[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":945},["ShallowReactive",2],{"blog-transcript-creativity":3},{"id":4,"title":5,"body":6,"description":930,"extension":931,"meta":932,"navigation":940,"path":941,"seo":942,"stem":943,"__hash__":944},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Ftranscript-creativity.md","Transcript from podcast Episode 4: Creativity",{"type":7,"value":8,"toc":926},"minimark",[9,13,16,19,22,25,28,30,33,35,38,41,44,46,49,52,55,57,60,62,65,68,70,73,75,78,81,84,87,90,93,95,98,101,104,106,109,111,114,116,118,120,123,125,128,130,133,135,138,141,144,147,149,151,153,156,158,160,162,165,167,170,172,175,177,180,182,185,187,190,192,195,198,200,203,205,208,211,213,215,217,220,222,225,227,230,233,236,239,241,244,246,249,252,254,257,259,262,264,267,269,272,274,277,279,282,284,287,289,292,295,298,300,303,305,308,310,313,316,318,321,324,326,329,331,334,336,339,341,344,346,349,351,354,356,359,362,365,367,370,372,375,377,380,382,385,387,390,393,396,398,401,403,406,408,411,414,416,419,421,424,426,429,431,434,437,439,441,443,446,448,451,453,456,458,461,464,466,469,471,474,476,479,481,484,486,489,491,494,497,499,502,504,506,508,511,513,516,518,521,523,526,528,530,532,535,537,540,543,546,548,551,553,556,558,561,563,566,568,571,574,577,579,582,584,587,590,593,596,598,601,604,607,609,612,614,617,619,621,623,626,628,631,633,635,637,640,642,644,646,649,651,654,656,659,661,664,666,669,671,673,676,678,681,683,686,688,691,693,696,698,701,703,706,708,711,713,716,718,721,723,726,729,731,734,736,739,741,744,746,749,751,754,756,759,761,764,766,769,771,773,775,778,780,783,785,788,790,793,795,798,801,803,806,808,811,813,816,818,821,823,826,828,831,833,836,838,841,843,846,848,850,852,855,857,860,862,865,867,870,872,875,877,880,882,885,887,890,892,895,897,900,903,905,908,911,913,916,918,921,923],[10,11,12],"p",{},"Razorsmile:",[10,14,15],{},"Hi and welcome to this month's podcast in conversations on concepts. And the concept we're looking at this month is the concept of creativity. Something that's often bandied around a concept that's used all over the place. But one that sometimes seems a little bit difficult to pin down, difficult to quite work out what we're thinking about. And one of the things we thought about a little bit when we, when me and Eric were sort of developing some, some ideas around what  What is creativity? One of the things we encountered was a relationship to creativity that might be negative, that might be, in a sense, seeing creativity in places where we might wanna sort of almost locate something like malevolence. And a person called Rosina Anwar came up with the lovely notion of malevolent creativity. And so we were kind of interested in the way in which creativity often is presented very positively.  almost as though it's a naturally good thing. Whereas in fact, maybe it's a little bit more complicated than that. And also we were curious about the way in which creativity sometimes seems to be presented as something like a life essence or some special thing that people need to release or have. And that often seems a little bit peculiar and maybe a little bit archaic. And so we were kind of curious about that as well. But what I wanna do first of all is just go around and.  introduce the people in our conversation this month. So what I'm going to do is ask you to introduce yourself and just say a little bit about where creativity might kind of work in your own life, where you come across it and what role it might have in your life. And I'm going to go to Chris Baker first. So just tell us who you are, Chris, and say a little bit about how you come across and what you do with the concept of creativity.",[10,17,18],{},"chris sands:",[10,20,21],{},"So, I'm going to go ahead and start the presentation.",[10,23,24],{},"Chris Baker:",[10,26,27],{},"Thank you, it's great to be here. Thank you for the invitation to participate in this amazing podcast. So my name is Chris Baker. I'm professor of religion, belief and public life based at Goldsmiths University, London. And we have a unit called the Faiths and Civil Society Unit where we are interested in researching lived religion and lived belief and how that impacts on the public square or squares.  but also how the public square or squares influences the way people live out their religion and their beliefs and by beliefs we're also increasingly interested in the category of non-belief. So for me it's a very dynamic relationship and you know religion is always a kind of a bit of the elephant in the room some people see it as very beneficial to the creative",[10,29,18],{},[10,31,32],{},"Okay. So, we're going to go ahead and start the presentation. So, we're going to start with the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the presentation of the",[10,34,24],{},[10,36,37],{},"other people see it as deeply repressive. My interest isn't really so much psychotherapeutic but more political, so for me I'm interested in new political affinities and coalitions that form around shared beliefs and values as a way to solving the fundamental problems that we're facing in society. And I'm particularly interested in those kind of  affiliations and coalescences and partnerships that form across difference and in particular religious and secular difference. So I see, I do see there's a negative creativity when, you know, so much of the political space is around polarization and essentialization and promoting cultural culture wars. But equally, I do think beneath all that noise, there's a kind of quiet determination from many people to...  try and create a better life for themselves and for those around them and therefore they're prepared to take the risk and embrace other forms of creativity that aren't necessarily ones that they're familiar with.",[10,39,40],{},"Eric:",[10,42,43],{},"You're muter than that.",[10,45,12],{},[10,47,48],{},"I'm sorry, I was going to come to Guy next. Thank you for that. Yeah, Guy, what do you, tell us a little about who you are and where creativity kind of comes into your life, where you encounter the concept.",[10,50,51],{},"guy de lancey:",[10,53,54],{},"Hello. Yes, I'm Guy. I run a laboratory at Barnard College, Columbia, which works, tries to work around this question. And the lab is called the Movement Lab, which is a lab for investigating creativity and emerging technology.  It's something we deal with every day and we don't know how to define it. There is something written on the wall of the lab that's a quote from a really interesting Buddhist public artist in Korea, a friend who, when asked a question about what does it mean, said, setting up the mood of chaos to make a meaningful heart. There are obviously religious tones there.  But that's what's up on the wall. So this is something I really don't know how to answer at this point. I have been reading Rick Rubin lately and his Anna Tsang, her book on mushrooms and the ways of paying attention. But I'm at the point of agreeing that all these things play in political economy.  how to root it in some sort of social awareness. So it's an open question at this point.",[10,56,12],{},[10,58,59],{},"Chris Sands, can I come to you and again introduce yourself, tell us who you are and where you encounter the concept of creativity in your life.",[10,61,18],{},[10,63,64],{},"Oh, goodness me, that's a... Can you hear me? That's the first thing. Can you hear me?",[10,66,67],{},"I don't know if you can. Okay. Yeah. Well, okay. I spent time at Goldsmith, I suppose. There's a Goldsmith connection here, quite obviously. But I spent time at Goldsmith a long, long time ago. In fact, when I was there with Malcolm McLaren, we were friends at the time.",[10,69,12],{},[10,71,72],{},"Yes we can definitely, we can definitely hear you.",[10,74,18],{},[10,76,77],{},"as you can imagine, quite some time ago. I suppose it was a busy moment. It was a moment when it was just in the wake of May 68 and I think a questioning of what in perhaps retrospect was",[10,79,80],{},"And I suppose I went off in the direction of what Chris Krauss calls social practice and did all kinds of things, eventually ending up as an art therapist and doing two sets of training there and one at Goldsmith again. And then working as a therapist, but then also  exhibitions doing my own work. A single parent at the time, which I think was doing a lot of juggling.",[10,82,83],{},"And then a period of three years of illness really, which meant that I came away from where I'd been living and helped sort of look after somebody. And then found I also had to look after myself.",[10,85,86],{},"I suppose then a desire to sort of use what energy I have, and it's depleted energy after three years of, well, actually radiotherapy and surgery and whatever, really to do perhaps what I thought I could do, which is letting go of one side of what I did. All the time actually being in analysis.  which is ongoing still, which is important to me, with quite a senior Lacanian. Then I suppose a lot of writing, which I'm still doing, and a desire at present to get some money off the Arts Council, which might be hard going.",[10,88,89],{},"in my working life and in my whatever, sort of working, kind of what Chris Klaus calls a social practice.",[10,91,92],{},"I think was art therapy for me, which...  with Rekhaan, I think, became something else. And really trying to make sense of getting older and what that means with what energy I have.  And I think I'll stop there.",[10,94,12],{},[10,96,97],{},"Hazel, would you like to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about where the concept of creativity is encountered in your life?",[10,99,100],{},"Hazel:",[10,102,103],{},"Yeah, it's interesting. I was surprised, so I'm training with Eric at the moment and I was kind of surprised that he said that to me. In a sense, I don't think of myself as a overly creative person, although I do surround myself with creative people and I am a songwriter. So in a sense, I do write, I mean, I suppose.  It's strange. It's a weird one for me that I don't feel comfortable identifying myself as anything, I suppose. But I began as a yoga teacher. I've been a yoga teacher for 25 years. And I came to music later. So I came to music about 15 years ago. And",[10,105,18],{},[10,107,108],{},"Thank you.",[10,110,100],{},[10,112,113],{},"I still work as what's called a top liner. So I write like the top melody that people sing, but I write for other people mainly. And yeah, that's it. I couldn't really define it. I feel like it's nothing that I can really define. All I know is that I feel best when I'm with",[10,115,18],{},[10,117,108],{},[10,119,100],{},[10,121,122],{},"people who are creatives.",[10,124,12],{},[10,126,127],{},"Eric, I'm going to ask you to just introduce yourself and say the same thing. Tell us a little bit about where creativity comes into your life, where you might encounter the concept.",[10,129,18],{},[10,131,132],{},"Okay.",[10,134,40],{},[10,136,137],{},"Mm.",[10,139,140],{},"Well, my name is Eric and I teach at Goldsmiths and I'm doing this podcast with Matt.",[10,142,143],{},"two ways of describing creativity or the way that I encounter it. One is when I endeavor to teach and somebody, a student, will ask me a question. And it's not when the student is trying to be clever, it's when the student genuinely doesn't understand. And then I find there's the struggle to elaborate something. But in the struggle of trying to elaborate something, I soon encounter what I don't know myself.  was something that I've taken for granted in the elaboration. And it's a very tricky and interesting moment. And there's another layer to this. It's when my daughter, who's six years old, asks me something. And then I sit, and it makes me really pause and question this concept that I have in my head. And I think, how on earth do I articulate this? How on earth do I elaborate this?  And there's moments I can say something, but a lot of the time I just encounter this.  It's very difficult. So that's one thing I just want to put out there in terms of how to have an idea, to elaborate it, to connect it to another human being. Another story I just want to share is, it's one that I share with Guy. When I was involved in human rights, I found that an endeavor, what we would call creativity, was so needed because people would...  would be so subjugated to all forms of violence, in which they would become isolated, and they would lose their voice, and they would become marginalised, and they would become shamed, and they wouldn't speak, and they would be spoken for. So for example, in a project where I was working with sex workers in Africa, where they were very isolated, one of the, what we thought was a creative initiative,",[10,145,146],{},"was to ask the sex workers themselves what they wanted the research to be on. And then we took it one step further and we involved the sex workers in the research and we had researchers engaging with them and helping them to become researchers. And then they were included in the writing up of the articles and the researching of it and the publication of it and this particular article it's got lots of",[10,148,18],{},[10,150,108],{},[10,152,40],{},[10,154,155],{},"It's been mentioned I think about three, four hundred times. But the interesting thing is we then did something else which I thought was more creative. And that was we were working with young people engaged in survival sex. People under the age of 18. And we wanted to do the same thing, to involve them in the research. And we trained them up as peer educators and we involved them in the research.  and we went one step further and this was where Guy was involved and we thought well actually we're also going to get them to produce plays to perform the scenarios that they're exposed to so it's not going to just be the written word and they performed plays and we did videos of it and then we performed this play at Icasa which was the big HIV conference in Africa but it got no mentions it became silent and it went nowhere  and it just became invisible. So two initiatives, quite similar, one which gets lots of references, you know, could probably, if that rafting, it could probably get lots of ticks. But the other one, which becomes absolutely silent, becomes invisible, which has been forgotten, which I thought was more creative. And it got forgotten because people felt uncomfortable thinking about this very contentious issue, young people engaged in survival sex.",[10,157,18],{},[10,159,108],{},[10,161,40],{},[10,163,164],{},"we put a lot of effort into it. So it kind of left me ponderin how important is the creativity or is it more a question as to what can one do with it. I'll stop there.",[10,166,12],{},[10,168,169],{},"Okay, Guy mentioned when you were talking Rick Rubin and I presume you were referring to his book, The Creative Act, and Rick was a music producer. Yeah, Rick was his music producer. One of the things that I found interesting about that, really interesting, but it had this sense, I mean, there's a metaphor at one point of tuning into a radio and trying to get to the station in which, you know, and this idea of a creative state that people need to get into.",[10,171,51],{},[10,173,174],{},"I am yes.",[10,176,12],{},[10,178,179],{},"And underlying that, there often seems to be this kind of odd metaphysics of like authenticity or the soul or some source or some freeing up of something, which seems to have an enormous value. And we seem to place enormous value on this particular thing. And yet often when we, if I, you know, when I was looking through like word searches for the word create and looking how people are using it, often it's used just as a synonym for make or produce.  And so someone creates something, they make something, they produce something. Is there a way in which we could imagine not having the concept? Is there a way in which, is there a situation in which, you know, something that you would describe as creative, you simply couldn't describe without that word? You couldn't say, oh, they've just made something good, or they've made something I like, or they've made something that seems authentic. Do you think there's a situation in which, no, we actually need this word creative here because it couldn't be described any other way? A hazel.  or you kind of indicate something. Let me come in and have a response or have something to say.",[10,181,100],{},[10,183,184],{},"Well, no, I was, because I like, I mean, yeah, I like Rick Rubin. But one thing I like that he says and that I agree with, but it feels to me that you might not because you said it was a kind of odd metaphysical idea, but is the idea that it's not so much that we're making something, it's more that we're tuning into something. So I feel like for me.  It's more about being sensitive to something that's already there, less than like, it's not that we, like, if you're picking at, if you're making up a melody, if you're making up words, it feels like the important thing is to get quiet, not to, like, it's not as if it comes from within you, it feels like it comes from somewhere else. And I feel like, I prefer, if.  