Dream-scholars and archival fabulists, the artist-researchers of the ESTAR(SER) collective pursue the evasive angel of “pure attention,” creating occasions to test the power of the focused mind and the vital senses. To celebrate the publication of the group’s new book, In Search of the Third Bird, as well as the opening of the year-long exhibition, “THE THIRD, MEANING” at the Frye Museum in Seattle, ESTAR(SER) research associates D. Graham Burnett (Princeton) and Jeff Dolven (Princeton) will sit down with discussant Michael Wood (Princeton) to discuss history, attention, and scholarly metafiction.

ESTAR(SER) is an international research collective concerned with the history—and the mythology—of attention. Recent work includes: “All Senses on the Qui Vive,” 33rd São Paulo Biennial; “El Halo del Cuidar,” Reina Sofia, Madrid; “The Dance of Attention,” Glasgow International; and “The Milcom Memorial Reading Room and Attention Library,” Mana Contemporary and the Monira Foundation, Jersey City. Other installations, performances, and lectures have taken place at the Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Manifesta (Zurich), MoMA PS1 (New York), the Museo Tamayo (Mexico City), and elsewhere.

D. Graham Burnett works at the intersection of historical inquiry and artistic practice. He is a professor of History at Princeton University and the author of a number of books and many essays. Jeff Dolven is a poet and professor of English at Princeton University. He is the author of four books, one of which (Take Care) was written in twenty-four hours. His New English Grammar, a book of poems, is out this October from Dispersed Holdings. Michael Wood is professor emeritus of English and Comparative Literature at Princeton University. He has written widely on 20th century literature, film, and literary theory and is an admired cultural critic who writes regularly for the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books. He is the author of seminal books on Nabokov, Marquez, Yeats, Oracles, and much more.

This event is cosponsored by Princeton University's Humanities Council.

D. Graham Burnett, Jeff Dolven, and Michael Wood: A Bird in the Hand -- The Work of ESTAR(SER)