Conference by Lars Svendsen
Saturday, November 1, at 5pm Lars Svendsen gives a lecture on his «Philosophy of Boredom» at Kadist Art Foundation. The insistence on making meaning, the necessity for caring, the longing to posses—these are some of the symptoms of boredom. The philosopher and writer Lars Svendsen delivers a lecture on the subject of his book «A Philosophy of Boredom» as part of the exhibition Archaeology of Longing (Archéologie de la Chine). Svendsen « investigates one of the central preoccupations of our age as it probes the nature of boredom, how it originated, how and why it afflicts us, and why we cannot seem to overcome it by any act of will. Svendsen brings together observations from philosophy, literature, psychology, theology, and popular culture, examining boredom’s pre-Romantic manifestations in medieval torpor, philosophical musings on boredom from Pascal to Nietzsche, and modern explorations into alienation and transgression by twentieth-century artists from Beckett to Warhol. » Lars Svendsen (b. 1970) is a doctor of philosophy and associate professor of philosophy at the University of Bergen in Norway. Svendsen has published several books, among them, his bestselling first book “A Philosophy of Boredom”, which has been translated into 17 languages, “Man, Morals and Genes: A Critique of Biologism” and “The Philosophy of Evil”. His forthcoming book, “The Art of Living” (2008) is published by Acumen. Free admission.