michael Dibb (filmmaker), Delia Derbyshire (composer), and Richard Hollis (book designer) with help from others. The project was conceived specifically to "question some of the assumptions usually made about the tradition of European Painting. That tradition which was born about 1400, and dies about 1900.” In the TV series (and in direct contrast to Kenneth Clark's big budget show, “Civilisation”), Berger shows up against a slightly shabby blue screen in a partially unbuttoned white and brown patterned shirt (he bought it right before the shoot bc he had been wearing blue) with kind of wild curly hair (kinda like Michael Landon style), and in slacks…he's casual- he's scrappy - parts of the show were even assembled in his parent's living room. He's earnest, feminist, anti-capitalist and unlike the posh-speaking Clark, he has a slight speech impediment…and Berger is ready to burn it all to the ground. "Ways of Seeing," the book, is available at most bookstores and "Ways of Seeing," the BBC tv program, is available to stream for free on Youtube A few grateful shout-outs to writers who we used for research for this talk: Olivia Laing / The Guardian, Kate Abbott / The Guardian and Sam Haselby / Aeon.co John Berger's other books: His novel "G" and also books about art's role in contemporary society: "About Looking" and "The Shape of a Pocket" Extra shout-outs: Composer, Delia Derbyshire, "The Man with the Movie Camera" film by Dziga Vertov, poster by Alexander Rodchenko, Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Eva Figes, book "Patriarchal Attitudes," Jane Kenrick, one of five who had been on trial for protesting against the 1970 Miss World contest, Laura Mulvey's “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Linda Nochlin's “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists," "Landscape & Power" by WJT Mitchell, "Looking at the Overlooked" by Norman Bryson Send me a voice message on Speakpipe.com about what you love and dislike about NYC! I'll use the recording in a future ep about Marsden Hartley: https://www.speakpipe.com/peps Follow Pep Talks on IG: @peptalksforartists Donate to the Peps: Buy Me a Coffee or https://anchor.fm/peptalksforartistspod/support. Amy's website: https://www.amytalluto.com/ All music tracks and SFX are licensed from Soundstripe. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/peptalksforartistspod/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/peptalksforartistspod/support
As you await the upcoming season of Curious Objects, please enjoy this special bonus episode, in which Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Abraham Thomas, ceramist Roxanne Jackson, and painter Andrew LaMar Hopkins join host Benjamin Miller onstage at the 2022 edition of the Winter Show to grapple with the legacy of Walter Benjamin's famous 1935 essay “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” How have Benjamin's contentions about “aura” fared in the ensuing eighty-odd years since its publication? And how might we apply his thoughts on art to works of craft being produced today?
Is the work of art possible in the digital age? Ostensibly this is the topic Gio and I discuss, but as we often do, we veer off onto internet political subcultures and Nick Land, among many other things. We compare/contrast The Matrix and Ready Player One, discuss Walter Benjamins "The Origin of the Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," "Hauntology," and much more! Follow me on twitter at @afscastSubstack at www.astralflight.substack.comFollow Gio on YouTube at Content Minded and on twitter at @giantgio
Is the work of art possible in the digital age? Ostensibly this is the topic Gio and I discuss, but as we often do, we veer off onto internet political subcultures and Nick Land, among many other things. We compare/contrast The Matrix and Ready Player One, discuss Walter Benjamins "The Origin of the Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," "Hauntology," and much more! Follow me on twitter at @afscastSubstack at www.astralflight.substack.comFollow Gio on YouTube at Content Minded and on twitter at @giantgio
Is the work of art possible in the digital age? Ostensibly this is the topic Gio and I discuss, but as we often do, we veer off onto internet political subcultures and Nick Land, among many other things. We compare/contrast The Matrix and Ready Player One, discuss Walter Benjamins "The Origin of the Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," "Hauntology," and much more! Follow me on twitter at @afscastSubstack at www.astralflight.substack.comFollow Gio on YouTube at Content Minded and on twitter at @giantgio
3-hour discussion of Andy Warhol's sexuality and its urgent ramifications for you and your family. Also response/review to recent Netflix Andy Warhol Diaries documentary series. Includes: Gossip about other Warhol critics. Judgmental statements. Also namechecked: James Joyce, Walter Benjamin (The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction), Roland Barthes (Mythologies), Einstein, Greta Garbo, Freud, Pop art, Popeye, Dick Tracy, waifus, R. Crumb, Furries, lycanthropes, vampirism, sadomasochism, voyeurism, Citizen Kane, Jorge Luis Borges, Basquiat, Ronald Reagan, AIDS.