It's kind of the weird contradiction where people who are like, I only know musicians really, because that's my passion. But like with musicians, most musicians are like obsessive music fans. So it's almost like they have like a catalog of music within them. And then somehow, like by becoming really quiet,  that can kind of come through, or whether it comes through from the catalog, or whether it comes through from somewhere else, I don't know. But it feels like, I really like the Buddhist, I really like what you have written on the wall, Guy, as well, about it being something to do with your heart, because I feel like it's less head and more heart.",[10,186,12],{},[10,188,189],{},"Thank you, Ator. Anyone else wanna come in on that? Anyone else got a thought at the moment?",[10,191,51],{},[10,193,194],{},"I was wondering if in terms of speaking about making something where the play just falls under that category.",[10,196,197],{},"necessarily.",[10,199,12],{},[10,201,202],{},"I mean, in the sense of like, he's necessarily creative. I mean, that's a nice sense in which play is kind of, is not making anything at all, is it?",[10,204,51],{},[10,206,207],{},"Is it?  is not making anything at all. There's something temporal in the quality having been involved in theater. And part of the skill set that people need in theater is to make it look as though they have no idea what's coming next. It doesn't happen that often. But there's something temporal and about pretending something is unknown and being able to improvise. Again, there's a musical analogy. But play itself...",[10,209,210],{},"Yeah.",[10,212,18],{},[10,214,210],{},[10,216,51],{},[10,218,219],{},"the unknown and discovery and yeah, I just wondered about the word play.",[10,221,12],{},[10,223,224],{},"Yeah, I think that's a word that we can probably come back to. Chris Sands.",[10,226,18],{},[10,228,229],{},"Yeah, I was just thinking that it sometimes feels to me as if we're moving into a completely new area altogether. I mean, you know, with digital worlds, which Byung-Han calls infocracy.",[10,231,232],{},"you know, going back a little bit to poor old Andy Warhol and everybody having 15 seconds of fame, not that fame is particularly relevant, I think, but that the way we see certainly the art world is in terms of objects, if you like, or museums or galleries or...  little adverts on e-flux or something. But it seems to me that something is happening, something else is happening in the wake of what is very saturated. The internet is saturated. And communication, which in a way, what was called connectivity is becoming something else, because it's connectivity.  but who cares? And it occurs to me, and I've been thinking and writing about it too, the idea that it's not so much that we have these things, we have objects or the sort of conceptual versions of objects, but we have the possibility of looking, actually looking for the work.  You know, if I think of somebody like Chantal Ackerman, a filmmaker, it's very hard to define what in fact she was doing. You can look at her films if you like, or read some of the stuff that she wrote. But I think you have to look elsewhere as well and get a sense that it's not about some kind of projection. It's something else altogether. It's something you have to look for.  And so it seems to me that creativity is a sort of problematic term, obviously problematic. I can cope with the phrase, the work of Armato, I think, which was something that Walter Benjamin made popular. But I think it's more now a question, let's say post-…",[10,234,235],{},"Andy Warhol's 15 Seconds of actually a question of everybody looking, as it were, for something and sometimes finding traces of something. But it's as if the world as we know it, the art world as we know it, is, I don't know, it feels incredibly pretentious at the moment. It feels pompous and ostentatious.  a period where people have very little sometimes.",[10,237,238],{},"I think the looking, which was something, it was curious, there's a moment with Jatla Khan in, I think, what was it, some 11, I think it was, where he talks about the gaze, and he talks about the function of the art, of art, of the artist. And he talks about the necessity of turning the gaze around. In other words, when we're subject to the gaze, we tremble. And, but...  The process of making something or working with something is a process of turning that around. And of course, it's with great difficulty sometimes.",[10,240,12],{},[10,242,243],{},"Chris Baker, you have a thought.",[10,245,24],{},[10,247,248],{},"Yes, I have lots of thoughts and you know, very interesting to hear how other people are conceptualizing and thinking about this idea of creativity. I think I want to pick up on something that the other Chris mentioned, which was this idea of a saturated landscape and the kind of the rise of the digital or even what we might call the post digital, because it's become so subsumed within our own.  sense of who we are and the way our brains are structured and everything that we forget often that we're living in this world that we might call digital. And so for me I kind of I'm reading a lot at the moment of Bernd and Stiegler's work on the digital as pharmacone, so that he believes essentially that the digital is toxic.",[10,250,251],{},"And the pharmacist has both the toxic elements but also within its toxicity there are the elements of being able to, you know, be the antidote to that toxicity. But he's fairly clear in his own mind that what the digital has done.  is that it's created short-term memory rather than long-term memory. So creativity, he thinks, is vastly diluted because it can only operate in the short-term memory space. And he says if we get creativity that can only operate in this short-term memory space, then that has huge psychological impacts on us and that has huge political impacts on us as well because we lose...  the idea of individuation, of transforming ourselves and becoming something more than we are already. So I'm interested in this idea of where do we find alternative strategies to be creative in a saturated world, in a world where there's a short-term memory only available.  And I think it's picking up as well something that Hazel said and both guys said as well that I think a lot of people are conscious that they need to step aside, they need to find spaces of wilderness or place would have called the core of the womb. Or liminal state if you want to use, you know, some anthropological terms, you deliberately put yourself, if you like, in a space where",[10,253,12],{},[10,255,256],{},"Yes, I think that's particularly kind of relevant in some ways because in the background, at least for me, is...",[10,258,24],{},[10,260,261],{},"you are disorientated, but where you are kind of alone with yourself. And it's in that wilderness experience in that liminal space, that to coin a theological term, which I'm quite fond of and I'm particularly fond of the way that people like computer use it and there it are. The messianic can come, the unexpected can come and talk to you and, you know,  orientate, reorientate your whole kind of creative life. So it's being open to that potential, that possibility of something from outside coming in and radically changing your culture, your mindset, your psychological outlook. So to me, creativity is linked very much to this.  Sometimes we don't have a choice, we find ourselves in these disorientating positions. And as Matt, I think you in your sort of preamble to this, you're looking at was it Wimber who said, you know, talking about a breakdown being the opportunity for a breakthrough. But I think sometimes we need to remind ourselves of the therapeutic value of deliberately choosing to step aside and to find those wilderness spaces.  to find the womb-like spaces where we can encounter the totally other, the messianic, and let it take, let it redirect our thinking and creativity and our politics.",[10,263,12],{},[10,265,266],{},"Thanks Chris. I'm afraid you got cut off a little bit in the middle there, but it was good. I enjoyed that. And I wanted to come on to that. When you're talking about the role of transformation, this seems to me to still play kind of a parallel role with creativity. It's in a sense, in the background is this idea of the advice you might give to someone when they're in a problem of like, you might need to get creative to get out of it. The advice rarely given is you might need to be more disciplined.  You might need a better habit. You might need a better routine. We often go instead to, oh, you need to break out of something rather than you need to get into something. There's often this kind of sense there that sometimes maybe is too quick. But the other thing that I wanted to just mention, but that idea of transformation and creativity, I think are very, very closely connected. But the other thing I wanted to mention is, is this sense I've come across of four different states that people often seem to refer to, two of which have already been referred to.  that kind of enable you to begin to clear away and get into a creative state. On the one hand, you have an experimental state and on the other, a clean slate state, a quietness, if you like, as Hazel mentioned, then an inspired state. Again, Hazel mentioned the catalog of things that musicians have, the kind of inspirations that they have. So yeah, experimental, a kind of clean state, a quiet state, an inspired state, and a new approach state. And so there seems to be these kind of techniques people have that they wanna offer.",[10,268,18],{},[10,270,271],{},"I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to the next speaker. So I'm going to turn it over to the next speaker.",[10,273,12],{},[10,275,276],{},"for creativity as though their techniques for something to happen. The techniques themselves are never the creative thing. They think they're there for something to happen. And it's and does that sound too is that too harsh? I'm going to go to Eric and then Hazel.",[10,278,40],{},[10,280,281],{},"Look, I really liked what Chris said, and I think it echoes what Guy was talking about also in terms of play. You know, I had a friend here who used to say that it's about making solitude one's partner. But I want to spoil the party a little bit. And I want to argue that, and it's what we wrote about in our piece. Would we have had...  the Greeks without slavery, would we have had the Renaissance without slavery? That there does seem to be something about a certain luxury where people can come together. Probably you have the most creative minds in terms of making adverts and making films at the moment. It's the luxury that certain people can come together at the expense of somebody else. And I just want to throw that in that.  