The Cold World and the Collective Subject

17 Nov. 2017

Talk for the WHAP! Lecture series at Calarts, 17 Nov. 2017 at 19:30. At the West Hollywood Public Library, Los Angeles, CA. Talk looks at the creation of new models of subjectivity in light of planetary-scaled complexity.

How can artists, activists, and citizens in general engage the increasing complexity of the global system, and the veritable explosion of a new type of capitalism with its production of data, control, and rampant inequities. Patricia Reed analyzes this emergent configuration from a perspective of ‘optimist realism,’ proposing the dynamics of a perspectival shift utilizing the forces of alienation to construct innovative models of collective agency generated by the interface of the concretely situated and the abstractly conceptual. Her talk will investigate some of these issues with regard to the advent of a/the Cold World.