Wundercabinet

a tiny pop-up lecture series featuring funny science, radical histories, strange circumstances, and other explorations of the implausible world.

[wundercabinettalks]

Imaginary Walls vs. Real Walls

In Daniil Kharms’ Theme For A Story, “a certain engineer made up his mind to build a giant brick wall across all of Petersburg” in one night without anyone noticing. “Thanks to exacting calculations…” a crew of four men is “able to build the wall in one night.” 

You might think when you read Theme For A Story that this is almost exactly how the Berlin Wall was built and you would be almost exactly right. 

[wundercabinettalks]

"One who asks about things - about their dimensions, weight, location, moods, names, holiness, smell - is an historian." -- anne carson, NOX

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Why tiny lectures?

"In her discussion of Theory's Contemplative Relation to the World Joan Cocks speaks of critical theorizing and writing as a process that reveals 'an intrinsic passion for the perverse revelation.' We write 'to find secrets in experience that are obscured from ordinary sight: to uncover hidden coherences in what seems to be a mere jumble of unrelated events and details, and incoherences in what appears to be strictly ordered; to make transparent what is opaque, and to expose opacity in what seems transparent.'" 

-bell hooks, remembered rapture, "dancing with words"

[piperkennedy]

[wundercabinettalks]

Where is our tiny lecture on the essay outline as art? 

[wundercabinettalks]

Tonight, there will not be a tiny lecture

on the reason why some people are easier to see in pictures than other people. But there will be two tiny lectures on two other things:

1. Major Jackson 2. The History of Burnt-out Paper Shredders

[wundercabinettalks]

This Friday we'll be at Under the Influence. 

We will be influenced by countless things, including, but not limited to:

Succulents Lawrence Weschler Machines that don't work and maybe never did Things that happened in 1968

[wundercabinettalks]

Let us know if anything else you care about will be born this Friday, or was born this Friday, a long time ago. 

[wundercabinettalks]

"Very often history is a means of denying the past. Denying the past is to refuse to recognise its integrity. To fit it, force it, function it, to suck out the spirit until it looks the way you think it should. We are all historians in our small way. And in some ghastly way Pol Pot was more honest than the rest of us have been. Pol Pot decided to dispense with the past altogether. To dispense with the sham of treating the past with objective respect. In Cambodia the cities were to be wiped out, maps thrown away, everything gone. No documents. Nothing. A brave new world. The old world was horrified. We pointed the finger, but big fleas have little fleas on their back to bite them."

Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit

[fieldmuseumphotoarchives]

Mammal Monday, Anteater. All anteaters have elongated snouts equipped with a thin tongue that can be extended to a length greater than the length of the head; their tube-shaped mouths have lips but no teeth.

© The Field Museum, CSZ77644.

Anteater Skeleton. Zoology mounted skeletons.

8x10 negative

1933

[wundercabinettalks]

What would you look like if you were made of hot air?

[wundercabinettalks]

The cabinet is open for submissions

Wundercabinet is making its first appearance on September 26 at Under the Influence - Round 18, and is now open for submissions. Send us your first tiny talk idea by September 13th.

We’re interested in botany, radical histories, astronomy, carpentry, great moments of escape, etc.

We’re still figuring out how the submission process is going to work, so for now, just send your tiny talks to [email protected] in some format, font, and typeface that humans can read.

Do write out a version of your talk. It doesn’t have to be the exact wording you’ll deliver, but you have to prove to yourself and to us that your talk is really five minutes.

Five minutes is not a very long time.

Before you send your talk, ask yourself if your topic is one you feel you know a lot about. If it is: tuck it away, send it somewhere else, and send us something else.

We like something else. 

[wundercabinettalks]

The revolution is what you think it's not.

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Don't be afraid to touch it.

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-wonderful-wundercabinet

[wundercabinettalks]

Blink and you'll miss it.