Thinking Existenz

These testaments from 2013 offer singular proof that we are still living a moment of urgent questioning about our common future, raised by the joint acceleration of human, natural and technological phenomena, but also by the inoperability of your models for interpreting our world and acting upon it.
This is a series combining common doubts and perplexities with stimulating thought of some of the most interesting personalities of our time.

With:

Eduardo Galeano - Uruguayan journalist and writer, lived in exile for the better part of his life.

Laurie Anderson - American artist uniting music, video, photography, sculpture and painting.

Lucrecia Martel - Argentinian filmmaker, part of the current known as New Argentine Cinema.

Suad Amiry - Syrian author and director of the Centre for the Conservation of Palestinian Architectural Heritage.

Karen Amstrong - UK author of A 'History of God', where she states that there is one common trait in all forms of spirituality: compassion.

Esther Duflo - French professor of Economics at MIT, founder of 'Poverty Action Lab' and director of 'Economic Policy Research's Development Program'.

Martin Jacques - UK author 'When China Rules the World', former editor of the journal 'Marxism Today'.

Vandana Shiva - Indian physicist combining the struggle for human rights with the protection of the environment.

Lula Da Silva - President of Brazil between 2003 and 2011. Founder of Brazilian Labour Party.

Braden Allenby - American professor of Law and Civil and Environmental Engineering, director and founder of the 'Center for Earth Systems', co-author of the book 'The Techno-Human Condition'.


Episode 1: Eduardo Galeano
Born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1940. A journalist and writer who combines fiction, history and political analysis in his texts. Has lived in exile for the better part of his life. Returned to Montevideo in 1985.
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For Eduardo Galeano, life is the relation between wanting and power, between what exists and what we believe exists, between our fantasy and our actual circumstances. Galeano understands reality as something much richer and more diverse than the way we sometimes see it, limited as we are by a value system that restricts our comprehension and our readiness to view the unknown as an opportunity, rather than a threat. Galeano proposes to reconstruct our memory, to listen to words never heard before and to see the world with different eyes, uniting that which is separate.


Episode 2: Laurie Anderson
Born in Chicago in 1947. In her art installations, she mixes several media, uniting music, video, photography, sculpture and painting through her narratives. In the 80's and 90's she was a precursor of contemporary electronic music. In 2010 she launches the album Homeland.
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In Laurie Anderson's words, technology is a mere tool – like the pencil – to design the world, allowing us to assess our capacity as acting individuals. This reality creates conflicting conditions: on the one hand, we are capable of determining our own existence; on the other, we are constantly limited by the way we design the world and life. This design is no doubt conditioned by external factors and obeys categories that have us think the world in a closed manner. Thus we become ignorant, creating a language and culture that don't allow us to ponder realities beyond those that we find within the perimeter in which we move - like poverty or war.


Episode 3: Lucrecia Martel
Born in 1966 in Salta, Argentina. Studied Cinema and Communication Science in Buenos Aires. As a film director, she belongs to the New Argentinian Cinema.
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In Lucrecia Martel's view, cinema allows us a sneak peek at reality, motivated by curiosity rather than prejudice. Lucrecia thinks of cinema as a way of accessing what is real, a way to question our perception of reality, which is given meaning through cinema. Our perception is shaped, with everyone's consent, by a certain version of history. Nevertheless, humanity possesses more shades and nuances than those offered to us by the current vision of a global world. According to Lucrecia Martel, the essence of life cannot be grasped and cinema enables us to see this transcendent quality that is, after all, she says, part of us.


Episode 4: Suad Amiry
Born in 1951 in Damascus, Syria. Educated in Architecture at the universities of Beirut and Michigan. Between 1991 and 1993 she was a member of the Palestinian peace delegation in Washington. She is the director of the Centre for the Conservation of Palestinian Architectural Heritage and the author of several books.
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Suad Amiry became a writer by accident, but by nature she is a true story teller. She tells us about the human side of the occupation, the daily life of Palestinians that live under the scrutiny and control of the state of Israel. To be able to write, all that is needed is to have a story to tell, and Amiry tells us the story of millions of people that one day found their lives usurped, while she reflects on the conflict existing in the region – a conflict that is essentially about territorial control. A conflict that irremediably divides two peoples forced to become neighbours by our recent collective history.


