The Essay: Art and Uncertainty

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The Essay: Art and Uncertainty: Prepared Minds

Prepared Minds

Art and Uncertainty

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, Art and Uncertainty, Prepared Minds

Margaret Heffernan explores the benefits of uncertainty in both life and art.

How can art help us deal with uncertainty in our own lives? Margaret Heffernan explores the benefits of uncertainty.

Margaret Heffernan explores how art can help us deal with uncertainty in our lives. Without uncertainty, there is no freedom. How do artists learn how to use this freedom to act, to make something, to have original ideas?
  
Modern life feels increasingly uncertain, to the point of making us uncomfortable. Most people hate uncertainty.  We feel calmer knowing something bad is definitely coming (say, an electric shock) than when there's a possibility we might escape it. New technology sometimes seems to have the goal of eliminating uncertainty, but is this really desirable? Margaret argues that an element of uncertainty is a necessary part of the creative process, a catalyst which can help us find ways of meeting the challenges of the future.  

Margaret Heffernan is a writer and entrepreneur, author of the award-winning 'Uncharted: How to Map the Future'. Here, she takes inspiration from artists who embrace uncertainty.

Producer: Mary Ward-Lowery

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Margaret Heffernan explores uncertainty through the work of five artists who embrace it.

How can art help us deal with uncertainty in our own lives? Margaret Heffernan explores uncertainty through the work of five artists who embrace it.

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