First Fridays
(Current)
UPCOMING on May 2, 2025
Reports from SoRA's organizing fellows in Rochester, NY, Arnaudville, LA, and Louisville, KY.
Material:
Going behind the scenes of the Attention Economy with Chris Hayes, author of NY Times bestseller, The Sirens' Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource.
Plus! Updates from SoRA facilitator and Attention Justice Coordinator Quinn Marchman, and a warm-up exercise with Eve Mitchell.
Material:
"TV Delivers People," Richard Serra, Carlotta Fay Schoolman, 1973.
Thinking through Attention and the Sublime with Johannes Wankhammer.
A sublime warm up with Vitoria Oliveira.
Material:
Expanding the Attention Curriculum with the Strother School's "Attention Activist" teachers.
Special warm-up with Sasha Wizansky and Pencil magazine
Material:
Expanding the Attention Curriculum with the Strother School's "Attention Activist" teachers.
Special warm-up with Sasha Wizansky and Pencil magazine
Material:
Attention Curriculum Presentations
Presented by Strother School facilitator Eve Mitchell
And a warm-up exercise with Jahony Germosen, Conjuring Sanctuary
Material:
Thinking on new strategies for networked collective action, with special guest Etienne Turpin.
Material:
A report on the 2024 Politics of Attention VI residency, Attention and the Law.
Material:
Attention and the Law Reading Packets
Presentation on Politics of Attention VI
A conversation with Elisa Tamarkin on attention, relevance, and irrelevance, and an exercise in "Silence as Speech."
Plus, a special report from Friend of Attention Julian Chehirian on the "searchlight" attention-effects in his collaborative installation at this year's Venice Biennial.
A conversation with special guest Professor Carolin Duttlinger on her book Attention and Distraction in Modern German Literature, Thought, and Culture.
Screenshot Vivant, with Claudia Claremi.
A conversation with musicologist Natalie Miller on immersive soundscapes.
And, an exercise in listening and looking, along with the video for the exercise.
Material:
Presentation slides for Attention, Music, and Immersion
A conversation with critic and journalist Sophie Haigney on How Group Chats Rule the World!
An exercise in Mapping the Chat. And the Maps of the Chat!
Material:
Sophie Haigney, How Group Chats Rule the World
Reflections on the Rhetorics of Attention with friend of attention, David Landes!
And, an exercise in Alethic Attention.
Material:
Mark Twain, Two Ways of Seeing a River
A discussion on "Dark Patterns", and the new lawsuits and lawmaking aimed at the attention frackers with Mihir Kshirsagar.
Plus, an exercise in be|hold|ing with An-Li Bogan.
Material:
What Makes Dark Patterns Dark?, Arunesh Mathur, Jonathan Mayer, Mihir Kshirsagar
An exploration of methods of attention to inner experience with Professor Russel T. Hurlburt.
An exercise in attending to Spaces in Thought.
A conversation with former Google-strategist, philosopher and author James Williams.
Plus, a warm up exercise w/ special guest Jac Mullen.
A conversation hosted by Jeff Dolven and Matthew Spellberg on the Strother School of Radical Attention.
Warm-up exercise led by Ana Marques.
And, a toolkit exercise.
A discussion with Caleb Smith on his new book Thoreau's Axe: Distraction and Discipline in American Culture.
W/ special guest Jared Rankin, an exercise in drifting with the clouds ...
Material:
Caleb Smith, excerpt from Thoreau's Axe
Henry David Thoreau, excerpt from Journal
Micro-documentary film-screenings on diverse practices of attention, with shorts from filmmaker and FoA intern Dylan Liu, and a conversation on the Friends of Attention coalition-building effort.
Plus, a filmic warm-up from Claudia Claremi!
A discussion with Jamie Kreiner on her new book The Wandering Mind: What Medieval Monks Tell Us about Distraction.
Plus, a Centripetal ASMR exercise with Ana Marques, and David B. Landes on The Attention Trove ...
Material:
John Cassian, Collationes excerpt
Professor Kreiner's "ANGEL WING MNEMONIC MEDITATION EXERCISE"
The Centripetal ASMR Spirographic Centering Meditation:
Courtesy of the 2020 ESTAR(SER) residency at the Watermill Center - "Wondergraphic Distraction"
Wondergraphic Distraction, Part I:
Wondergraphic Distraction, Part II:
A discussion with Stefanie Hessler on the forthcoming Attention, Algorithms, and Social Justice exhibition.
W/ special guest Stevie Knauss, and a January intervention protocol.
Presented by: Chris Mole
W/ special guest Jeff Dolven, and an exercise in attending to a philosophical problem.
Material:
Presentation on Attention and Attentiveness
Christopher Mole, On Attention and Adverbialism
Presented by: Eva Nagao
Material:
Excerpt from an interview with Mariame Kaba
Attention as the Discipline of Care
Presented by: Sal Randolph
W/ special guest David Richardson, and an exercise in mutual dreaming.
Material:
Sal Randolph, an excerpt from The Uses of Art
Presented by special guest: Silvia Caprioglio Panizza
W/ special guest Daphne Barile, and an August exercise.
A conversation with artist Lex Brown about love, politics, art, education, and her participation in the "Gramsci Monument" project.
Material:
Lex Brown, "Monument Time"
A screening of Statues Hardly Ever Smile (1971).
Followed by Q&A with producer: Kent Garrett, author of The Last Negroes at Harvard (2020), and a founding member of Black Journal (1968) and "Chamba Productions" (1971).
Material:
Exercise of the Zoom Buddha (in the spirit of Nam June Paik)
A collaborative conversation on curriculum for the upcoming Spring 2022 Attention Labs.
Facilitated by: Lane Stroud and Kristin Lawler
Material:
A collaborative conversation on curriculum for the upcoming Spring 2022 Attention Labs.
Facilitated by: Marcus Ryan
W/ special guest Diego Zamalloa-Chion and "Scenes of Attention."
Presented by special guest: Wayne Wu
Material:
Wayne Wu, "Action always involves attention"
Wayne Wu, "Good Technique in Attention"
Presented by: Sonali Chakravarti and Lane Stroud
Material:
Rachel Syme "On the Nose" from The New Yorker, Vol. XCVI, Iss. 46
A collaborative conversation on the "Handbook for the Attention Liberation Movements" working text drafted as part of the ongoing work of the Politics of Attention Workshops.
Materials:
Friends of Attention, working text of "The Handbook for the Attention Liberation Movements"
Presented by: Aaron E. Hirsh
W/ special guest Jared Rankin, and an exercise in practical nephomancy.
Material:
Allora & Calzadilla, Ted Chiang, "The Great Silence" from e-flux journal #65 SUPERCOMMUNITY
Presented by: Adam Jasper
W/ special guest: Penumbra Knauss, and her reflections on shadows.
Material:
Joseph Rykwert, "The Sciotherum" from The Idea of a Town: The Anthropology of Urban Form in Rome, Italy, and the Ancient World
Presented by: Carlos Montemayor & Jesse Prinz
W/ special guest: Helen Singh-Miller, and an Action of Joint Attention.
Material:
Carlos Montemayor, some ideas from Knowledge, Dexterity, and Attention