Art, Propaganda, and the Projection of State Power

Fellow Interintellect Linus Lu explores art becoming propaganda aesthetics relating to state power and political legitimacy "We take it for granted that art is a vehicle of self-expression for the artist, and about revealing deep truths about human nature and society. And we also take it for granted that propaganda can't really be considered art.…

Process and Institutions of Becoming: Past, Present and Future

How do you acquire an identity? Fellow Interintellect Arnaud Schenk explores the process of becoming and its changing with the internet "The person you are didn't use to exist, and yet now it does! How did this happen? Attempts to answer this question often start and end with an explanation of nature and nurture, of…

Let’s Get Meta: A Conversation About Conversations

Fellow Interintellect Vidhika Bansal invites you to chat about the art and science of conversation — across mediums, cultures, and contexts Conversations happen on so many different continuums: from eagerly anticipated ones to outright dreaded ones, synchronous to asynchronous, planned to impromptu, familiar to foreign, brief to lengthy, one-on-one to in groups, regular to sporadic,…

The “Interesting” Salon

Fellow Interintellect Linus Lu invites you to fearlessly investigate what makes things interesting What makes something interesting? Why do different people find different things interesting? What are some universal characteristics that make things interesting? We'll explore if and how things can be intrinsically interesting, and the process in which people develop interests through personal experiences,…

Personal Values vs Social Values – Interintellect Workshop Salon

Courage, loyalty, tolerance. Perseverance, empathy, autonomy... Most of us agree that the values we consider of highest importance in our lives don't only influence but should actively guide our living arrangements, our career choices, and our private relationships. Yet few of us possess the frameworks of introspection needed to clearly define our personal values for…

The Market Value of Contrarianism: Free Speech, Free Thought, and the Stock Market, A Discussion with Jim O’Shaugnessy

“Time spent arguing is, oddly enough, almost never wasted.”  ~Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian From Socraties to Galileo to Hitchens, contrarians have always made life more, well, interesting (for themselves as well as everyone else).But in a noisy combative world of hot-takes and meme-stocks where every second Silicon Valley talking-head is a self-described…

The Peril and Promise of Local Politics

Online

In this salon, fellow Interintellect Daniel Golliher will consider local politics, its prestige deficit, its aesthetic failings, and its hurdles to engagement; he and attendees will discuss why these things arise, but–more interestingly–how they might disappear.  When you think of local politics, you likely think of blank-faced people sitting in metal foldout chairs in some dilapidated civic…