Lawrence Weschler Talk at the Crowley Theater

A Typology of Convergences: Towards a Unified Field Theory of Cultural Transmission

The Chinati Foundation invites you to a talk by
Lawrence Weschler
June 7, 2012, 7:30 PM
Crowley Theatre, Marfa, Texas
Free

For the past decade, in the National Book Critics Circle Award winning Everything that Rises: A Book of Convergences, and in the ongoing contest that book spawned on the McSweeney’s website, Lawrence Weschler has been exploring the way images (also poems, musical themes, etc.) set a context for the reception of subsequent instances.

We see by way of what we have already seen.
We create out of our entire prior sensorium.

In this talk, Weschler will consider a spectrum of such convergent effects, from apophenia (the tendency of humans to see patterns where none exist) through co-causation, fractalization, influence (forward and backward, direct and unconscious), homage, apprenticeship, allusion, quotation, appropriation, cryptomnesia (verbatim appropriation without realizing you’re doing so), through outright plagiarism… Fun for the entire family!

Lawrence Weschler was a staff writer at The New Yorker from 1981 to 2002. He is the author of many books, including Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder (1995), which was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Everything that Rises: A Book of Convergences (2006) won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. Weschler has been the director of the New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University since 2001.

Note: We will streaming this talk live.