In this talk, writer, musician, and Curtis Institute of Music Professor Thomas Patteson will share some of his current research into compositional paradigms based on systems concepts, emergence, and nonhuman intelligence. In challenging the assumption that music must be the expression of human thought or emotion, these approaches compel us to radically reimagine the relationship between ourselves and the world we inhabit.

Choreographer and Fidget co-director Megan Bridge’s current research centers around presence, attention, and altered states of consciousness. She leads a discussion which weaves together threads from affect theory, philosophy, neuroscience, and somatic dance practices from the Ju/‘hoan Bushmen to the rave clubs of the 1990s.

Rhonda Moore shares a practice of digging, discovering, sorting, and selecting, through the process of engaging with her own artistic archive, in its many forms. She is especially excited to share this tangled tale with the Philadelphia arts community, and invites us through this talk to consider the many, many ways there are of “knowing.”

The reduction of life to 'biopolitics' is one of the main threads in philosopher Giorgio Agamben's work. His recent work "Biosecurity and Politics," published to his blog in May 2020, is the starting point for this forum.