Part Six
The Art (and Pop Culture) of Getting Long Time
The power of art, culture and stories to change our short-term operating system.
In our final episode we dive into the role art and culture play in cultivating long-termism at scale.
Far from being window dressing, art and culture forms the operating systems of our world; it has the power to shift our collective identity. Culture doesn’t just reflect societal norms, it has the power to change, iterate and manifest new ones.
We’ll meet the artists, creators and curators who are using time as both their medium and their message, and explore the role of creativity in shifting us to a long-term society.
Special thanks to the contributors to this episode, Brian Eno, Bridgit Antoinette Evans, Katie Paterson, Jeremy Lent, Anab Jain and Sherri Mitchell.
Long Time Practice: Your Long Time Ritual
This Long Time Ritual enables you to sense into your unique location in the great web of life. Use it whenever you’d like to drop into longer, deeper time.
You’ll need a small object that represents the long time for you. It could be a pebble, an acorn, a seed … anything that connects you to the long past, the long future, or time itself.
The Long Time Ritual is written and read by Ella Saltmarshe.
We’ve designed a set of tools to put the ideas explored in this episode into practice.
SHOW NOTES
Discover more about Brian Eno here.
Find out more about the work of Bridgit Antoinette Evans and the Pop Culture Collaborative here.
Discover Katie Paterson’s work here and delve into the Future Library.
Find out about Jeremy Lent’s work including The Patterning Instinct here.
Experience the work of Anab Jain and Superflux here.
Find out about Sherri Mitchell’s projects and writing here.
If you want to delve deeper into Long Time ideas, here is a suggested reading list!
CREDITS
The series was created and produced by Lina Prestwood and Ella Saltmarshe.
Produced by Ivor Manley and Madeleine Finlay. This episode was also produced by Eli Block.
Executive producers at Headspace Studios are Ash Jones, Leah Sutherland & Morgan Selzer.
Original artwork by Mavi Morais. Design by Loz Ives & Lewis Kay-Thatcher.
Original music, sound design and mixing by Tristan Cassel-Delavois, Scott Sorenson & Chris Murguia with additional music this episode from Eli Block and Jamie Patterson.
It’s a Sin clips courtesy of Channel 4/ HBO Max/ Red Production Company.
Glee clip courtesy of Fox/ 20th Century Fox Television/ Brad Falchuk Teley-Vision/ Ryan Murphy Productions.
Clips from Mitigation of Shock courtesy of Superflux.
Future Library archive courtesy of Katie Paterson Studios.
Additional archive clips from xinaesthete/ Astounded/ Christopher J Astbury, Switzerland
The Long Time Academy comes to you from Headspace Studios and The Long Time Project, and is produced by Scenery Studios.
Meet our guests
Brian Eno
Brian Eno is a musician, producer, visual artist and activist. To date he has released over forty albums of his own music and exhibited extensively. He is a founding member of the Long Now Foundation, a trustee of Client Earth and patron of Videre est Credere. In April 2021, he launched EarthPercent, which raises money from the music industry for some of the most impactful environmental charities working on the climate emergency. His latest album, ‘Film Music 1976 – 2020’ was released in November 2020.
Bridgit Antoinette Evans
Bridgit is the CEO of the Pop Culture Collaborative. She is widely recognized as one of the foremost thought leaders in the culture change strategy field. A professional artist and strategist, she has dedicated her career to the relentless investigation of the potential of artists to drive cultural change in society. In 2008, Bridgit founded Fuel | We Power Change, a culture change strategy studio in New York City. In 2016, Bridgit was a Nathan Cummings Foundation Fellow, piloting Culture Changes Us, a coordinated learning system designed to accelerate the social justice sectors’ understanding and use of culture change strategy. For Unbound Philanthropy and Ford Foundation, she has led multi-year culture change research and strategy design projects aimed at unearthing breakthrough narrative and engagement strategies for the immigrant rights and gender justice movements.
Katie Paterson
Katie Paterson is widely regarded as one of the leading artists of her generation. Collaborating with scientists and researchers across the world, her projects consider our place on earth in the context of geological time and change. Her artworks make use of sophisticated technologies and specialist expertise to stage intimate, poetic and philosophical engagements between people and their natural environment. Katie has exhibited internationally and her works have been included in major exhibitions including The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Turner Contemporary, Hayward Gallery, Tate Britain and more.
Jeremy Lent
Jeremy is an author and speaker whose work investigates the underlying causes of our civilization’s existential crisis, and explores pathways toward a life-affirming future. His award-winning book, The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning, examines the way humans have made meaning from the cosmos from hunter-gatherer times to the present day. His new book, The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Universe, offers a solid foundation for an integrative worldview that could lead humanity to a sustainable, flourishing future.
Sherri Mitchell
Sherri is a Native American attorney, activist, and teacher from the Penobscot Nation. She is the author of Sacred Instructions; Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change, and a contributor to numerous anthologies including All We Can Save: Truth, Courage and Solutions for the Climate Crisis and Portraits of Racial Justice- Americans Who Tell The Truth. Sherri is the founding director of the Land Peace Foundation, an organization dedicated to the protection of Indigenous rights and the preservation of the Indigenous way of life.
Anab Jain
Anab is a filmmaker, designer and artist. She is Co-founder and Director of Superflux, an experimental foresight, design and art studio in London, UK exploring more-than-human futures. Superflux has worked for clients like Google, DeepMind, Red Cross, UNDP, IKEA and BBC. Anab is also Professor and Programme Leader for Design Investigations at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna.