I gave a talk on comparative method, Buddhist studies, and Rudyard Kipling’s Kim at the “Acts of Comparison” conference at Princeton last week. The talk was titled, “Comparison as Reconstitution: The Case of Buddhist Modernism,” and argued that we misunderstand both modernism and modern Buddhism if we do not grasp the ways in which they have mutually constituted each other. The conference was magisterially organized by three Princeton grad students: Cate Reilly, Jill Stockwell, and Javier Padilla. More info on the proceedings is available here: http://actsofcomparison.wordpress.com/

Research Service’s most recent project, Teleconference, is now online at New Museum’s R&D website.

“Teleconference” is a research initiative investigating the voice as both concept and vibration. It was developed by Research Service in collaboration with the following participants: Charles Bernstein, Jeanne Dreskin, Roksana Filipowska, Becket Flannery, Cassandra Gillig, Mark Johnson, Alexi Kukuljevic, Steve McLaughlin, Joe Milutis, Rit Premnath, Jean-Michel Rabaté, Paul Salveson, and Kaegan Sparks.

Interviewees were called by three robotic avatars of Research Service members. These avatars posed a series of preprogrammed questions both to the group as a whole and to specific subjects. The results have been edited and collated here.

“Teleconference” features a hidden bonus track by Charles Bernstein; a musical interlude by Joe Tossini, courtesy of Mark Johnson; a live musical performance by Joe Milutis; and a sampled soundtrack by Richard Rossmini from AT&T’s 1974 wordless documentary, “The Hello Machine.”

Here is the gallery wall text for an upcoming installation and performance by Research Service at Lisa Cooley gallery in New York:

If Your Phone Doesn’t Ring, It’s Me is an installation, research initiative, and performance by Research Service. The project investigates aphasia as a social phenomenon triangulated by politics, aesthetics, and technology. We understand aphasia not simply as a neurological condition, but also as something that occurs through the effects of power and processes of socialization and automization. We propose that aesthetic activities, social engagement, and new technologies might assist aphasic subjects to recover lost voices or invent new ones.

As part of our research initiative, we would like to call you. Research Service will be conducting daily interviews throughout the duration of this exhibit. They will be short oral questionnaires (lasting approximately 10 minutes each) about these topics, executed by robotic avatars. To participate, simply fill out one of the cards provided with your name, phone number, and an approximate time you would like to be called. You may also choose to withhold your name and remain anonymous. In such cases, the choice of anonymity will become part of the interview. New interviews will be broadcast daily in the gallery at 4pm, and compiled in a database on our website: http://researchservice.info.

On August 28th at 7PM, Research Service will present a lecture-performance to report the findings of If Your Phone Doesn’t Ring, It’s Me.

Research Service, a collaborative project between myself, Danny Snelson and Mashinka Firunts, will give a “performance-lecture” as part of Thomas Hirschhorn’s Eternal Flame  Project at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris tomorrow. The event will raise questions about a number of issues, including the state of scholarship in a digital age, site-specificity with regard to academic lectures, and the potentials of new modes of translation enabled by the internet. The Eternal Flame Project is free and open to the public, and runs until June 23rd.

As part of the Rhetoric department’s conference, “Theory/Post-theory,” I will be giving a talk entitled, “Anti-Primitivism and the Origins of the Dialectic: on an Anecdote from Colonial Guadalupe and its Philosophical Afterlife.” The talk argues for a geographic history of theory in the humanities, especially one that understands how certain theoretical concepts – including the dialectic – were in part constituted by colonial encounters. More info on the conference here.