Because it kind of this thing quite heroic in the way that we're presenting creativity. I don't want to negate that creativity is incredibly therapeutic and helpful, but also want to just I want to contextualize it. Sorry to spoil the party a little bit.",[10,283,12],{},[10,285,286],{},"No party spoil. Hazel, you want to come in?",[10,288,100],{},[10,290,291],{},"That's for my party. I can't really respond to that apart from saying yes. But I was kind of really thinking about, like I really liked what Chris Baker said. Like I feel like, and also the thing about discipline, that discipline is important, but, and yeah, exactly what you said Chris about.  phones particularly like destroying our not only memory but our creativity and that we have to have the discipline to put them down and for me I have to have the discipline not necessarily to kind of work on anything creative but like to have a yoga practice or a meditation practice that is that allows me to get into that space but I think it's almost like a bit of a trick that you can't want it.  You have to go in with no expectation and if it shows up, it shows up. But I agree with you, Eric, that it is, of course, like a very privileged position to...  to be able to work on something and work on something as a team and work on something and get paid to do it as well. It's like even more privileged.",[10,293,294],{},"But yeah. Yeah.",[10,296,297],{},"What's the question though, Eric?",[10,299,40],{},[10,301,302],{},"I'm not sure. I'm not sure. There's something that I think that just gets taken for granted, like the way that certain discourses line up that enables something to happen.",[10,304,51],{},[10,306,307],{},"Ha!  Um...",[10,309,40],{},[10,311,312],{},"but there's something else happening in the background as well.",[10,314,315],{},"I suppose, well, maybe the question is something around this emphasis on the individual and these individual moments. But I suppose I'm wondering something around collective moments of creativity. I'm stumbling in response to your question.",[10,317,51],{},[10,319,320],{},"I have a question, Eric. Would you not suggest that the background is creative? There is creativity within that background, whether it's in the form of rebellion or plotting.",[10,322,323],{},"And that if we consider creativity as this privileged thing, then there is a background we don't even...",[10,325,24],{},[10,327,328],{},"Can I just come in there? I think I hear what Hazel's saying. I think it's right to ask what's the question. But Eric, I sensed what you were getting at was something that we might now call decolonialism or decolonizing creativity in the way in which, you know, it's been privileged by Western epistemologies and, you know, Western medical models and everything else. So what does a non-Western...  model of creativity look like? I think it's a very pertinent question. And how do we open the door to letting other narratives, discourses, experiences of creativity, you know, come in into our public life, into our public art and into our political culture as well?  I mean, I do sense things are changing, but there's still a long way to go.",[10,330,100],{},[10,332,333],{},"I was just going to say like some of my favourite creative have been in response and rebellion really. Like hip hop was like I'm a massive hip hop fan and that was when it was really underground you know it's a really response to not a privileged state. So I think it can't always be phrased in that way.",[10,335,40],{},[10,337,338],{},"Yeah, I think that's sorry, can I come in? I think that's correct. If we think of jazz and the way that the slave body was worked, what is your name? But something of the musicality of the voice that gets erased and a different way of embodiment, which isn't in relation to a Western name, but a name in relation to a community and ancestry.  an earth comes out in the music, but it comes out in the music in a very creative way in that it's taking Western instruments and African rhythms and beats and mixing them and creating something which enables a voice to survive, to survive generation after generation. Even though alongside that there's a transgenerational trauma, there's something that's enclosed  but alongside that there's something that's speaking, that's opening up a possibility. So I think creativity in a sense does open up some possibilities in the face of erasure. I think that's why the late Foucault talks about wanting to create oneself as an art piece, as opposed to cultivate the self as an art practice, not to discover who you are, but to have the possibility to create yourself anew.",[10,340,51],{},[10,342,343],{},"the",[10,345,12],{},[10,347,348],{},"Yeah, go ahead, go ahead.",[10,350,51],{},[10,352,353],{},"I just want to point out that I think, and just in reference to Chris talking about Jung-Chul Han, that there's a malevolence in that too, in that we are now exhorted to create ourselves and curate ourselves endlessly.",[10,355,12],{},[10,357,358],{},"Yes, part of the thought, part of the discussion, the conversation me and Eric have is in a sense, sometimes in the background, this strong sense some people put forward of the creativity of capital and obviously of the creativity of violence or harm, whether that be from the",[10,360,361],{},"It's something I don't want to advocate. I don't want to raise in value. I feel quite often these things are negative, but what I also feel is that they're also creative. And so I find I can't turn TikTok content creators, self-called creators, I can't turn them away from the concept and only place in some wonderful artist I'm massively inspired by or takes hold of my heart.  the content creator that makes me laugh because they've got an algorithm together and produced a platform and sent some dogs out to make funny barking noises. I mean, also makes, you know, it's temporary. And I think someone mentioned the time and the duration relationship is temporary and it's just translucent. But it's also, you know, I have a sense that they're creative. They've got off and they've done something. The problem is, is often the repetition of creativity, the repetition of this trope and the repetition of the idea of the need to be creative.  How does it in a sense maintain anything in the face of a system that wants us to be creative? That the first impulse, enjoy yourself, the first commandment, enjoy yourself, be creative, be an individual. These are the commandments of the society we live in. And in that situation, does creativity resist those things? Or is it a way of resistance, a form of resistance? Perhaps something like that is what's kind of in a sense worrying us. Because as I say, I don't want to create some sort of high art.  lower, high creative, low creative boundary. You know, working class people making big, big livings out of TikTok are incredibly creative, as far as I can see, at least in terms of self-transformation. Not quite the transformation I might advocate, but it's a form of massive self-transformation. So that ambiguity of the relationship to creativity, of how we can, as it were,  pick some things that we want to value as creative without at the same time saying these other things that we don't want to value aren't creative. It's what are the values there that we are associating with positive or, you know, somehow healthy creativity? What's connected to that, we think? Is it partly to do with this relationship to time that's being massively changed with our communications culture? Is it partly to do with an end of capital and a shift in kind of social relations? Is it decolonization having its play out?",[10,363,364],{},"What kind of thoughts do we have as to how we might maintain a positive relationship to creativity if we were to acknowledge the enormous wealth of capitalism's creativity?",[10,366,51],{},[10,368,369],{},"Chris you're mute.",[10,371,12],{},[10,373,374],{},"It's alright, you're muted Chris. We'll just wait a moment. Let me unmute you from here. There we go, you are unmuted.",[10,376,18],{},[10,378,379],{},"OK, you can hear me. Yeah. I think this notion of privilege, Eric's notion of being able to do something is important. I've been looking at, well, I've been reading a book. I've been aware of George Yohogambin's ideas for a little while. But I'm.",[10,381,12],{},[10,383,384],{},"Yes, we can hear you.",[10,386,18],{},[10,388,389],{},"His recent book is called Herdlund's Madness. It's of course referenced to a poet from 200 years ago, a German poet. What's interesting is how he sort of links it to these ideas like bare life, which has been a current that's run through the visual arts for some time. And there's also this notion of states of exception.  as well, which seems to be particularly important politically at the moment. But I think what Gamben is doing, I think very interesting text, is pointing out that Hoedl in his madness, and he really did have a hard time, tried very hard to sort of  be a poet. And it was almost as if his madness was one way that he could be a poet, also sort of being looked after by his friends and whatever. But it was important that for him, at least, that he put himself in a position where he could do something. And sometimes, I think,  perhaps linked to this idea of bare life, which is so important because it comes straight out of the middle of the 20th century and everything that was complete and after disaster in human history, which seems to be echoed now as well. The idea that we can begin with what I think Lacan calls an empty set. In other words, you're working, but you're working, you begin with nothing.  It is perhaps something you have to qualify. You have to say what that nothing is. But I think it's.",[10,391,392],{},"It's actually, despite all the sort of the difficulty of producing anything, it seems so important for some people to be able to maintain some kind of society through their work. And at the moment, there's an interesting Lekianian conflict.  Congress coming up, which is a World Association of Psychoanalysis Congress, and the title is Everybody is Mad. And I think for me that, you know, I've been really quite, after 20 years of being a Lacanian groupie, I've been really paddling away quite earnestly, but it was surprising to come across that notion from a group of people who...",[10,394,395],{},"have had varying opinions about psychosis, about madness, about all kinds of things related to a kind of bare life which goes with falling apart.  And I think there's something in Lacan as well, which has to do with this direction of falling apart. And the real, is he a kind of knowledge in the real sometimes, but also the real being something which is a way of breaking a continuity or providing an impasse or something like that. I said too many things in one go, I think.",[10,397,12],{},[10,399,400],{},"No, it's absolutely fine, Chris. I had Hazel and Guy. So Guy, would you like to go first? I can see you're still there.",[10,402,51],{},[10,404,405],{},"Oh, no, I just I was saying yes to Chris.",[10,407,12],{},[10,409,410],{},"Oh, okay, Hazel, come and tell us.",[10,412,413],{},"No, you're okay? Okay.  Ah.",[10,415,51],{},[10,417,418],{},"Um, okay. May I? Go Chris.",[10,420,24],{},[10,422,423],{},"Maybe I could just comment on that. And I think there's something about when creativity comes from a very pained place or a dark place or a place of agony or...",[10,425,12],{},[10,427,428],{},"Yes, go on, please.",[10,430,24],{},[10,432,433],{},"distraught state that it tends that the reason why that creativity is emerging is because something important has been suppressed. An idea and experience. And therefore, on the surface, it seems as though there's a lot of creativity that comes out of this one event and the event itself is. Grotesque or painful.  And yet, for me, it goes back to these long chains of memory idea from Stiegler that we were talking about earlier. We need, we often need these, this painful art to jolt us out of our present short-termism and to remind us of, you know, genealogies of oppression and human experience that, you know, we've, for whatever reason, we've wanted to avoid and sought to avoid.  So I do think there is a role for that kind of creativity that you were referring to. I suppose there's still, I'm listening to myself talking and thinking, well, I'm still wanting to ennoble this in some way. And so the question I suppose is, what is the role of nihilism? What is the place of nihilism? And again, nihilism can be incredibly.  creative if it in some way jolts the system, the kind of prevailing system of thinking and the sort of you know the capitalist constructs whatever that support that. So clearly there's a place for nihilism as well. I suppose the question I'm asking myself is when there is so much suffering going on in the world and so much you know the need for outrage and the need for prophetic creativity.  Sometimes it's quite hard to find, because even protest art somehow can be made palatable.",[10,435,436],{},"Is there something in our present structures that's somehow anethetizing us from that kind of creativity, or are there systems in play that seek to suppress its true potential, true value?",[10,438,18],{},[10,440,108],{},[10,442,12],{},[10,444,445],{},"Hey so.",[10,447,100],{},[10,449,450],{},"I was going to say, yeah, of course it feels, I mean, it feels like that for sure. And I feel like in terms of like the suppression, it feels like again, with the hip hop analogy, when it was underground, it was much more political and then it kind of the machine sanitized it. And I was also thinking about like, and I've only got music examples, but Andre 3000, who was the rapper in Outkast and his new flute album.",[10,452,51],{},[10,454,455],{},"Sure.",[10,457,100],{},[10,459,460],{},"which I just completely adore about him, that everyone wants a rap album from him, and he is like, the world needs healing, and I'm gonna give you a pure flute album. And he just walks for five hours a day playing his flute.  And so, yes, I agree with you that it does feel like capitalism wins and suppresses outrage and kind of, it does feel like that, but it also feels like there's something about...",[10,462,463],{},"What just makes me, what thrilled me about the Andre 3000 thing is when you listen to his interview, he's completely just doing like for him, like, and I know that goes against, like what you were saying about the community, the responsibility, but like, there's something uplifting for me in hearing him and in seeing him do it. And in that sense, it's, he's right, it is healing in some way.",[10,465,18],{},[10,467,468],{},"It's a great opportunity to be able to share with you the great work that we've done. Thank you.",[10,470,100],{},[10,472,473],{},"And the music's beautiful. And I don't have a problem with ennobling it actually, because I've had drawn so much comfort from the arts. I don't have a problem with slightly ennobling it.",[10,475,12],{},[10,477,478],{},"Eric, did you want to come in?",[10,480,40],{},[10,482,483],{},"Well, I still feel bad about dampening Hazel's spirit and I didn't really answer Hazel's question. It was kind of an example of when somebody asks you a question and you don't really and it shows you your lack of creativity. So that was a good example Hazel where there was a lack of creativity on my part. But I suppose the response I have now, but it's maybe not a very creative one.  was when there was protests and when in South Africa the police were standing with their guns and they were about to do the tear gas, you toy-toying and people are singing and there's something very creative in that moment of carnival or acceleration of protest where and but at the same time it's very interesting because people are communicating political messages.  and the songs and the music played a very, it wasn't just a way of exhilarating people and giving people courage in the face of the state of oppression, but it was also a way of communicating and a way of sharing information.",[10,485,12],{},[10,487,488],{},"Yes, I do want to kind of just emphasize I'm all in favour of ennobling creativity. I also, you know, my true self feel creativity is a positive, but I also feel sometimes I'm not entirely sure what I mean by that. And in particular, as I said, what I would mean if I was to say to someone, be more creative. One thing that perhaps we touched upon in the text, perhaps I take as a kind of guide is  the way in which Deleuze would try and locate things like the creative in a very, very local space and in a very, very pragmatic space and essentially have this kind of idea that creativity arises in the solving of a problem, in particular one that can't be solved by thought. He often has this notion of the haptic, things having to be put together, literally put together by hand. It's a very interesting example and talks about Bresson's filmmaking and the way Bresson makes a particular kind of",[10,490,18],{},[10,492,493],{},"And I think that's a great way to start a conversation.",[10,495,496],{},"I think that's a great way to start a conversation.",[10,498,12],{},[10,500,501],{},"aesthetic space, but the way in which it operates is not by an overarching narrative. It's literally as a kind of, and it's not by montage, by taking it at once, it's kind of gradual step by step solving of each particular problem in the way a filmmaker might solve the problem of staging a scene, not by thinking, you know, in a big abstract way, but simply by thinking about literally what cut, where's the eye, where am I going to make the cut, where's the camera going to be placed, and in a sense solves the problem rather than thinking creativity. So one of the things perhaps is",[10,503,18],{},[10,505,496],{},[10,507,12],{},[10,509,510],{},"is this idea that, you know, is creativity actually, in a sense, what we recognise when we recognise a problem has been solved, something has been made to work. And in that sense, is creativity ultimately really a kind of key pragmatic activity? When someone can be blocked, they can't make anything work, getting them out of that, we call creative, but in fact, is the pragmatic solving of a problem and almost at that point, any means necessary works.  