NYAB Event - "4th Annual Brainwave" Talk Series

"4th Annual Brainwave" Talk Series

Rubin Museum of Art

This event has ended.

The Rubin Museum’s BRAINWAVE series will kick off its fourth season on February 7 with a conversation between spoken-word artist Henry Rollins and neuroscientist David Eagleman. Subsequent conversations will feature composer and performance artist Meredith Monk, playwright John Patrick Shanley, painter David Salle, and actress Debra Winger among other artists paired with leading scientists involved in the study of the mind.

The museum's fourth annual exploration of the human mind will focus on the relationship between dreams and creativity, prophecy and consciousness. Why do we dream? What function does this ancillary brain activity serve? Do dreams anticipate the future? Can dreams inspire creativity in our waking lives? BRAINWAVE will explore these questions in a variety of formats. In addition to the public dialogues, the museum will host its first "dream-over" for adults, and a series of workshops complementing the U.S. theatrical premiere of the award-winning documentary The Edge of Dreaming, which explores prophetic dreaming.

The Rubin Museum’s Producer, Tim McHenry said, “The subject of dreaming was a natural choice. Buddhism might not exist were it not for the ‘conception’ dream of Queen Maya, the Buddha's mother. In her dream a white elephant comes to her while she is sleeping and penetrates her right side with his trunk. It is from this same side that the Buddha is born, setting in motion a chain of fantastic events that would eventually lead to his Enlightenment. Through BRAINWAVE, the museum will collaborate with an incredible cross-section of the creative community to enable a dynamic exploration of the life of the mind.”

PUBLIC DIALOGUES

The Assassin of My Dreams
Henry Rollins + David Eagleman, neuroscientist
Monday, February 7, 7:00 p.m., $30

“The assassin of my dreams comes to destroy from the inside” –Henry Rollins, Hot Animal Machine 2
Punk band original and (out)spoken-word artist Henry Rollins hunts down the assassin of his dreams with neuroscientist David Eagleman of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.

Secrets of a Dream Diary
Meredith Monk + John Antrobus, neuropsychologist
Friday, February 11, 7:00 p.m., $25

Composer and performance artist Meredith Monk has kept a dream diary since she first started performing in the 1960s. With the help of CUNY neuropsychologist John Antrobus, she reaches back into her past visions to see if she can trace a creative line from her dreams to her work.

Bedtime Hypnotism
Nathan Englander + Amir Raz, neuroscientist
Sunday, February 27, 3 p.m., $15

Prize-winning writer Nathan Englander has wild, vivid dreams. Neuroscientist Amir Raz specializes in hypnotism and used to be a magician. Together they explore the power of suggestion.

Soul Dust: The Problem of Consciousness
David Freedberg, art historian + Nicholas Humphrey, psychologist
Wednesday, March 2, 7 p.m., $15

Theoretical psychologist Nicholas Humphrey studies the evolution of human intelligence and consciousness. His books include Consciousness Regained, The Inner Eye, A History of the Mind, Leaps of Faith, The Mind Made Flesh, and most recently Seeing Red and his several honors include the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize and the British Psychological Society’s book award. Humphrey is joined in this quest for comprehending consciousness by art historian David Freedberg, who has been concerned with the importance of the new cognitive neurosciences for the study of art and its history, particularly with the intersection of art and science in the age of Galileo (The Eye of the Lynx: Galileo, his Friends, and the Beginnings of Modern Natural History, 2002).

Creativity and the Dreaming Brain
Amy Tan + Deirdre Barrett, psychologist
Saturday, March 5, 7 p.m., $25

Amy Tan's books and stories have included ideas, breakthroughs, and whole narratives unleashed during dreams. She believes that her creativity relates to a free-form combination of memory, emotion and sensory synesthesia leading to metaphors and narrative paths. Her dreams have a similar quality. Do dreams enhance creative leaps? Can one use dreaming to increase creativity in specific ways? She discusses the effect of dreams on creativity with Harvard clinical psychologist and dream researcher Deirdre Barrett.

Who Dreamed the First Dream?
Meir Shalev + Serinity Young, anthropologist
Sunday, March 6, 3 p.m., $15

Who dreamed the first dream in the Bible? Israel’s most celebrated novelist Meir Shalev has recently written Beginnings: Reflections on the Bible's Intriguing Firsts, a book of nonfiction essays about the Bible. In the text he follows the heroes and heroines of the Old Testament, finding the first love ever mentioned, the first kiss, the first laugh, the first hate, and the first dream. In this talk he and anthropologist Serinity Young (Dreaming in the Lotus) compare the use of dreams in the biblical and the Buddhist contexts.

