Precious Moments, Extreme Events
The theme for ABOAGORA 2015, held on August 11-13 at the Sibelius Museum, was “Precious Moments, Extreme Events.” Under this theme, the Symposium addressed questions of time, changes in society, and significant and extreme events in the course of individuals’ lives and the history of humanity.
In the modern world, information moves faster than ever before. Slow, global processes of transformation, such as climate change, cause increasing alarm, but extreme and sudden events also have the power to completely change our perspective in mere seconds. In the midst of such change, interest in memory and individuals’ experience of time has grown. Extreme events can traumatize whole nations, and the lives of individuals can be turned upside down in a single moment, in the blink of an eye.
Definitive moments and turning points
There are moments that have the power to affect both individual lives and entire societies.
The Agora lectures from Aboagora 2015 are available on ABOAGORA’s YouTube channel:
Tiina Rosenberg
Professor, Stockholm University; President of the Central Arts Council of Finland
Umayya Abu-Hanna
Author, Journalist
John D. Barrow
FRS, Professor of Mathematical Sciences, Cambridge University; Professor of Geometry, London Gresham College, UK