Reframing Antiquity: Ways of Knowing and Being

GEEX Talks Q&A Podcast

What is the significance of reinvestigating and recreating historic processes? Artist Raghvi Bhatia and historian of science Dr. Marvin Bolt discuss alternative histories of the telescope, the concept of loanwords and “loancraft” objects, and the critical value of embodied knowledge.

“The context is always there. It's always in the roots. And — in a lot of different schools of thought — we've kind of been trained to ignore those contexts especially when the context relates to U.S. or Eurocentric modes of power. If I work with a kind of glass that's produced industrially in North America, and it was developed for the Studio Glass Movement: no one asks me about the context of the material I'm using.”

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Transcript available on the GEEX website.

Made possible by the Center for Craft. Thanks to Bullseye Glass Company and His Glassworks for sponsoring this episode!

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Featured Speakers:

• Raghvi Bhatia (@raghvib): Visual artist. Visit Raghvi’s website.

• Dr. Marvin Bolt: Historian of science and curator emeritus of science and technology at the Corning Museum of Glass. Visit Dr. Bolt’s ResearchGate profile.

Additional Links:

• "Dioptrice: Examining and Cataloguing the World's Oldest Surviving Telescopes" (JSTOR)

• "Undersea Adventures: The Marine Invertebrate Glass Models of Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka"

• Giannis Antetokoumpo: "There Is No Failure in Sports"

• Arnold Schoenberg: "String Quartet No.2, Op.10"

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Theme music by Podington Bear. Additional music in this episode by Otis McDonald.

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Selected questions from the audience:

• SUCCESS/FAILURE: How do you define success and failure (artistically, scientifically, or historically)? Thinking of glass, do you define success by controlling the will of the material or working with it?

• ‘NEW’ OLD GLASS: Thinking about how both of you are reinvestigating and recreating old processes (i.e. Tschirnhaus' double lens burning apparatus, Zellige tiling, etc.) What is the impetus or impact of repurposing these methods? What do you hope to learn?

• SHADOWS: How is mimicry related to the idea of a subjective truth of reality? How is this variation connected to the dichotomy of reflecting/absorbing?

• PRACTICE: I have noticed that people in STEM are intimidated or discouraged because of a belief in art as an innate talent versus something that is actively developed. What would you suggest to change this mindset?

• ARTISTIC GROWTH: Have you ever conceptualized your practice as other than a religious sect? What did that look/feel like and how did that thought process evolve over time?

• ALTERNATIVE HISTORIES: Can you speak to alternative histories of the telescope outside of Europe and the U.S.? What was the impact of the telescope's introduction to other cultures and communities?

• LOOKING AT, LOOKING THROUGH, LOOKING INTO: How do you distinguish the ideas of looking at, looking through, and looking into? How does it impact or change the way you see and learn?

Thanks to the University of Wisconsin-Madison for sharing questions!

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Edited and produced by Emily Leach and Ben Orozco.