Episode 5: Karen Armstrong
Born in 1944 in Wildemoore, England. Among many other books she is the author of A History of God, in which she presents a comparative study of the three monotheistic religions. Karen Armstrong states that we can find one common trait in all forms of spirituality: compassion.
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Karen Armstrong identifies compassion as the common trait of different religions and sees suffering as a creational force. According to the English writer, suffering is something we all share, at the very least because of our common mortal condition, which, by itself, should be enough to enable us to understand the pain of others. Today, more than ever, the world needs compassion and putting ourselves in the other's place has become an ethical imperative. However, it is not enough to believe in this “golden rule”: we need to apply it, and find creative ways of making an ethic of compassion possible.


Episode 6: Esther Duflo
Born in 1972 in Paris. Professor of Economics at MIT, Boston, founder of the Poverty Action Lab and director of the Center of Economic Policy Research's development economics program. She is a regular contributor to the weekly newspaper Libération.
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Motivated by the responsibility that came with having been born in the Parisian upper class, Esther Duflo chose to be an economist, reconciling research and action. Starting with the interrogation on what constitutes poverty, she tells us about the way reality is materialised by politicians. According to Duflo, many of the development policies, where the issue of poverty is the central object, are largely ineffective, because they stem from wrong assumptions about poverty and about the poor. A trap that Duflo calls the “triple i”: ideology, ignorance and inertia. Duflo deconstructs some of the stereotypes about poverty and reveals to us the way the cycles of poverty work: in other words why, the poorer the people, the higher the probability that they will stay poor.


Episode 7: Martin Jacques
Born in Coventry, England, in 1945. Until 1991, he was the editor of the journal Marxism Today. Visiting professor at universities in Japan, China and Singapore. Author of the book When China Rules the World.

According to Martin Jacques, the fact that China will overtake the North-American economy already in 2018, and not in 2025 as predicted a few years ago, will have a strong impact on the world as we know it. For the author of When China Rules the World, the rise of economies such as China and India, that together represent 38 percent of the world population, constitutes the biggest act of democratisation of the modern world. The rise of China gives birth to a new social and economic reality.


Episode 8: Vandana Shiva
Born in 1952 in Dehradun, India. Obtained a PhD in Physics at the university of Ontario in Canada with the thesis “Hidden variables and locality in quantum theory”. he combines the struggle for human rights with the protection of the environment.
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Vandana Shiva combines Quantum Physics with social activism to peacefully resist a system that she considers has colonised the earth, life and the spirit. She recounts how she started defending the forest, the seeds and the local ways of life and production, against the registration and control of patents claimed by multinational corporations. Our civilisation, to survive, will have to review its model of understanding and interacting with the world, taking as an example the holistic knowledge of the Chinese and Indian civilisations that, according to Shiva, survived history essentially because they differ from the Occident in the relationship they have established with nature.

Episode 9: Lula da Silva
Born in Pernambuco in 1945. Workman, unionist and founder of the Brazilian Labour Party. President of Brazil between 2003 and 2011.
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Lula da Silva was Brazil's president for two terms. His popularity stems from his charisma but also from his life story: a workman that became the leader of one of the world's strongest economies, one of the world's most beautiful countries, and an unequal society that is undertaking a huge effort to create change. Lula talks about Europe and the current correlation of forces in the world, about ecology and sustainability, about the non-existence of Left thinking, about his successor Dilma and the importance of women in politics. Lula also reflects about the way his recent illness may have influenced his life, his way of viewing others and the way he now plans to act and live.


Episode 10: Braden Allenby
Born in 1950 in Illinois. Professor of Law and Civil and Environmental Engineering at Arizona State University; director and founder of the Center for Earth Systems Engineering and Management and founding member of the Consortium for Emerging Technologies. Co-author of the book The Techno-Human Condition.
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Braden Allenby introduces us to today's world in all its complexity, revealing the discreet yet powerful connections that exist between the human, natural and technological systems. We currently live integrated in the systems we created; technological objects have become an extension of our body, our personality and our cognition. We inhabit a world ever more dominated by human systems that operate at various levels and are imbricated in the life of individuals and of the planet. This condition has important ethical implications, because stopping is no longer an option for us. Navigating in plain sight in a world with an unfinished design, adapting ourselves to the system as it evolves, will be our non-remediable condition from now on. For Allenby, the future is uncertain, different, more difficult, but fascinating.

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