The Artangel Longplayer Conversation 2011: John Gray and James Lovelock

RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects)
66 Portland Place
London W1B 1AD
7pm, 18 April 2011

An audio recording of the discussion is now available - click here to listen

Listening post at Trinity Buoy Wharf Lighthouse

The Artangel Longplayer Conversation 2011 introduced two of the world’s foremost modern thinkers: climate-scientist and ‘futurologist’ James Lovelock and political philosopher and author John Gray, embarking on a discussion inspired by the philosophical implications of long time.

An annual event, The Artangel Longplayer Conversation invites two cultural thinkers to engage in a discussion inspired by the philosophical premise of Jem Finer’s Longplayer, a musical composition playing, in real time, over the course of an entire millennium. Commissioned by Artangel and launched in 2000, Longplayer suggests a projection of growth and change and a timescale beyond our lifespans.

The inaugural Longplayer Conversation, in 2005, paired New York artist and musician Laurie Anderson with Nobel prize-winning writer Doris Lessing, and in 2007, leading British architect David Adjaye conversed with Canadian design luminary Bruce Mau. 2008’s Conversation brought together British writer and philosopher Alain de Botton and international financier and philanthropist George Soros, and for Longplayer’s tenth anniversary in 2009, Longplayer Live staged an epic relay of conversations – a 12-hour talking marathon of 24 leading writers, filmmakers, scientists, academics and technology activists – as well as the enactment of Longplayer’s spectacular first-ever live performance: a 1,000 minute section from its 1,000 year duration.

James Lovelock is the originator of Gaia theory, a hypothesis he formulated in the 1960s as a consequence of his work for NASA on methods of detecting life on Mars, which proposes that Earth's physical and biological processes are inextricably bound to form a self-regulating system – but not one that can indefinitely support human life. His latest book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia updates and reiterates the urgency of his original theory – proposing that climate change will result in inevitable global catastrophe, and that the human race should prepare for the worst. He is also the inventor of the electron capture detector (which made possible the detection of CFCs and other atmospheric nano-pollutants) and of the microwave oven.

John Gray has written several influential books on political theory – and is perhaps best known for Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals, a critique of humanism; asserting that humanist belief in progress is derived from an erroneous Christian notion of humans as morally autonomous beings categorically different from all other animals. Gray sees volition, and hence morality, as an illusion, and portrays humanity as a ravenous species engaged in wiping out other forms of life. He writes that "humans... cannot destroy the Earth, but they can easily wreck the environment that sustains them.”

The Artangel Long Conversation 2011 was streamed online in partnership with Intelligence Squared. An audio recording of the discussion is avilable here