And it also gives us the argument, in a sense, against capitalism, which is it doesn't solve any problems. It just has a way of making stuff work. And so it looks creative because it makes things work. It makes money. But it's not actually creative. It's not solving any particular problem. So that idea of a pragmatics of creativity or pragmatics underlying a kind of creative act, does that sound viable? Does it sound interesting? Does it sound like something you come across? I've got Chris and then Guy.",[10,512,24],{},[10,514,515],{},"Well, I like that idea, Matt, but I'm also thinking for me, the role of creativity is to ask the question that no one's asking. So it provokes the question that then provokes a reaction that is part of creating something new that, you know.  through that making of something new, does it begin to address some of the issues that are around us at the moment? So creativity for me is something that's, yes, deeply about asking, trying to find the right question and asking it, provoking it, not coming up with answers, but coming up with the right questions, I think is a lot of it. So.  I'm not sure I'm taking a completely antithetical view to you, but I'm just wondering where maybe creativity is part of both processes at some level.",[10,517,12],{},[10,519,520],{},"Guy, did you want to come in?",[10,522,51],{},[10,524,525],{},"I was very much going to come in on that point, in that I think it is defining the problem as much as solving the problem, creating the problem that you solve. And I'm sort of basing this on the spectrum of work I do now, which is work at a very highly privileged space, a college teaching creativity and technology, and the work I've done with Eric, with the sex workers in Africa.  And the one thing that I find common and draw from actually having done the sex work in Africa to try and teach the Westerners here, the relationship to creativity is to develop this radical honesty in one's orientation to what comes next in anything. There's a feeling of apprehension, surprise, but...  Yeah, if we can get a kind of a presence that really can have no sense of what comes next and then discover it, there's a lot more complexity to what I'm trying to articulate there. But I think part of that is creating the problem to solve. It is a joy in it. And when I speak to the students I have here and try and tell them this idea of...",[10,527,18],{},[10,529,108],{},[10,531,51],{},[10,533,534],{},"Really think about what comes next in what you're doing. Don't be glib about it. Strange things tend to happen.",[10,536,12],{},[10,538,539],{},"Rosina, would you like to say something or are you happy there? I mean, if you do, I'm going to ask you to introduce yourself. So is that be good?",[10,541,542],{},"Rozina:",[10,544,545],{},"Sorry, could you repeat the last bit, Matt?",[10,547,12],{},[10,549,550],{},"If you were, if you were, should I ask you to introduce yourself if that's okay before I suddenly turn to you? Or are you just wanting to chat?",[10,552,542],{},[10,554,555],{},"Oh, yes, no, I'm happy to. Yeah, sorry, it takes me a little while to just get into the groove of a conversation and then I'm happy to contribute. But I'm Rosina, I'm a psychologist at Goldsmiths, sorry, wrong way around, a psychologist and a lecturer at Goldsmiths University. I don't know why those two things define me at the moment, but I can't think of anything other than that.",[10,557,18],{},[10,559,560],{},"So, I'm going to go ahead and start the presentation. So, I'm going to start with the presentation of the first item, which is the",[10,562,12],{},[10,564,565],{},"And how do you come across creativity in your life at the moment? Where would be your initial sort of thoughts as to where you come across it and how it might be encountered in your own life?",[10,567,542],{},[10,569,570],{},"are in dark ways. I've been thinking in the last year, Eric and I did this talk about this time last year on malevolent creativity and what constitutes that creativity with the intent to harm. So my thoughts these days are around...",[10,572,573],{},"what's considered a benevolent and malevolent kind of creativity. I've been thinking about the difference between creativity and innovation, because they often get lumped together.",[10,575,576],{},"That's all I can offer up right now. But my thoughts around creativity are often to do with those things that...  uh  that appear murky to me.",[10,578,12],{},[10,580,581],{},"Yes, that's lovely. Thank you very much. Chris Sands, I saw the...",[10,583,18],{},[10,585,586],{},"I was just thinking about this notion of it works. If something works, it must be okay. But I was thinking how that is sort of out of kilter with a lot of what happens in the Lacanian world. I mean, they make a big point of saying, my goodness me, it doesn't work. And it's because it doesn't work that somebody actually has to make something work.  or at least the analyst isn't in the position of providing any kind of solution. I'm also thinking back to somebody like Samuel Beckett, who really made a point of saying it doesn't work. Or, you know, I'll fail and I'll fail again and I'll somehow carry on.",[10,588,589],{},"I think maybe that's a kind of reference to the empty set as well, which in set theory, but...",[10,591,592],{},"I don't know if there's any malevolence there. I think it's more sort of a question of sort of the place of things. I think in psychoanalysis, it's about sort of what the function of the analyst is, what the function of the analyzer is, and how they find their places. And I'm sure Eric would have something to say, maybe.  Yeah.",[10,594,595],{},"Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm not altogether happy with it works because when it works, it doesn't work for me.",[10,597,40],{},[10,599,600],{},"Will I respond?",[10,602,603],{},"sometimes in an analytics context or therapeutic context one says something and only after one has said it one then realizes oh was this what  I thought, but it isn't what I thought, it's a communication that's happening between two people, which I think links to what Guy was talking about what comes next, in that the what come next is almost like a jazz improvisation, that something's happening and it happens and it's almost as if  the fields or the connection between the people enables them to allow something to flow where in a sense you simply just become a vehicle for something where the thought in a sense thinks you it's not that you think in the thought or when the music comes through I remember one of  one of the leading dancers in South Africa once said to me, it's the ancestors dance through me. I think it becomes problematic when one's ego, and you see this in so many conversations and I get so bored with conferences where people just try to be clever and it's so fucking boring.  that really, really is because they're not really saying anything. They're not really saying anything. There's no thinking going on there. It's just trying to upstate somebody, quote a series of references, but there's no thinking. My mom, who had literally no education, could really think. She didn't know all the capitals of the world, but she could think. So and I think this relates to the question of to allow yourself to think is to allow",[10,605,606],{},"what comes next and to what comes next is never quite you. You are simply a vehicle in a sense for something that comes next. Yeah, let me stop there.",[10,608,51],{},[10,610,611],{},"In the conferences, Eric, do you have an overwhelming sense that you know what's coming? That you know what is coming?  It's a special kind of tedium.",[10,613,40],{},[10,615,616],{},"Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. With so much that gets published, with so much that gets written, it's like what the hell? It's like people play a game and they go through, they stage something, it's literally like they re-stage in their own identifications. It's literally like they re-stage in their own identifications, their master signifiers if you want to use the Lacanian terminology, but it's just dead.",[10,618,51],{},[10,620,210],{},[10,622,40],{},[10,624,625],{},"There's no life in it, there's no thinking, there's no, for want what you were talking about earlier on Guy, there's no authenticity, there's no authenticity, it's just...",[10,627,51],{},[10,629,630],{},"That's the temporal quality, I mean, that micro-temporal quality between what you know comes next and what doesn't. I mean, just to be a prosaic example, Alan Rickman was talking about actor training or preparing as an actor. He said, I'm not interested in preparing. You can prepare all you want at home, but what I'm really interested in, and in terms of the idea of what comes next, it's not only the people that are involved, it's someone who might be observing that what comes next becomes interesting.",[10,632,18],{},[10,634,108],{},[10,636,51],{},[10,638,639],{},"too. And he said, what I'm essentially interested in is the accuracy of your listening. If there's accuracy in