Preview: Longplayer Conversation 2008

By Londonist Last edited 187 months ago
Preview: Longplayer Conversation 2008
longplayerconversation.jpg

Jem Finer's thousand-year musical composition Longplayer is now well into its first decade, and we still like to throw it out there as our favourite song just to trump everyone. What other single piece of music can we really, truly call the soundtrack of our lives?

Apparently we're not the only ones still haunted by the transhuman span of its millennial strains. The stewards of the project, Artangel, are now making an annual event of the Longplayer Conversations, evenings bringing together two deep thinkers to meet for the first time and discuss the implications of Longplayer and its millennium in their respective spheres. The 2005 invitation saw Laurie Anderson philosophising with Doris Lessing, and 2007 introduced designer Bruce Mau to architect David Adjaye.

This year at the Royal Geographical Society, London-based luminary Alain De Botton, author of How Proust Can Change your Life, sits down with superstar investor-turned-philanthropist George Soros. It's set to be an unpredictable encounter between a self-styled "philosopher of everyday life" and a politico-economic mastermind whose ambitions are anything but everyday. To learn how we can hope to invest in a long term as far-flung as Y3K, or whether a thousand years can fit in a madeleine, jump on the last few tickets, available for £10/£8 from See Tickets.

By Paul Cox

For more information on Longplayer and the Conversations, visit Longplayer.org. Image of Trinity Buoy Lighthouse courtesy of McTumshie via the Londonist Flickrpool.

Last Updated 14 August 2008