[Foam.Seminar]

1.    it’s no secret that the Foam.Project is also inspired by Sloterdijk’s Spheres-trilogy, and in particular to the 3rd vol. Foams/Schäume/Schuimen, from which it borrows its titular figure of thought.

2.    the foam.seminar proposes a platform on which to explicate that reference, to develop and welcome it, to be surprised or enticed by it (and to suffer it on occasion)

3.    it is set up as an echo.chamber in which material from the trilogy –textual and graphic, as well as some related material from other sources- may resonate; as a hotbed where seeds may be sown and come to grow, be it into beautiful flowers or into hardly recognizable weeds

4.    a seminar is, generally, a form of academic instruction, either at an educational institution or offered by some or other organization, for instance commercial.   Etymologically it is a nursery or breeding ground : a more or less marked-out place –a lab, if you like- where seeds (semen) may be cultivated.   In that regard it constitues an enclosure of sorts, where the interest of knowledge and of life may overlap. 

5.    The Spheres-trilogy is much about “the configuration of the relation between knowledge and life”; in Sloterdijk’s perspective the verbs to think and to live come to the same thing, as both amount to “the creation of spheres”

6.    In its thematic and method, its spatial metaphoric and somewhat baroque tone the trilogy addresses the formal crisis life goes through, once the world –life- is entering the 3rd faze of the globalization-process.  This crisis comes to a loss of form, which can only be addressed by an increasing mobility.

7.    Spheres analyses and describes, but in view of the enhancement of vital possibilities; it is theory, but live theory, affirmative and explorative


8.    This has implications for the way the foam.seminar may be configured.  It should work toward some understanding of the books’ strategy and content: the seminar is also an class of instruction.   Yet it should contribute in its own way to the ongoing “exploration of the possibilities and limits of a geometrical vitalism”; it should create an inner-space in which “seeds of life” may be “cultivated”, and thus work as  a selective transmission medium for different spectral frequencies -as a greenhouse does.   

9.    1st memory-instruction: “spheres are space-creations, that work as immune-structures, for ecstatic beings that are exposed to -and affected by- the outside”


10.    Pat Bruggeman, Bart Buseyne and Luk Mutsaert have different backgrounds, in chemistry, philosophy and cultural anthropology respectively, but they share a committed interest in continental philosophy and aesthetics.   They have previously been involved in reading-groups hosted by Echo.Base.