July 08, 2005
Adelaide Festival of ideas
I'm just going to link this Visual Culture and National Identity for the moment. I will come back to it given the importance of including, for example, ideas of "Australianess" in the discussion of visual culture(traditionally painting, photography, and cinema) has been historically important.
It is an old and central theme in Australian culture and one that is still particularly relevant to living in particular regions in a global world. It is an issue in which there has been a vigorous public discussion in Australia.
On that note the Adelaide Festival of Ideas is on again in the dirty drug capital of Australia (the drugs are laced with poison) and still caught up in the Randall Ashbourne political corruption affair. Though Adelaide is mocked as a big country town on the way becoming a retirement village, it does do the discussion of ideas in a public space well.
The full programme is oneline. It is very activist orientated--finding ways to make the world a better place. The idea is that we are overwhelmed by information and we have troubling translating that into knowledge and then into action.
The Festival has had a low media profile--unsuprising given the anti-intelllectual populism of the Murdoch rag called The Advertiser and the self-satisfied complacency of its columnists.
However, like most cultural institutions in Australia, the Festival does not have a strong online presence. None of the talks are online. So it has the feel of town meeting prior to the digital age. It is popular because it is that.
I missed the Thursday night forum session in the Adelaide town Hall. Entitled on 'Perils, Real or Imagined', it was about domesday scenarios and apocalypse soon. I don't need help to sort through the chaff of alarmism (a meteorite collison) to understand that global warming is a big threat to our way of life.
The Friday night forum session at the Adelaide Town Hall was on 'How to be Good', which would be the core of the programme. The emphasis is on goodness as an ethical category not an ethical/political one of an ethical life..
I have little interest in Saturday's session, Designing the Universe, as I am evolutionist who does not take creationism seriously and I'm not persuaded by the classic argument from design.
I notice that there is nothing on urban design and make Adelaide a more exciting and sustainable urban place based on a dwelling mode of being-in-the-world?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at July 8, 2005 09:02 PM | TrackBack