Hallucination and Dreaming
Siri Hustvedt + Jaak Panksepp, neuropsychiatrist
Sunday, March 6, 6 p.m., $15

Writer Siri Hustvedt is a migraine sufferer who often experiences aphasic dreams, experiencing hallucinations as she enters the slumbering state. As she says, these “are anomalies, no doubt, tics of the nervous system that affect some, not all, but they could well help explain more general human qualities—who we are, what we feel, and how we see.” She analyzes her condition and the nature of sleep with the distinguished neuropsychiatrist Jaak Panksepp of the Medical College of Ohio at Toledo.

Which Side of the Brain Controls You?
David Salle + Iain McGilchrist, psychiatrist
Wednesday, March 9, 7 p.m., $20

Psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist is concerned that our society is betraying signs that our left side of the brain is ruling the usually dominant right side, leading us to petty, short-focused behaviors. He engages with painter David Salle on what constitutes the ideally balanced human brain.

Do You Doubt Your Own Dreams?
John Patrick Shanley + Polly Young-Eisendrath, psychoanalyst
Friday, March 11, 7 p.m., $25

“You dream of outer space, of distant seas of unknown people. What could be more unknown than your own tongue whispering the unlying truth in your own ear?” –John Patrick Shanley

Writer John Patrick Shanley (Moonstruck, Doubt) and Jungian psychoanalyst Polly Young-Eisendrath had one of the richest on-stage encounters in 2009’s Red Book Dialogues. This time instead of investigating Jung’s fantastical inner life they place Shanley’s sometimes very public dream life under the microscope.

The Murderous Mind
Scott Turow + Michael Gazzaniga, neuroscientist
Wednesday, March 16, 8 p.m., $25

Scott Turow, one of the country’s top legal thriller writers (Presumed Innocent), meets with Michael Gazzaniga, one of the world’s top cognitive neuroscientists and author of The Social Brain, Mind Matters, and Nature's Mind, to explore how justice and retribution are processed in the brain.

Do Dreams Come True?
Debra Winger + Robert Stickgold, professor of psychiatry
Sunday, March 20, 3 p.m., $20

One of the most acclaimed actresses of our generation, Debra Winger reveals her dream life to Robert Stickgold, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

Tibetan Dream Yoga
Lama Lhanang Rinpoche + Jayne Gackenbach
Wednesday, April 20, 7 p.m., $20

Venerable Lama Lhanang Rinpoche is a spiritual teacher of the Nyingma Longchen Nying-Thig order of Tibetan Buddhism. Here he talks about the practice of dream yoga in the context of science’s growing acceptance of lucid dreaming with Jayne Gackenbach, professor at Grant MacEwan University, Alberta, Canada. Dr. Gackenbach was invited to present her work on lucid dreaming to the Dalai Lama at a conference on sleeping, dreaming, and dying in Dharamsala, India in 1992.

Are Dreams Pure Fantasy?
Graham Joyce + Kelly Bulkeley, dream specialist
Wednesday, March 23, 7 p.m., $15

Graham Joyce, one of Britain’s most popular fantasy authors (Indigo and The Tooth Fairy), explores his own dream life and that of his characters with dream specialist Kelly Bulkeley.

A Dream on a String
Roman Paska + Rodolfo Llinás, neuroscientist
Wednesday, March 30, 7 p.m., $15

Presented in association with the Jim Henson Foundation.
Dreams are directly related to the puppet work that Roman Paska creates. Famed neuroscientist Rodolfo Llinás and the puppeteer explore the boundaries of illusion and perceptions of reality.

Irish Dreams
Frank McGuinness + Ernest Hartmann, psychiatrist
Saturday, April 9, 4:30 p.m., $15
Presented as part of Imagine Ireland, 2011

The Irish playwright Frank McGuiness, who is renowned for his translations of Ibsen, Lorca, Chekhov, Brecht, Strindberg, Pirandello and Sophocles, explores the Celtic dreamscape with psychiatry professor Ernest Hartmann of Tufts University School of Medicine.

The Buddhist Dreamer
Sharon Salzberg + Lawrence Barsalou, cognitive scientist
Wednesday April 13, 7 p.m., $20

Meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg explores mindfulness, meditation, and the awake state with cognitive scientist Lawrence Barsalou, Professor of Psychology at Emory University.

The Compass of Pleasure
To be announced+ David Linden, neuroscientist
Sunday, April 17, 6 p.m.

Whether eating, taking drugs, engaging in sex, or doing good deeds, the pursuit of pleasure is a central drive of the human animal. In The Compass of Pleasure Johns Hopkins neuroscientist David J. Linden explains how pleasure affects us at the most fundamental level: in our brain.