The Bureau of Linguistical Reality is a participatory artwork facilitated by artist Alicia Escott and Heidi Quante which collaborates with the public to create new words for feelings and experiences for which no words yet exist. Recognizing the climate crisis is causing new feelings and experiences that have yet to be named, the project was created with a deep focus on these and other Anthropocenic phenomena. The Bureau views the words created in this process as also serving as points of connectivity: advancing understanding, dialogue, and conversations about the greater concepts these words seek to codify.

This evening will include an intimate sharing of our findings from our decade long social art practice as well as a Word Making Field Session where Escott and Quante will collaborate with participants to collectively coin a term together.

Participants are encouraged to consider in advance their personal unnamed experience(s) of our changing world as well as their unique feelings for which they wish there was a word. Participants are encouraged to bring the diversity of their linguistic backgrounds to this conversation as the Bureau creates neologisms in all languages.

Alicia Escott is an interdisciplinary artist whose work addresses how we are negotiating our immediate day-to-day realities and responsibilities amid an awareness of the overarching specter of climate change, mass extinction and other Anthropocenic events. Escott's work has been exhibited widely in galleries, museums, at residencies and alternative spaces. She is a founding member of 100 Days Action, and co-founded The Bureau of Linguistical Reality.

Heidi Quante is an interdisciplinary artist working in the areas of environmental and human rights, both in personal practice and in larger participatory public artworks. Quante is a co-founder of The Bureau of Linguistical Reality and also founded the non-profit Creative Catalysts, which works to find innovative approaches to the pressing social and environmental challenges of our time though projects, workshops and strategic advice for artists and organizations.

This event is part of Long Now Talks, a series launched in 02003 by Stewart Brand to explore compelling ideas about long-term thinking from speakers around the world.

The Long Now Foundation is a non-profit dedicated to fostering long-term thinking and responsibility. Our work encourages imagination at the timescale of civilization — the next and last 10,000 years — a timespan we call the long now. Our work began with The Clock of the Long Now, an immense mechanical monument, installed in a mountain, designed to keep accurate time for the next ten millennia.

For the last two decades, Long Now Talks has invited speakers to explore their work in the context of the next and last 10,000 years for a live audience and for millions online around the globe.  Long Now Talks are recorded live in San Francisco, many of them at The Interval, our public gathering space. Featuring craft cocktails, artisan coffee and tea, a library that stretches from floor to ceiling, and prototypes of The Clock of the Long Now, our space aims to inspire curiosity and wonder.

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The Bureau of Linguistical Reality Performance Lecture - Alicia Escott and Heidi Quante

Launched by Stewart Brand in 02003, Long Now Talks has invited more than 400 leading thinkers to share their civilization-scale ideas with a live audience and millions around the globe tuning in to our podcast and videos. Long Now Talks are brought to you by The Long Now Foundation, which has spent the last 25 years igniting cultural imagination around long-term thinking.

By inspiring thought and conversation about how we've been shaped by the last 10,000 years and what might be in store for us over the next 10,000 years, Long Now Talks seek to expand our collective sense of the present moment. Long Now Talks cover futurism and speculative fiction; time, nature, and contemplative practices; the intersection of the humanities and sciences; the evolution of counterculture to cyberculture; cultural imagination, land art and public monuments; and of course, long-term thinking and being a good ancestor.