Hear a deep dive into the creative process of one of the most prolific circus directors of our time. ------------------------------------------------- Please won't you be a Patreon?: http://www.patreon.com/theartistathlete This podcast is dedicated to CIRCUS. Aerialist, Shannon McKenna interviews guests from acrobats in Cirque du Soleil to circus therapists and everyone in between. Learn the backstage lives of those who flip, twist, sparkle, and shine under the big top. Find her online: www.theartistathlete.com Facebook: theartistathlete IG: @the_artist_athlete ------------------------------------------------- Recommended Reading Towards A Poor Theatre by Jerzey Growtowski Theatre and It's Double by Anton Artaud ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' by Walter Benjamin https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/benjamin.pdf Hear interviews with artists who have worked with Circa Lauren Joy Herley - 69 Lewis West - 61 Freyja Wild- 50
In this episode Saronik asks Kim about the aura. The idea comes from Walter Benjamin's 1935 essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Besides the central text, the episode references Benjamin's 1940 essay, “On the Concept of History” in which the Angel of History appears. We also talk about Oscar Wilde's 1891 essay “The Soul of Man Under Socialism.” And make a passing mention of the British artist Banksy. The image is a photograph that Kim took of a painting of peaches in an art museum in Amsterdam. She forgets artist and title of the painting, and would welcome reminders from listeners. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
In this episode Saronik asks Kim about the aura. The idea comes from Walter Benjamin's 1935 essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Besides the central text, the episode references Benjamin's 1940 essay, “On the Concept of History” in which the Angel of History appears. We also talk about Oscar Wilde's 1891 essay “The Soul of Man Under Socialism.” And make a passing mention of the British artist Banksy. The image is a photograph that Kim took of a painting of peaches in an art museum in Amsterdam. She forgets artist and title of the painting, and would welcome reminders from listeners. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In this episode Saronik asks Kim about the aura. The idea comes from Walter Benjamin's 1935 essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Besides the central text, the episode references Benjamin's 1940 essay, “On the Concept of History” in which the Angel of History appears. We also talk about Oscar Wilde's 1891 essay “The Soul of Man Under Socialism.” And make a passing mention of the British artist Banksy. The image is a photograph that Kim took of a painting of peaches in an art museum in Amsterdam. She forgets artist and title of the painting, and would welcome reminders from listeners. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies
In this episode Saronik asks Kim about the aura. The idea comes from Walter Benjamin's 1935 essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Besides the central text, the episode references Benjamin's 1940 essay, “On the Concept of History” in which the Angel of History appears. We also talk about Oscar Wilde's 1891 essay “The Soul of Man Under Socialism.” And make a passing mention of the British artist Banksy. The image is a photograph that Kim took of a painting of peaches in an art museum in Amsterdam. She forgets artist and title of the painting, and would welcome reminders from listeners. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
In this episode Saronik asks Kim about the aura. The idea comes from Walter Benjamin's 1935 essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Besides the central text, the episode references Benjamin's 1940 essay, “On the Concept of History” in which the Angel of History appears. We also talk about Oscar Wilde's 1891 essay “The Soul of Man Under Socialism.” And make a passing mention of the British artist Banksy. The image is a photograph that Kim took of a painting of peaches in an art museum in Amsterdam. She forgets artist and title of the painting, and would welcome reminders from listeners. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/art
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most celebrated thinkers of the twentieth century. Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, critic, historian, an investigator of culture, a maker of radio programmes and more. Notably, in his Arcades Project, he looked into the past of Paris to understand the modern age and, in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, examined how the new media of film and photography enabled art to be politicised, and politics to become a form of art. The rise of the Nazis in Germany forced him into exile, and he worked in Paris in dread of what was to come; when his escape from France in 1940 was blocked at the Spanish border, he took his own life. With Esther Leslie Professor of Political Aesthetics at Birkbeck, University of London Kevin McLaughlin Dean of the Faculty and Professor of English, Comparative Literature and German Studies at Brown University And Carolin Duttlinger Professor of German Literature and Culture at the University of Oxford Producer: Simon Tillotson
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most celebrated thinkers of the twentieth century. Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, critic, historian, an investigator of culture, a maker of radio programmes and more. Notably, in his Arcades Project, he looked into the past of Paris to understand the modern age and, in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, examined how the new media of film and photography enabled art to be politicised, and politics to become a form of art. The rise of the Nazis in Germany forced him into exile, and he worked in Paris in dread of what was to come; when his escape from France in 1940 was blocked at the Spanish border, he took his own life. With Esther Leslie Professor of Political Aesthetics at Birkbeck, University of London Kevin McLaughlin Dean of the Faculty and Professor of English, Comparative Literature and German Studies at Brown University And Carolin Duttlinger Professor of German Literature and Culture at the University of Oxford Producer: Simon Tillotson
