Art, Interdependence, Enaction

Science & Wisdom LIVE dialogue VI:

Art, Interdependence, Enaction

Speakers:

Scott Snibbe, and others, moderated by: TBC.

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We are now organising a dialogue on Art, Interdependence, and Enaction, in order to explore how contemplative practices can inform art and have an education and/or cultural influence on how we understand our world and society in terms of interdependence and enaction. We would like to hear from artists and art historians interested in interdependence and enaction in art.

Enaction is a term that was first articulated by Varela, Thompson, and Rosch in their book The Embodied Mind (MIT Press, 1991). They posit there that a living organism enacts the world it lives in: its embodied action in the world constitutes its perception and thereby grounds its cognition. Since then, Enactivism has become a position in cognitive science where the dynamic interaction between an acting organism and its environment is seen as the basis of cognition. Enactivism claims that the environment of an organism is brought about, or enacted, by the action of organisms in the world.

The notion of Enaction therefore comes close to the Buddhist notion of interdependence – a notion tied in to a specific ontology of reality, in which the profound connectedness of all sentient beings with our planet is emphasised. In this view, we are all linked in our lives and actions with other beings, and we also continuously bring about new conditions that link us in even more tightly together in the future.

In this 6th Science & Wisdom dialogue, Scott Snibbe and others will explore the notions of enaction and interdependence in art, and what art can thus teach us about the nature of our own reality.

Ticket sale will start soon! 

Join the conversation LIVE on Zoom! You will receive a link via email after registering for the event. After each dialogue, there will be plenty of time for questions and debate.

About our speakers:

Scott Snibbe is our regular guest moderator of Science & Wisdom LIVE during talks and events. He is also the founder and host of the meditation podcast ‘A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment’.

Snibbe is a twenty-year student of Tibetan Buddhism whose teachers include Geshe Ngawang Dakpa, Choden Rinpoche, Ven. Rene Feusi, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Gyumed Khensur Rinpoche Lobsang Jampa, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Inspired by his teachers, he leads meditations that infuse the pure lineage of the great Buddhist masters with science, humor, and the realities of the modern world.

Over the course of a career as a digital artist and entrepreneur, Snibbe has created bestselling art, music, and social apps, and collaborated with musicians and filmmakers including Björk, James Cameron, and Philip Glass. His interactive exhibits have been collected by both science and art museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art and New York’s Museum of Modern Art.