Comfort, like capital, is unevenly distributed—not everyone gets to have the same amount. When you have it, it’s hard to let go. It’s even harder to convince someone to give it up—and I think this is a major challenge we’re facing. Comfort feels normal, expected, obvious—deserved.
RISD Media (Page 3 of 3)
Climate Futures II Introductions
presented by Damian White, Jonathan Highfield
There’s much intellectual, cultural, and creative work to do. But it’s really important as well that we leave room for debate, discussion, productive critique, etc. So this event is not about the final moment. It’s not going to resolve nicely fluid disciplinary discussions. But it is going to be a kind of jamboree of kind of conflicting, interesting, diverse perspectives on post-carbon futures and so on.
“The Case Against Cynicism,” Hilton Als RISD 2016 Commencement Address
presented by Hilton Als
[We] could hope because we’d seen what it had done for us. We were refugees from the world’s cynicism because we’d grown up in belief, and knew just as our mothers knew, that each act of making is born out of hope because there, in the rank earth where cynicism flowers, nothing grows.
John Waters RISD 2015 Commencement Keynote Address
presented by John Waters
“But how can you be so disciplined?” friends always ask when I tell them my job is to get up every day at 6 AM Monday to Friday and think up insane stuff. Easy. If I didn’t work this hard for myself, I’d have to go work for somebody else. Plus, I can go to my office one room away from my bedroom in my own house dressed in my underpants if I want to.
Maira Kalman RISD 2013 Commencement Keynote Address
presented by Maira Kalman
We live between despair and hope. No one knows why we are here, and nothing makes sense. Don’t forget that. You could ask yourself, “What is the point?” until you go crazy, literally. So, the starting point is to not know. And then to proceed.
Bruce Mau RISD 2014 Commencement Keynote Address
presented by Bruce Mau
Work on what you love. This is such an easy thing to say, and it seems so obvious. What else should we work on? What else could we work on? And yet the problem of aligning our passion and our production, our love and our work, remains one of the great life challenges that we face as artists, as designers, and as citizens.