Posts Tagged ‘philosophy’

The slides of the lecture I gave few weeks ago can now be consulted here. I used the example of Walt Disney World to illustrate the concepts of Utopia, Heterotopia, Postmodernisn and Consumerism. It would have taken me two hours to explain all the relations between them and the theme park. My presentation was limited to half of that time and only a subset of the slides were used for the Philosophy for All lecture. Don’t hesitate to leave your feedback. I hope that the slides are still understandable even without any comments.

Philosophical debate on Utopia and Progress

Usually, philosophical debates are organised around a specific question and maybe some philosophical texts. In this case, I wanted to organise a philosophical debate around some of the videos of the exhibition. I knew that the theme of Utopia and Progress was too vast to be completely discussed, so I considered the debate to be an introduction to the subject. The purpose of the debate was to introduce the main aspects around Utopia and Progress, show some great videos related to the theme, to inspire the audience and to get them thinking more about the subject.

This paper introduces some of the aspects and philosophical questions related to the concepts of Progress and Utopia. It has been written as part of the Dreams of Progress video art exhibition and philosophical debate, serving as a framework for the selection of the artwork but also as an analysis of the resulting tensions.

Here are the books that have been used to prepare the Dreams of Progress philosophical debate, centred around the themes of Utopia and Progress. Books and authors with an asterisk (*) can be borrowed for free at the Westminster Reference Library and other libraries of Westminster: http://www.westminster.gov.uk/libraries/.

• Utopia* by Thomas More*, 1518
• A house of memories* by Rev. Isaac Hartill*, 1900
• Brave New World* by Aldous Huxley*, 1932

A philosophical debate about Utopia and Progress was held at the WRF in July 2009, as part of the Dreams of Progress video art exhibition. The debate attracted around 50 people from various backgrounds, including professors from London universities, philosophical students, art curators and engineers.