The Artangel Longplayer Conversation

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.

The Artangel Longplayer Conversation 2011, on 18 April, introduced two of the world’s foremost modern thinkers: climate-scientist and ‘futurologist’ James Lovelock and political philosopher and author John Gray.

Conversation recordings/documentation:

2011: John Gray & James Lovelock
18 April 2011 at RIBA, Portland Place, London
 [Watch] [Listen] ... or [Read] a response from futurist Mark Stevenson

2009: The Long Conversation
12 September 2009 at The Roundhouse, Chalk Farm, London
(with Jeanette Winterson, Susie Orbach, Sophie Fiennes, Mark Miodownik, Cory Doctorow, Ruth Padel, Lewis Wolpert, Charles Arsène-Henry, Mark Lythgoe, Bonnie Greer, Marcus du Sautoy, Robert Peston, Steven Rose, Lisa Jardine, Andrew Kötting, David Toop, Mark Haddon, Rachel Armstrong and Vincent Walsh)
[Listen]

2005: Doris Lessing and Laurie Anderson
26 May 2005 at the Royal Institution, London
[Listen]