GSSC Seminar Series
23 May 2023
To "Cocoon" a New Method for Trilemma Society
Lei Zhou (ODI and Aquatecture Project Director, World Water Source Summit Academic Committee)
12:00-13:00
Sericulture, Oracle bone writing, bronze ware casting and ink writing, among many other things, have been treated by this research as the prototype, raison d’etre and things-in-itself of so called oriental society. The canonical writings documents, bronze ware rituals, oracle bone writings on tortoises’ shells have all somehow related with Chinese weaving machines, especially convoluted with the silkworms and silk making. In Chinese, many fundamental concepts concerning thinking process,hermeneutics, epistemology and computing all can traced to their origins linking with sericulture and weaving machines; and the prototypical
modern computer shares uncanny resembles with sophisticated weaving machines designed for ritual-use ornate brocades and royal silk garments.
With these seemingly far-fetched cases which are in nature irrevocably and intricately convoluted, this research intends to argue a future oriented mentality and methodology that consists of traditional thoughts, prototypical materials, thinking modes, archaic algorithms and herbal/verbal/cerebral diversities, occasioned by evidences collected throughout South America, Southeast Asia, China proper (global south) and beyond，from decade long field works and chronological documentation.
Lei Zhou is trained as anthropologist, journalist and calligrapher, ZHOU Lei is a conceptual artist and design anthropologist, works in a limitless range of media and topics from water pollution, calligraphy metamorphosis, propaganda evolution, social linguistics, grassroot protests, lithium mining, South China Sea contestation, MH370 missing, GMO soybeans plantation, indigenous group realpolitik, “womencipation” in China and BRICS dilemma.