Noontime Chat: Cognitive Dissonance

Mike Daisey, Stanya Kahn and Harry Dodge, Moderator: Mark Russell
Noontime Chat: Cognitive Dissonance
Exposing the Tricks of the Mind and the Ills of the Society Through Visual and Performative Languages
Pacific Northwest College of Art
Thur. Sept. 11, 2008 12:30 pm
Posted by: Camille Gerharter
“Cognitive dissidence” is an “idea, a psychological process, where two contradictory ideas are in your mind at the same time,” and it’s our inclination to “resolve one and erase the other.” – Russell
We’re “living in a very cognitively dissident time.” How does one “accept the fact that they’re being brutalized?” “How much feeling we can conjure for something we can’t name?”- Dodge
In the outside world it’s “incredibly difficult to even try to tell the truth,” the climate is discouraging to the truth. Theater is a space where “people have a charged opportunity to tell the truth.” …outside of “everyday static.” – Daisey
We are “suppressed, repressed and sublimated,” by a “society and state” that fail to “legitimize our pathways.” Which get bottled up inside until they overwhelm us and we “go to MacDonalds and shoot everybody.” – Kahn
(to be continued …)