A conversation with D. Graham Burnett, Justin Smith-Ruiu, and Russell Williams at the American Library in Paris. Filmed on 19/10/2023 with a live audience both in person and on Zoom.
Have we lost our ability to pay attention? Faced with a world designed to distract us, how can we control what we see and how we see it?
As the speed of the world increases, technology develops, and companies hone their abilities to steal our time and our gaze, do we still own our attention? In In Search of the Third Bird, scholars D. Graham Burnett and Justin Smith-Ruiu transform their attention anxiety into a historical study of literary, psychological, philosophical, and artistic approaches to attention. From attention to the world, each other, and ourselves, they imagine a new artistic order capable of re-awakening viewers to their own innate desire to look at length. Join them as they propose a strategy of resistance toward the commodification of our curiosity, celebrating the miraculous possibility of awe.
About the speakers:
Justin Smith-Ruiu is a historian and philosopher of science. A professor at the University of Paris, Smith is the author of Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason (2019), The Philosopher: A History in Six Types (2016), and Divine Machines: Leibniz and the Sciences of Life (2011).
Born in France, based in New York City, D. Graham Burnett trained in the History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University and teaches at Princeton. He works at the intersection of historical inquiry and artistic practice, and his writing and collaborations focus on experimental/experiential approaches to textual material, pedagogical modes, and hermeneutic activities traditionally associated with the research humanities. Recent projects include THE THIRD, MEANING at the Frye Art Museum (Seattle, WA).
Russell Williams teaches in the Comparative Literature and English department at the American University of Paris. He is also French editor at the Times Literary Supplement and is currently writing a book called French Weird.
Evenings with an Author is generously sponsored by GRoW @ Annenberg.