If you have an option to die painlessly and peacefully in your sleep, only that you wouldn’t know when, would you say yes? It seems impossible to imagine that one would voluntarily seek death if they are truly content and happy. Suffering happens all around us but certainly no one would complain about too much good life. Is it ever possible that one would say, with joy, like the last words of George Eastman, founder of Kodak, ‘My work is done, why wait?’ Or could this be rendered too pompously transcendental, therefore irrelevant, in an age where God is dead? This series attempts not to answer the unanswerable but perhaps to start by asking some difficult questions.
Dr. Christopher Hamilton, reader in Philosophy at King’s College London will join us in a workshop navigating the question: Death is certain but unknowable, how then do we make sense of our lives? In this session, Hamilton will share current research on his work in moral philosophy, political philosophy and the philosophy of religion.
This series of events has been organised through a graduate mentoring initiative developed in collaboration with Acme Studios Graduate Award Programme
Artist Bo Choy will present her new film, The Birthday Party, which reflects on questions and issues raised in the season. Set in her forty-fifth birthday party, Anat, an artist who has led a successful career, makes an important announcement which stuns her closest friends and family. The screening will be followed by a discussion on the work and questions surrounding it led by artist Oreet Ashery.
This series of events has been organised through a graduate mentoring initiative developed in collaboration with Acme Studios Graduate Award Programme.
Oreet Ashery is an interdisciplinary artist working in local and international contexts and engaged with bio/political fiction, gender materiality and potential communities. Ashery is the winner of the Jarman Film Award 2017 and the Associate Professor of Fine Art at Ruskin School of Art. Ashery’s recent large scale projects include: Passing Through Metal, a sonic performance commissioned by LPS, Malmo, 2017; web-series Revisiting Genesis, commissioned by Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston University London, and supported by the Wellcome Trust, 2016; The World is Flooding, a Tate Modern Turbine Hall performance re-enactment of Mayakovsky’s play ‘Mystery Bouffe’, 2014; and Party for Freedom, a moving-image album, concerts and performances commissioned by Artangel, 2013
Bo Choy is an artist living and working in London. Working across film, writing, performance, and often using fiction as a device, Bo seeks to examine the questions and politics that arise from living in the contemporary world.
Dr. Christopher Hamilton is Reader in Philosophy at King’s College London, where he teaches philosophy, literature and film. He specialises in the work of Nietzsche, Simone Weil, Kierkegaard, Primo Levi and W.G. Sebald. His work explores core themes in moral philosophy, the relationship between philosophy and literature, and between moral, religious and aesthetic value. He has also written on the philosophy of ageing, philosophy and (auto)biography, and the philosophy of tragedy. He aims to bring the ancient goals of philosophy – to seek wisdom and explore the meaning of life – to the core of his research. He is the author of the books: Living Philosophy: Reflections on Life, Meaning and Morality (2001), Middle Age (The Art of Living) (2009), How to Deal with Adversity (2014) and The Philosophy of Tragedy (2016), as well as of a school textbook on philosophy, Understanding Philosophy (2003).