The LFTT and the ‘E-Kit’ at The Schloss Wartin Salon (DE)

The second stop on The LFTT Library Translation Tour was at The Schloss Wartin Summer Salon* in Brandenberg, Germany in collaboration with Polish artist Aga Tamiola and Emergency Kit for Neuroskeptics. Billed as ‘a survival kit to help a modern person be more human in a time of neuroscience’ the ‘E-Kit’ is a fragmented poetry anthology re-presented in a neuro-labs slide box, a receptacle which once contained cross section images of rats brains. As literal ‘slices of thought’ the E-Kit’s text fragments (coincidentally of a scale commensurate with the limits of a twitter post) are further employed in sympathy with the early Dadaists as a performance prop, allowing the subconscious thoughts of artist and audience to speak through the medium of the Kit.

The E-Kit is an equally humorous and considered critique of the sometimes reductive methods of neuroscience in explaining away mechanisms behind thought and language processes as ordered and transparent. With a background in literature and linguistics Tamiola is drawn to the apparent simplicity of the scientific method which she see’s as ultimately problematic. The Emergency Kit… adds a layer of Stochastic freedom to the process of intertextual analysis and provided a lyrical counterpart to the historical weight of the The LFTT Library content.

For The Schloss Wartin Summer Salon, The LFTT Library and Emergency Kit for Neuroskeptics presented the collaborative project ‘Language Confusion Clinic’ in the form of an initial public demonstration and subsequent workshop/clinic in the grounds of Castle Wartin. See related post for further details.

*Situated in former East Germany Castle Wartin is one of hundreds of castles and manor houses which had been left to fall into near ruin since the end of WWII in 1945. After German reunification in 1990 two professors The Free University of Berlin and fellows of Harvard and Cambridge; Hans-Joachim Mengel and Charles Elworthy set up The Foundation Collegium Wartinum for protection and promotion of activities related to Castle Wartin. A further goal of The Foundation was the establishment of a permanent centre for art, culture and science at Castle Wartin in association with The European Academy. The Schloss Wartin Summer Salon 2015, was an art and philosophy conference initiated by the Yale University Alumni Club in Germany eV . The Emergency Kit for Neuroskeptics is a joint project of Aga Tamiola and Sean Erickson.

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