talkPOPc's Podcast

The choreographer and performance artist Patrice Miller’s conversation with RP Martina Botti (phd candidate from Columbia University) starts out with Patrice asking Martina a definition of ontology and metaphysics. What is real. And how we define the real. This sets the stage for the very interesting exchange between this artist and this philosopher, as they find common ground between art and phil...

Destin was the winner of our raffle at our fundraising event at Postmasters Gallery in October, 2019. It was a contest to raffle off a philosopher, and I, Dena Shottenkirk, ended up being the philosopher who was raffled and Destin won the slot of being the talkPOPc participant. He gives a definition of art as something that makes people feel something. He also argues that prestige items are such b...

Kunning posits that the function of art is to give yourself a different kind of life-style. He says it’s a way of spending time that is not very “cost effective” - You are not thinking about how one can make money. But I then ask him: What are they getting, knowledge? He says no, novelty . But how does novelty, I ask, distinguish itself from distraction?  Kunning says that art is just the way we d...

In this episode from our talkPOPc event, held in our tent at Lincoln Terrace Park in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, we invite two philosophers to converse about and explore the third and current topic "Art and Cognition." Resident Philosopher Andrew Rubner from Rutgers University and Professor of Neurophilosophy, Dr. Sascha Benjamin Fink from Otto-von-Guericke University in Magdeburg, Germany...

As a lover and maker of fashion, Crystal talks about what makes both fashion and art in general meaningful to her. The conversation at first seems to hint at her thinking that something is art because it is emotional and makes her feel a certain way, and Resident Philosopher Rubner comments on that: he points out that she seems to think art is art because it is emotional, and not cognitive. At the...

After weaving in a discussion of writing and what happens in writing, Jasmine relates a story about the astounding experience of sitting with a friend outside, and between them there suddenly appeared a butterfly. And that was like art. She says, “We are not really aware until we are aware.” In art you are caught up in that moment, and everything stops and stands still. It brings us into the pheno...

Mr. Raul Walcott, who is from Guyana and works as a landscaper, talks to Resident Philosopher Andrew Rubner about how the process of making something beautiful is a kind of art. The conversation in many ways is about the definition of art, but it also becomes a conversation about the function of art. Interestingly, it returns several times to the point, evident in landscape architecture, but perha...

Erline, a seamstress from St. Vincent, discusses the importance of clothes in her life: the personal associations with clothes. As a child living in a country where most parents couldn't afford to buy dolls, she instead dressed up a stick from the Breadfruit tree and called it "breadfruit baby". It would become real. Clothes do that: they make certain realities apparant and they par...

Flora, a performance art scholar, talks about the politics of the artworld's elitism (driven in large part by its role as a leisure activity), and also about the vulnerability of the artist in the moment of being public - the artist's vulnerability to the audience. It is an original  and profound view on the role of voyeurism in art. She also addresses the shifting meaning in an artwork,...

Mark, an investment banker (and wanderer through Lincoln Terrace Park, where this talkPOPc was held), knows about math, and he knows about the aesthetic qualities in a well-formed formula. And he likes surrealism particularly the oddity of puzzle-teasing in surrealism: what is this thing I’m looking at?  For him, art is personal kind of time-travel, where someone from before is now whispering in y...

Charlexia connects the amazement she feels in nature – parks – and the emotion that she experiences when in front of a street mural. Nature is in her view something that allows us the freedom to let our minds wander, not going in a particular direction. It is meditation through that freedom. It can be anything you want it to be, and yet it directs you in no direction at all. In her words it is “gr...

This conversation started out as a query about art and turned into a conversation about decision theory. Or more specifically about how creativity is just decision-making, much like science is. Angelie, an epidemiologist, begins with a quote from Nietzsche – that art is just leaving your mark. She talks about how children naturally want to do this. This conversation started out as a query about ar...

This conversation tackles head-on what art is meant to do. Jake takes issue with the recent 75 years or so of visual art, particularly since Conceptual art of the 60s or 70s. Traditionally art is, according to Jake’s view, soteriological. Now, literally, this means to give us comfort, to make us feel better.  One often thinks of this in traditional kinds of religion, particularly ancient Hindu or...

This is part of talkPOPc's #3 project: Art as Cognition Marcus speaks about his love of diverse kinds of music- Indian, Chinese, Sukka. This is interesting because he has looked for a common thread in music and he sees it in certain kinds as a force for good and in other kinds of music as a force for bad. This bad kind he calls "Poisoning for the mind." Support the show Website: tal...

This is part of talkPOPc's #3 project: Art as Cognition As a kindergarten teacher, Tom, in his conversation with Resident Philosopher Agule, is giving his experimental account of incorporating art into the education of children. The conversation yields a point: Art meets people where you are, instead of -- like testing -- meeting you where you should be. Support the show Website: talkpopc.org...

This is part of talkPOPc's #3 project: Art as Cognition Marina has deep feelings about the kind of visual art she encounters in churches, particularly stained glass. She seems to have a dislike for the experience involved in perspectival vision where one separates the object from the background. It is an experience of the whole of the scene as a whole, and not a systematic identification of o...

This is part of talkPOPc's #2 project: Censorship Pessy is a woman who broke out from a religious fundamentalist community, and she insisted on her right to gain her own education. She had the bravery to look back on that fundamentalist world, and analyze the censorship within that world.  Support the show Website: talkpopc.org Instagram: @talkpopc Email: info@talkPOPc.org