Discussion with David Edwards

Presentation

David Edwards is the founder of “Le Laboratoire” in Paris, core to his international innovation network of ArtScience Labs. He teaches at Harvard University in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and is a core-founding member of the Harvard Wyss Institute of Biologically-Inspired Engineering. David’s creative base, Le Laboratoire, is a cultural center in Central Paris where David works closely with artists and designers, including chefs, composers, and contemporary artists, to conduct experiments at frontiers of science. These experiments lead to public exhibitions of works in progress and often translate as cultural, social, and commercial innovations. Among David’s commercialized innovations since the opening of Le Laboratoire in 2007 are “Andrea” (a plant-based filter that accelerates filtration of toxic gases by plant matter), “Aeroshot Chocolate” (chocolate without calories), “Le Whaf” (a generator of flavor clouds for fine dining), “CellBag” (a cell-inspired bag for carrying water in the developed and developing world), the “AeroShot” (aerodynamic caffeine,) and “WAIHH Quantum Sensations” with designer Philippe Starck.

Discussion with Jean Claude Ameisen

Présentation

Jean Claude Ameisen is a physician and researcher, professor of immunology at the University Paris Diderot. His research for over twenty years concerns the origin of phenomena of cellular self-destruction in the evolution of life and the role of “programmed cell death” in the development of diseases. He was appointed in November 2012 President of the National Consultative Ethics Committee of France. Involved in the development of relations between science, culture and society, he is Director of the Centre for the Study of Life (Institute of Humanities of Paris – University Paris Diderot), and member of the Scientific Council of the International College of Philosophy. He is the author of several books: “La sculpture du vivant. Le suicide cellulaire ou la mort créatrice” (Points Seuil), Jean Rostand Award, and Biguet Award of Philosophy of the French Academy; “Dans la lumière et les ombres. Darwin et le bouleversement du monde” (Points Seuil); “Les Couleurs de l’oubli” (with François Arnold, L’Atelier) ; “Quand l’art rencontre la science” (with Yvan Brohard, La Martinière) and “Sur les épaules de Darwin. Les battements du temps” (France Inter/LLL).

Seminar: “Aby Warburg: Art, neuroscience, and psychoanalysis”

Date

Saturday and Sunday 12th and 13th of October 2013, 9am-4.15pm

Speakers

Organisé en collaboration avec The Helix Center, New York
Intervenants : Cristina Alberini, Siri Hustvedt, Christopher Johnson, Joseph LeDoux, Peter Loewenberg, Spyros Papapetros, Robert Penzer, Louis Rose, Anjan Chatterjee, Georges Didi-Huberman, David Freedberg, Vittorio Gallese, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Ludovica Lumer, Edward Nersessian, Andrea Pinotti, François Quiviger, Dorothea Rockburne, Christopher Wood, François Ansermet et Pierre  Magistretti.

Location

The Helix Center for Interdisciplinary Investigation, The Marianne & Nicholas Young Auditorium, 247 East 82nd Street New York, NY 10028

Entry policy

Free and open to the public.

Discussion with Jean-Michel Besnier

Presentation

Jean-Michel Besnier is professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris-Sorbonne and member of the Center for Research in Applied Epistemology (CREA, Ecole Polytechnique and CNRS). He is member of the CNRS Ethics Committee (until June 2011), of the Scientific Council of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Science and Technology, and member of the Managing Board of Universcience. He was scientific director of the Science and Society Sector of the Ministry of Research (until April 2011). His recent publications include: La Croisée des sciences (Le Seuil 2006), Demain les posthumains. Le futur a-t-il encore besoin de nous ? (Fayard 2010), La Science en jeu, with E. Klein, H. Wismann and H. Le Guyader (Actes Sud 2011), and L’Homme simplifié. Le syndrome de la touche étoile (Fayard 2012). He manages the collection Mélétè published by Le Pommier. His current research mainly concern the philosophical and ethical impact of science and technology on the representations and on individual and collective imaginary.

Discussion with Claude Calame

Presentation

Currently director of studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and attached to the Centre of “Anthropology and history of the ancient world” (ANHIMA, 2 Rue Vivienne, F-75002 Paris), Claude Calame has long been a professor of language and Greek literature at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lausanne where he chaired the Interfaculty Department of History and Religious Studies. After teaching at the University of Urbino in Italy and then in Lausanne school, after a brief fieldwork in the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea, he also taught in the United States, at the University of Yale, as well as in the Graduate School in humanities from the University of Siena.

Discussion with Catherine Malabou

Presentation

Catherine Malabou teaches philosophy at Kingston University in the UK. Among other works, she has published: L’Avenir de Hegel, Vrin, 1996, Le Change Heidegger, in Léo Scheer, 2004, Que faire de notre cerveau ?, 2005, Les nouveaux blessés, 2007, in Bayard. As a philosopher, her name is associated with the concept of “plasticity” to which she has devoted a number of works including L’Avenir de Hegel, Plasticité, temporalité et dialectique (Vrin) and La Plasticité au soir de l’écriture in 2005. She also organized a symposium entitled Plasticity, which was held at Le Fresnoy and which brought together Jacques Derrida, Peter Szondy, Georges Didi-Huberman, Dominique Païni and other personalities from the arts. This symposium was followed by the publication of its actions at Léo Scheer in 2000.

Discussion with Jean Starobinski

Presentation

Jean Starobinski was born in Geneva in 1920. He taught French literature at the universities of Johns Hopkins, Basel and Geneva, where he also gave lectures about the history of ideas and history of medicine. His books have enriched the views of several major works. He has also worked extensively on the contemporary poetic creation, as well as on the issues of interpretation. His essays on the art of the seventeenth century have become classics. His experience as a physician and psychiatrist led him to study the history of melancholy (including Trois Fureurs, 1974). In 2010, he entrusted his archives, consisting of over 40,000 books, at the Archives of the Swiss National Library. In 2012, he published L’Encre de la Mélancolie (Paris, Seuil), Accuser et séduire (Paris, Gallimard) and Diderot, un diable de ramage (Paris, Gallimard).

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