listening, everything else tends to take care of itself.",[10,641,18],{},[10,643,108],{},[10,645,51],{},[10,647,648],{},"I'm done.",[10,650,40],{},[10,652,653],{},"I think we tried to listen. I mean, it's the whole question of silence in music, the whole question of silence in anything. In a sense, I mean, one of the interesting things that you talk about that when often faced with crisis or extreme trauma, it's almost like I have to find a very silent place in myself.",[10,655,51],{},[10,657,658],{},"I don't know what was coming next. I have no idea what was coming next.",[10,660,12],{},[10,662,663],{},"We had a moment of listening, yes.",[10,665,18],{},[10,667,668],{},"So, I'm going to go ahead and start the presentation. So, I'm going to start with the presentation of the first item, which is the COVID-19",[10,670,51],{},[10,672,210],{},[10,674,675],{},"Mm-hmm.",[10,677,40],{},[10,679,680],{},"And it's literally like I am so present but so silent and I'm in a sense making myself present. There's a listening in that. There's a presence. I think Chris wanted to say something.",[10,682,12],{},[10,684,685],{},"Yeah, Chris Baker.",[10,687,24],{},[10,689,690],{},"Sorry, you'll need to edit this out. It's just I couldn't hear what Guy was saying. I don't know if I was the only one who couldn't hear him.",[10,692,12],{},[10,694,695],{},"Oh, do you want to just repeat that then, Guy, and see whether Chris could hear it?",[10,697,24],{},[10,699,700],{},"But for some reason I can't hear Guy, I don't know, neither can I see him.",[10,702,12],{},[10,704,705],{},"Oh, oh, that's...",[10,707,51],{},[10,709,710],{},"Oh lord is that is that working? Chris can you see me now and hear me?",[10,712,24],{},[10,714,715],{},"No, I still can't hear him. Can everyone else hear him? Oh, okay. No worries. Don't worry.",[10,717,12],{},[10,719,720],{},"Yeah, I'm afraid we all can hear. I'm sorry, Guy. That's obviously for some reason, obviously, you and Chris have been censored on the platform.",[10,722,51],{},[10,724,725],{},"No problem.",[10,727,728],{},"Oh, okay.",[10,730,24],{},[10,732,733],{},"No worries.",[10,735,12],{},[10,737,738],{},"This idea of what comes next, I mean, I know, as Eric says, he's mentioned this idea of improvisation or the kind of stale familiarity of certain discourses or, you know, and the idea that what comes next can be a surprise is, I mean, to me, that's a very kind of crucial element of what feels creative in some sense. When I encounter that, that thing that's a surprise or that thing that's not, you know, I haven't heard before or it's boring, but at the same time,",[10,740,18],{},[10,742,743],{},"I'm going to turn it over to you.",[10,745,12],{},[10,747,748],{},"With works that I've found to be, in a sense, the most interesting for me, it's the fact that I can return to them and actually see them again and again and again. And the familiarity can be built in so deeply that sometimes I have music that I can only really listen to on a record because I can't hear it without the scratches anymore. And it feels, because I'm so used to the particular, there's one record I know of that has a little jump and it misses two lines of a lyric.",[10,750,18],{},[10,752,753],{},"I think that's a great way to start a business. And I think that's a great way to start a business.",[10,755,12],{},[10,757,758],{},"And it makes the song perfect for me because I didn't like it. And it was these kind of things, but also paintings and things like this, things you return to. So I think it's, I mean, and I agree that which is new often is deeply connected to the creative. And I think that's because creativity is to do with the production of the new, but also creativity does have this other temporality of being perhaps, perhaps outside of like theater and things like that, of being able to be kind of returned to time and time and time again.",[10,760,18],{},[10,762,763],{},"I'm going to take a few minutes to get back to you.",[10,765,12],{},[10,767,768],{},"in a kind of comfort, with a kind of joy, and that isn't sort of super exciting or super ecstatic, it's a kind of centered joy. Quiet, to go back to Hazel's point, perhaps. So the creativity that we're encountering at that point, you know, is that, I mean, because that seems like, Chris Sands is quite right, that's more than just getting something to work, there's something else that seems to be going on there.",[10,770,18],{},[10,772,763],{},[10,774,12],{},[10,776,777],{},"Does that represent the kind of relationship perhaps to the positive value, that which we can keep, that which we can return to, is that which we would have as a positive in creative? Whereas Capitao, for example, has to, in a sense, create something that will be thrown away, couldn't be kept, because you cannot make a profit if you keep it. So maybe is there some relationship to that capacity to keep something that is also maybe important to creative acts, creative objects? Hazel, I can see you wanted to come in.",[10,779,100],{},[10,781,782],{},"Yeah, I know what you're saying, but I also, like I think with, I think it's Aboriginal, I think it's Australian Aboriginal art, there's a, like a, ability to just make it and then destroy it immediately.  And I like that too. I think there's also like that the process is king.",[10,784,18],{},[10,786,787],{},"Can I jump in now? Yeah. In the middle of a massive amount of writing, and what I'm faced with all the time is I go to bed, and I think, oh, I've done something. I think I've done something. And then the next day, I look at this thing, and it's not what it was. It changes. Overnight, it changes. And",[10,789,12],{},[10,791,792],{},"Yeah, jump in Chris, jump in.",[10,794,18],{},[10,796,797],{},"And this process of looking and looking again is not just a sort of going back to something. For me, I go back to see Rembrandt's portrait at 63 in the National Gallery. That's, for me, a special thing. But if I do some writing, the chances are it'll be awful tomorrow. And I think part of the process of working at something  encountering this shock that comes with something which isn't what he thought it was in the first place.",[10,799,800],{},"At least that's my experience.",[10,802,40],{},[10,804,805],{},"You're muted Matt, you're muted.",[10,807,12],{},[10,809,810],{},"Sorry, I was going to say, I'm going to begin winding up, so I'm going to give Rosina a little bit of space, and then we're going to have a little go around for final comments, if that makes sense to everybody. So if that's all right with you, Rosina, I could see you were kind of interested in saying something as well, so take as much time as you'd like, and then, as I say, we'll go around and have a final round.",[10,812,542],{},[10,814,815],{},"Thank you. It's more a question. I was thinking about the comment on conferences. And the question was, do we really actually go to conferences to engage with creative ideas? Do creative ideas even exist in conferences in the way that we imagine them to exist? Or do we go to inhabit a space where we can ascertain what we actually need to keep a hold of more daily, secretly, privately?  I get that sense sometimes when I go to conferences. There's a sort of, there's a two-facedness. And I don't mean that in the sort of mainstream sense. I mean it quite literally, as in there's an openness in engaging with ideas, but at the same time.  sort of very simultaneously, there's it's mine, like a clinging to one's chest of one's ideas. And then the final question in my mind was,  Can creativity happen in open public spaces? Does it have to go through? Well, can you hear me? I just heard my echo. Oh yeah. Okay, can it happen? Is there something?",[10,817,51],{},[10,819,820],{},"places today.",[10,822,12],{},[10,824,825],{},"Yes, no, you're fine.",[10,827,542],{},[10,829,830],{},"I'm thinking about my own relationship with creativity. And I, at least in the beginning period, I hide a lot with my thinking process. I don't know if I can call them ideas, my ideas, but with the thinking process, the feeling process that creativity entails, yeah, that's what I'm thinking. I don't know if that's much of a contribution, but.  Just question spinning.",[10,832,12],{},[10,834,835],{},"Good set of questions for people to have at hand as we have a final go round and I'll just ask people to have any kind of final comments respond to any of those questions or anything else that you have in mind.",[10,837,18],{},[10,839,840],{},"I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to you. So, I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to you. So, I'm",[10,842,542],{},[10,844,845],{},"Oh, sorry, can I just mention one more thing? It's just come to mind. It's just about the conferences. Conferences are a little bit like weddings, I think, in the sense that every wedding planner or set of people getting married think that they're gonna do the most innovative, original thing at their wedding. I'm generalizing here grossly, but there's this idea around this is gonna be the most creative wedding or birthday event or whatever.",[10,847,18],{},[10,849,132],{},[10,851,542],{},[10,853,854],{},"But it's so predictable. You know what's going to happen. Yeah, I'll actually stop talking now.",[10,856,12],{},[10,858,859],{},"Thank you, Rosina. I'm gonna go to Chris Baker.",[10,861,24],{},[10,863,864],{},"I just want to really pick up on your last point, Matt, about why we keep going back to sources of creativity and works of art that particularly we enjoy. And I mean, I could be completely off-beam here, but I'm just wondering if it's something to do with they carry for us intimations of immortality that maybe we don't dare to carry for ourselves. So I'm thinking I'm going back to very...  basic, over-level English, and Keats's Ode to the Grecian Urn, and this idea that truth and beauty are eternal. And I think for me, when I go back to great pieces of music or art, I find it immensely reassuring that these will outlive me, but they'll also outlive our further generations, and it'll still be there.  