Sometimes a new technology comes along that you've barely heard of but could change everything. Like how we OWN things. Adam & Chris are putting the fun in Non-Fungible Tokens—the relatively new digital tech also known as “NFTs” OWN THE NFT FOR THIS DEVICE & VIRTUE EPISODE Are we kidding? No! You can buy the NFT for this very episode! CHECK IT OUT HERE CHRIS & ADAM ARGUE ABOUT NFTS They use the same underlying technology as Bitcoin, but NFTs aren't money—they are being used more like a digital deed—an ownership certificate that allows people to buy digital goods. Some of the questions Adam & Chris argue about this episode: There are already people paying millions of $ for some digital cat images online. It seems crazy. Are NFT's a fad? Digital things can be copied with just a right-click! Why does anyone care about owning an “original?” What is an original anyway? If NFTs stick around, what are the effects on the world? What is a Christian ethic of ownership? LINKS & RESOURCES OpenSea —Chris called this the current “Amazon of NFTs” American rock band the Kings of Leon sold an album as an NFT Artist Beeple sold digital art collection for a record $70 million “No, NFTs Aren't Copyrights” by Harrison Jordan via TechCrunch “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”—1935 essay by Walter Benjamin that Adam brings up talking about how technology has affected our view of “originals” Manifold—NFT digital agency doing complex “digital contracts” with NFTs TALK BACK Follow Device & Virtue on Instagram and Twitter. Follow Chris and Adam on Twitter. Support Device & Virtue on Patreon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Clio compares the short film of "All Too Well (10 Minute Version)" to Citizen Kane and discusses three versions of the song : the short film, the "Sad Girl Autumn Version," and Taylor's Saturday Night Live performance. Clio discusses liveness and mediation with reference to Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction and Philip Auslander's Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture. Get in touch with comments, questions, or just to say hi at studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com and check out the podcast website at https://cliodoyle.wixsite.com/studiesintaylorswift. Music: "Happy Strummin" by Audionautix. Cover art by Finley Doyle. See more of Finley's work at https://tangelofin.wordpress.com/.
Mike's new book, The Memeing of Mark Fisher: How the Frankfurt School Foresaw Capitalist Realism and What To Do About It ... Subconscious narratives today and in interwar Germany ... Walter Benjamin and Herbert Marcuse in the digital world ... Mike wants memes that will slow people down ... How "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" has been misread ... Mike's Kafkaesque book publishing experience ...
CW: Eating Disorders, Self Harm. Cherry emoji twitter tremble in fear, as Kendall and Ceres are here to ruin the Virgin Suicides for you. This week, our favorite they-devils discuss the history and current resurrection of Pro-Ana communities online. They dive deep into the history of beauty standards, nationalism, and how it ties back into the communities of white women online who kin Lily Rose Depp and think Nihilism is super cool (#cringe). Find out how The Cold War, The Olsen Twins, Walter Benjamin, and BBLs getting cheaper are all related in this week's Big Soy Naturals!Patreon: patreon.com/bigsoynaturalsTwitter: https://twitter.com/BigSoyNaturalsWebsite: https://bigsoyuniverse.neocities.org/Works Cited and Further Reading:Hope is a Discipline Mariame Kaba TranscriptHope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit PDFThe Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin PDFSilicon Snake Oil by Clifford StollFreedom Fries Wiki PageThe End of History by Francis Fukuyama PDFThe Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of Word Order by Samuel Huntington PDFJutta Rüdiger Wiki PageImpact of exposure to pro-eating disorder websites on eating behaviour in college women by Scarlett Jett, David J. LaPorteGorilla Radio Show
This week, Nathan, Peter, Richard and Simon rise up against their more viscous oppressors, launching blistering attacks on their shot composition, plot conveniences and crimes against good taste. Because, in a very real sense, we are all The Almost People. Notes and links Once again, Richard refers to Walter Benjamin's 1935 essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, which we linked to last week. He also mentions a response to Benjamin by American philosopher Susan Buck-Morss, a book called The Dialectics of Seeing (1989). Picks of the week Simon Simon recommends Moon (2009), a science fiction film starring Sam Rockwell. No spoilers. Peter Peter has been watching The Good Fight, a TV series in which the reliably fabulous Christine Baranski plays a lawyer working at an African-American-owned law firm in Chicago. You can watch it on Paramount+. Its sixth season starts next year. Richard Last episode, Richard mentioned Kozintsev's film version of Hamlet (1964), and so that's his pick of the week. You can watch it on YouTube. Nathan Nathan comes out as a fan of Kurtzman's Star Trek in general, and of Star Trek: Lower Decks in particular. The Series 2 finale screened just a couple of days ago in the US. Follow us Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, and Richard is @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast. We're also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we'll ruin your plans for a violent revolution out of sheer indifference. And more You can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on the Whittaker Era of Doctor Who, at jodieintoterror.com, at @JodieIntoTerror on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and wherever podcasts can be found. We'll be back to cover Series 13 at the very start of November. Our James Bond commentary podcast is called Bondfinger, and you can find that at bondfinger.com, at @bondfingercast on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and everywhere else as well. Today we released Episode 5 of Maximum Power, a new Blakes 7 podcast featuring some of our regulars and guests and some of the regulars from the Trap One podcast. We'll be continuing to cover Series A of Blakes 7 every week over the next few months.
