Second Nature

Paul Chan's speech, first delivered on the occasion of Engage More Now! A Symposium on Artists, Museums, and Publics at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles (November 2015), proposes that artistic experiences be understood as forms that vividly emblematizes the relationship between cunning and reasoning. It considers the ways in which this relationship echoes within the broadest arenas of social life and how such an outlook could upend what have become standard and increasingly tedious debates about aesthetics, politics, and social engagement in art. Chan also delivers a brief attack against the xenophobic and racist 2016 G.O.P presidential candidates, in particular Donald Trump.