Free Range Humans

…was the title of my talk at the PSU Open Engagement conference this afternoon, which I began with these three quotes:
“The performance of a piece of music can be a metaphor of society, of how we want society to be. Though we are not now living in a society which we consider good, we could make a piece of music in which we would be willing to live. I don’t mean that literally, I mean it metaphorically. You can think of the piece of music as a representation of a society in which you would be willing to live.”
“Art is a sort of experimental station in which one tries out living.”
– John Cage

“But specialization is in fact only a fancy form of slavery wherein the ‘expert’ is fooled into accepting his slavery by making him feel that in return he is in a socially and culturally preferred, ergo, highly secure, lifelong position”
– R. Buckminster Fuller

“I always like a plaza where there are benches—but I like it more when people decide to sit on the steps, which is sort of like the first radical act. The first act of revolution: a bench has told me to sit down, so I’m not going to sit there, I’m going to sit where I will bother people walking up the stairs.”
– Vito Acconci