Rutgers University Lecture program - mark you calendars!
Curated by Anthony Smyrski
I've selected a small group of young and influential speakers that will be presenting short lectures at Rutgers University Camden Campus during the next two months. The featured guests include Matt Schwartz, Willima Pym and Wesley Eisold. You can find out more about them below. I'll also be capping off the program with a presentation of my own towards the end of April. The talks will loosely focus on the challenges of practical creativity and independent thought in our time, as well issues of work place integrity and professional responsibility. The first lecture is will be given by Matt Schwartz of the Philadelphia Independent. For more about himself an his topic of discussion, please read the synopsis below.
All the lectures begin at 12:30 in the afternoon sharp, and are located at Rutgers University Camden Campus. Get there early to get a seat. All of the talks will take place in the Campus Center in Conference Rooms South AB (located on the Lower Level of the Campus Center ). Rutgers is just across the Delaware river and is easily accessible by New Jersey Transit and the Ben Franklin bridge.
For directions go here: http://maps.rutgers.edu/directions/camden.aspx
And here's a map of campus: http://maps.rutgers.edu/maps/default.aspx?campus=3
We'll see you there, and bring a friend! Refreshments will be served.
Matt Schwartz - Thursday, February 28. 12:30 in the afternoon.
The Known Unknowns: An Abridged History of Randomness
Scientists use the word "random" to describe phenomena that cannot be predicted, modeled, or controlled. Laypeople use it to describe events that occur without any apparent cause and/or meaning. As random events remind us of what we don't know and can't control, we often find them disturbing. In this lecture I will summarize what experimental psychology knows about human responses to randomness. I will discuss the urge of science to discover an underlying order beneath random data, and how this search for invisible forces has led to some of civilization's greatest discoveries (heliocentricity, gravity, relativity) and follies (synchronicity, telepathy, telekinesis). I will also present the two main historical responses—the belief in events without causes, and the belief in a hidden order.
Matt Schwartz is a writer living in New York. He specializes in extended nonfiction on technology, vice, games, and urban issues. He also likes to write essays that hunt for significance in esoteric and minor subjects. From 2002 to 2005, he edited and published The Philadelphia Independent, the last American broadsheet newspaper. He contributes to Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, and GOOD.
William Pym - Tuesday, March 4. 12:30 in the afternoon.
Integrity in the Workplace. A general-interest political lecture for Rutgers University Undergraduate students
Being an artist is, at this point in time, a profession for which strict and specific training is required. This training extends far beyond the fundamentals of technical and historical scholarship that might, you’d reasonably think, form the backbone of higher education. A few important lessons that aren’t being taught are the ones that contemporary artists need most.
Today, it is profoundly risky to spend one’s college years–four, six or more–in the hopes that this apprenticeship will yield an artist’s career of any kind. William Pym would like to tell you about some things he's seen in pursuit of contemporary art around the globe in the last six years. It has always been his wish that these experiences would count for something, so he is delighted to be deliver to you his thoughts on 'integrity in the workplace'.
William Pym is a writer, curator and art dealer in Philadelphia. As Director of the Fleisher/Ollman Gallery in Philadelphia, where he programs 9-12 exhibitions a year, William co-curated the landmark show "Fabulous Histories: Indigenous Anomalies in American Art", a project collapsing the boundaries between so-called outsider and insider art at the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts, Harvard University. As a writer he has been on the staff of Artforum magazine's free-standing web arm artforum.com for 3 years, where he writes regular reviews and has developed the progressive format of their social diary, 'Scene and Herd'. He was the lead art writer for the Philadelphia Independent for several years, and has since published many pamphlets and essays on contemporary art and youth culture, the most recent of which, "What one small film tells us about how we live now" was showcased in a one-day exhibition at the Philadelphia ICA in spring 2007.
Wesley Eisold - Wednesday, March 26. 12:30 in the afternoon.
Lecture topic TBA
Wesley Eisold is a writer, poet and musician living in Philadelphia. He has performed both solo and with various artists and bands around the globe. In '07 he published his first collection, Deathbeds, thru his own publishing company, Heartworm Press. Heartworm was started as a vehicle to release underground artistic endeavors in various formats, from tapes to records and from zines to hardcover books.
Anthony Smyrski - Thursday, April 17. 12:30 in the afternoon.
Lecture topic TBA
Anthony Smyrski is an art director, designer, consultant, producer and independent book/magazine publisher, collaborating with an international clientele in both the cultural and commercial sectors. As co-founder of Megawords Magazine and Free News Projects, and the art director for Swindle Magazine and Heartworm Press he has worked on a wide variety of art and design projects. Smyrski continues to design and publish books on art and culture and works closely with publishers such as Thames and Hudson, DAP, powerHouse, and Gingko Press.