This week, gooey duplicates of Nathan, Peter and Richard are joined by a gooey duplicate of Simon Moore for an earnest discussion of camerawork, capitalism (again) and the deepest questions of human identity. Doctor Who ruins yet another workers' uprising, in The Rebel Flesh. Notes and links Richard wishes that this story was directed more like Kozintsev's film version of Hamlet (1964), which you can watch in its entirety on YouTube. Richard also alludes to Walter Benjamin's 1935 essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, which maintains that a copy of a work of art lacks the original's aura or authenticity. You can read it here. Although his Doctor Who stories are not highly regarded, Matthew Graham is the creator of the acclaimed TV fantasy cop drama Life on Mars (2006), starring our very own John Simm, and its sequel Ashes to Ashes (2008). And of course, anyone who doesn't know about Star Trek: Deep Space Nine will be mystified by our references to its shape-shifting Constable Odo until they follow this link. Follow us Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, and Richard is @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast. We're also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we'll borrow your Vauxhall Astra to nip over to Kent for the weekend and the bring it back covered in acid burns. And more You can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on the Whittaker Era of Doctor Who, at jodieintoterror.com, at @JodieIntoTerror on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and wherever podcasts can be found. We'll be back to cover Series 13 at the very start of November. Our James Bond commentary podcast is called Bondfinger, and you can find that at bondfinger.com, at @bondfingercast on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and everywhere else as well. Today we released Episode 4 of Maximum Power, a new Blakes 7 podcast featuring some of our regulars and guests and some of the regulars from the Trap One podcast. We'll be continuing to cover Series A of Blakes 7 every week over the next few months.
Episode Notes In this episode, we discuss Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" with special guest Max Nussenbaum of the On Deck Writer Fellowship. The On Deck Writer Fellowship is an eight-week remote program for internet writers who want to improve their writing and grow an audience. The On Deck Writer Fellowship will be hosting "Drafted," a day-long writing & learning event on March 22, 2021 at 11 am EST. Hear from amazing speakers, meet other incredible writers, and learn how writing can accelerate your career online. Register for free. On Deck is currently offering special early-bird pricing of $1,990 for our third cohort, which kicks off April 17. Apply here. If you liked this episode, please leave us a review! If you have any questions or comments, feel free to reach out to us on our website. Or, if you would like to read and listen to more of our work, go to www.athwart.org. Image by Jeremy Yap via Unsplash. Music courtesy of yn00001 via Musopen Note: This episode of Phronesis is sponsored by On Deck.
The EBL crew, with guests Nullus and Donald Kent, discuss Walter Benjamin's "Work of Art in the age of Mechanical Reproduction".
The Eikonosphere or, the Work of Mechanical Reproduction in the Age of Terrorism Michael S. Judge, American writer and host of the excellent "Death is Just Around the Corner" podcast, writes on the philosophical-political concept that he terms "The Eikonosphere." What is it, how did it come about, and what does it mean for art and for terrorism? You'll have to listen to find out! The original writing was published by Michael S Judge on medium.com and can be found here: https://medium.com/@michael.s.judge/the-eikonosphere-c2afc6f4ef1d All rights belong to the author/publisher. The first 15 or so episodes of Death/Corner are available to stream for free (https://t.co/FwrvTVeVkx?amp=1). The full body of work is available on Patreon (and is well worth a subscription)!
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