Wed, Dec 18 at 7:30 p.m. | 90 minutes
Come celebrate the end of 2019 Olio-style as we unleash three seemingly random topics from Blade Runner to the Civil War to our perception of time.
Taught by Ted Barrow
This mini-Olio will explore the shared themes of identity performance and deconstructed histories in the classic Ridley Scott Blade Runner (which is set in 2019) and the festival depictions of early 18th century French painter Antoine Watteau. What do these works share, and what can we learn from each representation of the past and future?
The Glory of Decay: John Brown's Mouldering Corpse
Taught by Jamie Warren
The 19th century boasts many infamous corpses, but none so legendary as the body of John Brown. It is nearly impossible to think of his story, of his role in the history of radical abolitionism, without picturing his lifeless form "a-mouldering '" in a distant grave. Why? Why must we remind ourselves that while his soul (aka, American freedom) "goes marching on," his corpse will continually decay to infinity? This mini-Olio will examine the value of certain dead bodies in the crafting of American "freedom," and will ponder the question: Why did people love to sing songs about a-moldering corpses in the 19th century? Gross.
Take it, don't waste it: Our Experience and Perception of Time
Taught by Jeanne Proust
Time appears as one of these concepts impossible to define, nor to perceive as such. Augustine writes, “What then is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I want to explain it to a questioner, I do not know”. Indeed, though impossible to deny its existence, since it seems to be part of the necessary framework (with space) in which we can perceive at all, time cannot be accurately described. None of our 5 senses perceives it: we don’t see, hear, touch time. Even if time is intimately experienced, impossible to get out of, and an essential dimension of our experience and existence, it still is extremely difficult to think it, to grasp it - left alone to control it. How do we experience time passing? What is the past, the present and the future, and how does our conception of them shape the way we behave and think? The irreversibility, the ephemerality of time is at the core of our existence - as is our mortality, our very finitude.