to communicate something that's beyond ourselves, something that's outside of ourselves, something outside of our own experience. So, you know, malevolent creativity, benevolent creativity, maybe at its best, there's something about art that carries intimations of immortality that we find reassuring and comforting.",[10,866,12],{},[10,868,869],{},"Thank you for that Chris. Hazel, any last thoughts or comments?  I'll come back to you if you just shout if you want to come back. Chris Sands. Any last thoughts?",[10,871,18],{},[10,873,874],{},"No, I just, with the last speaker, I was thinking of Goya's black paintings for some reason, so I suppose that's my little moment of, it wasn't malevolent, so I don't think there's anything malevolent about Goya's black paintings, but they are surprising.  I think you probably all know them.",[10,876,12],{},[10,878,879],{},"Guy, would you like to have any last moments, comments, thoughts?",[10,881,51],{},[10,883,884],{},"The only thought that I could share that I have been exploring is it's sort of couched in the work of Donald Hoffman, the case against reality in post-physics, post-time and space thinking, where everything is now decorated permutations, and everything is conscious agents. And in one sense, it's an evolutionary biology, which is malevolent, yet creative at the same time. That's a nice place to draw from, but...  The possibility is that everything is creative. And I know that stepping towards the same or a slightly different theology, but perhaps everything is creative like everything is conscious.",[10,886,12],{},[10,888,889],{},"Eric, any last thoughts?",[10,891,40],{},[10,893,894],{},"Just before I do, can I just ask Guy just to say a little bit more around that? So it's interesting just to hear a bit more around that.",[10,896,51],{},[10,898,899],{},"Eric Hoffman is an MIT scientist who is exploring the nature of consciousness, but he wants to do it mathematically. Things have to be proved mathematically. I think he's also connected to evolutionary biology, or even behaviorist psychology, I can't remember. But he proposes that...  In physics, time and space are now passe, and they're discovering different entities like decorated permutations. I can't go into what that is, I don't have the expertise, but that reality essentially is based on evolutionary biology and that we have survival points, so we see less and less to survive better. The environment encourages us to.  see less. And in essence, he has this pretty sort of prosaic analogy of it being a VR headset or a trash can on your computer desktop. You put things into the trash can, you have no sense of the operation behind that computing action. But the reality we experience is a series of icons that if you remove the headset, there's something beyond. And he's proposing that  Everything is conscious agents all the way down, and of course it links to old practices in Asia. And that's... Yeah, I'm not doing very well, but that's basically sort of summing up where he's heading. That beyond this headset we take off, there are these possibilities for conceiving of what consciousness is that we don't at this time.  and that everything is conscious agents. So perhaps everything is creative in a malevolent and creative, essentially creative way, they're the same thing.",[10,901,902],{},"I hope that helped, but it was very stumbling.",[10,904,40],{},[10,906,907],{},"Well, maybe it was... No, no, I'll try to improvise with what you're saying. Something Freud said was that we can only maintain contact with reality for a limited period of time and then we need to go to sleep. And in a sense what Freud was saying is that if you had to be present to everything that you're experiencing you wouldn't be able to get through the day.  you probably wouldn't be able to get through the next five minutes. You have to continually screen out everything to be able to function. Now, it's very interesting that in some of the most contemporary psychoanalytic theory, what they're advocating is that we move away from an interpretation of a dream or even to a befriending of a dream, but for the actual session to become a dream space.  So there's now a blurring between how we conceive conscious and unconscious, how we conceive conscious and unconscious. And through, in a sense, going into a dream-like space, through introducing different characters, we can then have a greater capacity to be with complexity. We can then start to digest things that are overwhelming us, and we can start to have a way...  through a playful way to use your words or through an initial looking away to open up something to give birth to something that was previously unimaginable, too much in our faces, a pure presence without an absence, a lack of a lack in a sense, something that was just too present. So it opens up the possibility.  an interval between a sensor and a motor for something else to breathe, for something else to be thought, but that something else isn't you who thinks it's something else. You have to dream at first and then in a sense, hopefully alongside another, it can become a joyful passion when it's dreamed alongside somebody. I think there has to be a dreaming alongside. Even if the dreaming alongside is imaginary friends, the authors you're engaging with.",[10,909,910],{},"but ideally with actual people as well. But I think it's that capacity to dream, to then enable a one to have a different relationship to this complexity and the different relationship, this reassembly gene in Delirzian senses is where the creativity is. But I also like to hear what Matt's, I always want to put Matt on the spot, what's Matt's views are.",[10,912,12],{},[10,914,915],{},"I don't know. I think for a long time, creativity was something the other people did. It wasn't something you don't. I grew up learning to work in a factory. So you don't have creativity in a factory, except you do, of course. You know, there's constantly problems being solved and all this sort of stuff. But no one would ever call you a creative person. We're doing that. So creativity was a kind of alien space. And I didn't even think of musicians as creative, to be honest. It was a long time before I actually thought musicians were kind of creative. I thought they were entertainers.  And like entertainment to me was something that was kind of strange. Creativity was a kind of, as I say, it was a word that signaled a different class position. Someone that someone else was creative and I was just, you know, doing something, making something, even though the people around me, you know, rebuilt motorbikes from the ground up and turned them into works of art and, you know, made their houses in the most sort of spectacular way by, you know, building all the shelving and all the bits and pieces of furniture and things, you know.",[10,917,51],{},[10,919,920],{},"Thanks for watching!",[10,922,12],{},[10,924,925],{},"None of this was creative. So I've always had a very ambiguous relationship to creativity because of that initial kind of encounter and always felt it was something kind of beautiful and strange and not quite of my space. But in the last 20 years, you know, I've kind of made my life into one in which I kind of, avoid the creative industries, but basically act as a creative person. I'm a philosopher who...  you know, makes films and writes and does magic. And so from the outside, most people look at me like that and say, oh, no, you live a creative life. And it's like, I suppose I do, but it's a kind of strange one where I didn't need the concept in order to get there, which is part of the kind of interest in what the role of the concept is. You've all been wonderful and lovely to talk to and given me a lot to think about. What I would ask you to do when I press the leave button is, and I'm just going to stop the recording for a moment.  when I press the leave button.",{"title":927,"searchDepth":928,"depth":928,"links":929},"",2,[],"Episode 4 of CONVERSATIONS ABOUT CONCEPTS explored creativity. Here","md",{"date":933,"episode":934,"image":935,"tags":936},"2024-02-23",4,"\u002Fimages\u002Fuploads\u002F20260125_105254.jpg",[937,938,939],"creativity","transcript","podcast",true,"\u002Fblog\u002Ftranscript-creativity",{"title":5,"description":930},"blog\u002Ftranscript-creativity","UrMLEdKCRsVxgN9DFtDEWhUUlGja53hG02n94fJisDs",1777636241116]