
Transmission in Motion Seminar 2024-2025 – Science as an Adventure — Simon Gusman (UU)
Chesley Bonestell, Exploring Mars, 1953.
Event | Transmission in Motion Seminar 2024-2025 – Science as an Adventure — Simon Gusman (UU)
Dates: 4 December 2024
Time: 15:00-17:00
Location: Grote Zaal of the department of Media & Culture of Utrecht University (Muntstraat 2a, Utrecht).
Organizers: Maaike Bleeker, Iris van der Tuin, Nanna Verhoeff, Sorcha Brennan (Student Assistant)
Contact & registration: tim@uu.nl
Credits: 3 ECTS (Details below)
More information here
The allure of adventure is all around us. Who would not prefer an adventurous life over a mundane one? Whether it is thrilling experiences, travels to faraway lands, or passionate love affairs, adventurous existence is something many people look for. Even those of us who do not necessarily want to experience adventures directly, often engage with adventure stories. We spend a lot of our time watching the stories of fictional heroes portrayed in Hollywood movies and television series, whose endeavors are filled with quests and challenges, giving us a sense of excitement and wonder not often found in everyday life. In addition, many companies try to sell their products through adventure. Ranging from cars to vacations and from toothpaste to elderly care, countless products and services promise their customers an adventurous existence once the proper purchase has been made. We also see adventure in the world of politics. Many societies locate their origins in almost mythical origin stories, or claim descent from adventurous leaders and forefathers. Many contemporary leaders similarly portray themselves as stereotypical adventurer types (the warrior, the outdoorsman, the trailblazer, and so on).
The idea that life can be one great adventure has been criticized by many thinkers, most prominently by French philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone De Beauvoir and Pierre Bourdieu. Their critiques can be used to problematize our contemporary obsession with adventure.
In this seminar, we would like to apply this perspective to our own practices as researches and teachers. Science and other forms of research themselves can also be considered an adventure. Daring individuals who embark on quest for knowledge, piercing the veil of everyday opinion and finding true knowledge about the workings of the world behind the scenes. Although this view is perhaps a bit exaggerated and dramatized, it still permeates in the way science is sometimes perceived. We want to shed light on the ways in which we are implicated in mainting the view of Science as adventure. By drawing parallels between popular culture and philosophical critique, we would like to investigate in what ways scientific practice can be considered an adventure, and how we can learn from this in the way we conduct research and teach it to our students.
Simon Gusman is assistant professor Liberal Arts & Sciences at Utrecht University. His research concerns contemporary French philosophy applied to social themes and popular culture. As a member of SILT he also focuses on the philosophy of interdisciplinarity and personal reflection.
You can register for this seminar here. This session is part of the Transmission in Motion seminar (2024-2025): “Implicatedness” To stay updated with more seminar sessions, please subscribe to our newsletter.
Suggesting reading:
- Latour, Bruno (2004). Politics of nature: how to bring the sciences into democracy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
- Gusman, Simon & Kleinherenbrink, Arjen (2018). Introduction of ‘The Illusion of Adventure’, originally in Avonturen bestaan niet. Amsterdam: Boom uitgevers.
Programme
- Wednesday 16 October 2024 (15:00-17:00)
“Reparative Encounters: Colonial Histories, Other-Archives, and Collaborative Artistic Research”
Daniela Agostinho (Aarhus University) - Wednesday 13 November 2024 (15:00-17:00)
“Everyday Activism in Times of Collapse: Bridging the Personal and the Planetary”
Chris Julien (Utrecht University) - Wednesday 4 December 2024 (15:00-17:00)
“Science as an Adventure”
Simon Gusman (Utrecht University) - Wednesday 5 February 2025 (15:00-17:00)
Julian Hetzel (Studio Julian Hetzel) - Wednesday 5 March 2025 (15:00-17:00)
EARN Methods Research Group(Mick Wilson, Maibritt Borgen, Henk Slager, Vytautas Michelkevičius) - Wednesday 26 March 2025
Saskia van Stein (International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam) - Wednesday 23 April 2025
Maria Hlavajova(BAK, basis voor actuele kunst) - Wednesday 21 May 2025
[To be confirmed]
Credit Requirements
Like in past years and in collaboration with NICA (Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis) we offer students the option to acquire credits (3ECTS) by contributing to our seminar series “Implicatedness” in the form of blogposts or documentation (400-500 words) for 5 out of 8 sessions. Deadline to register for student participation in the series for credits is November 11th, for more information, please contact us at tim@uu.nl. Feel free to check out past student past student blogposts and documentation on our website.
Check out other events by TiM – Meet the Makers
The Meet the Makers programme facilitates meetings and conversations between students, teachers and researchers at UU, and makers – i.e., artists, curators, dramaturges, designers or other creative practitioners and professionals within the wider field of arts and culture. We usually organise a Meet the Makers event every block during the academic year, but sometimes more. If you are interested in joining a session, take a look at the programme below. You can register via the link at the top of the event.
- Meet the Makers: Roos Groothuizen
- October 31st, 15:30-17:00, Grote Zaal, Muntstraat 2A
- RSVP: https://forms.gle/1iCHkPfo56BfZAvj6
- Meet the Makers: Screenwriters on Female Representation
- November 18th, 15:15-17:00, Sweelinckzaal 0.05, Drift 21, 3512 BR Utrecht
- RSVP: https://forms.gle/8DiZsnSdU4VwjY9B9
- Meet the Makers: Ward Janssen
- November 27th, 15:30-17:00, Grote Zaal, Muntstraat 2A
- RSVP: https://forms.gle/DRFarU1KKA2EwJWM6