this is a piece of paper you should all
have one it is a blank sheet there is
nothing on it
it is laden with nothing but possibility
right now and while I’m talking today
I’d like you to have a play I’d like you
to make something out of your piece of
paper I don’t know what scrum pull it up
into a ball or perhaps you can make me a
paper aeroplane or a boat I don’t mind
what but have a go and I will try and
walk and talk and make it’s going to be
an interesting session back to the
pursuit of uncertainty what if instead
of saying I don’t know as a bad thing we
said that I don’t know is an outcome in
itself what if instead of thinking
uncertainty needed justification it was
only the first step on the road to the
road away from ignorance what if instead
we thought that it was a goal in its own
right what if it was okay not to know
well if it was okay to sit on the fence
what if it was okay not to know who to
vote for not to know who to love what if
you couldn’t tell the difference between
spin and alternate fact and that was
alright
what if fundamentally the truth that I’m
searching for was unknown
I’m a great fan of the serendipitous the
oh look what I found
as we meander through life and mud
Larkin the practice of wandering along
the banks of a river and picking up
forgotten shards and thinking about them
it’s one of my favorite conceptual
sports I love the idea of picking up
something which is a couple of thousand
years old I love the idea of a falling
crown mess Ling up against a washed-up
paper bag I love the absurdity
I love the possibility but most of all I
love the uncertainty I don’t know what
I’m going to find when I go mud Larkin
and I would hate it if someone could
tell me the joy is fundamentally in not
knowing this is an image of the Thames
at Cannon Street those with eagle eyes
might be able to just spot in the
distance a little bit of Tower Bridge
and this it’s a tray of things that I
found when I went wandering a Sunday
morning a couple of weeks ago there’s
the whole history of London in it we
have up at the top here we have some
green glazed medieval shards of pottery
on the left-hand side there some blue
and white West Thomas Delftware
hand-painted other is transferware it’s
descendants made in England there’s
Pompey Bellamy we’re down at the bottom
they’re stripy Bakewell where there is a
chronology of London’s history but you
know the thing that really links them
it’s not just that I picked them up all
on the same day it’s that they’re
worthless
there is there is no value here apart
from the uncertainty apart from the fact
that I know I will never find the rest
of these vessels I know but there’s a
possibility that someone might have a
few of the pieces of these shards how
about these things down in the bottom
here in the bottom right corner can you
see the little pins ancient rusty who
knew a 21st century mudlark was going to
come across and pick them up and spot
them that’s a different story
and then the little Nobles their little
bubbles that are there those are garnets
semi-precious stones uncut and they’re
an anomaly nobody knows why you find
them on this particular piece of
foreshore in such profusion
I’ve asked archeologists nobody knows
again they have no value apart from to a
magpie mind like mine and my pipelines
like mine that wants to ferret out
forgotten stories that wants to perhaps
assign meaning to objects but those
meanings and those stories are
provisional they are not certain I don’t
really know who owned those pins I don’t
know why they ended up in the Thames and
if the archaeologists can’t tell me what
are you those garnets are there in such
profusion well I certainly don’t know it
leads me on however to another of my
favorite things a Japanese practice
called kintsugi
knocking Sookie is the decision to mend
with the precious so you take a broken
vessel which perhaps has some kind of
emotional value and you mend it with
gold one of our most precious subjects
you make that mending visible you make
that mending extremely visible in fact
it becomes one of the most beautiful
things about the piece of pottery that
you have and obviously when looking an
active pursuit of the uncertain what a
lovely metaphor mudlark skin sugi could
be so I set myself a task I decided to
make a thing I call it a thing because I
certainly didn’t know what it was going
to be when I started I took an oyster
shell with its edges rubbed smooth by
time from the Georgian era and I placed
little shards of pottery around it until
it began to resemble and as you can see
resemble is a big whale its year around
and then I decided to try and stick it
together and then I changed my mind a
couple of hundred times I started to try
and make it into a vessel of sorts but I
forgot something I don’t have limitless
access to gold so I used glue and gold
dust instead I found a pretty blue shard
of glass which had been mineralized by
the Thames and rendered opalescent I
found unlikely perfect fits my hand
started to become part of the process
I took on the mantle of mica I lost a
glove because I stuck it to the thing I
tried to make it more and more perfect a
thing began to emerge but in the
language of nursery school it was
perhaps a key holder or a candle holder
it was definitely not watertight and
worse than that in all my enthusiasm I
had forgotten I put all the pretty bits
on the bottom so actually it’s
functionally useless but it’s still
interesting because the thing that kept
on striking me was how was I
choosing what to keep and what to
discard how did I know which pieces were
important and which pieces were not how
did I choose and remember I was
specifically documenting this process
but at the end of it I didn’t know my
rationale how can I talk about the
generative and powerfulness of
uncertainty when I can’t justify the
reasons behind this the answer perhaps
lies in the profusion of objects that I
brought from the riverbank but also I
think more so in the course that I teach
at Kingston University in fine art and
art history every year
I bring in an amazing group of
innovators and the same thing strikes me
I assure them into three years of higher
education 50,000 pounds worth of debt
how do they know they want to do it how
can they be so certain how can they be
so secure in their decision if we think
about experience and influences as the
mudlark shards of our lives how do they
know which pieces to keep how do we know
which pieces to keep I then in the
course in the process of the course I
ask them to take positions on enormous
philosophical debates the kind of ones
which don’t have answers the ones which
are still going after 2,000 years of
thought and I give them a series of
tools with which to decide an opinion
but they internalize some of those and
they become part of that tray of King
Suki but which ones how do they know how
are they able to decide which bits of
experience are important and which bits
aren’t how do any of us make those kind
of
decisions it made me think that maybe my
thing wasn’t what we needed it made me
think maybe we needed this this is a mug
from a well-known Swedish brand it’s
cheap and I took hammer to it I
shattered it into a series of pieces and
I can sue get it back together to make a
watertight vessel why well I was
interested to see whether I would have
an emotional connection to it and the
answer was strangely yes this thing that
had no importance had somehow gained
value by being made truly worthless and
then repaired but I wasn’t comfortable
with that as an answer so I went to the
mud locks this is an Elizabethan money
box it was found just outside the Globe
Theatre and it’s complete it has some
cracks in it but it was stuck back
together it is perfect it is invisibly
mended it’s a very different thing
it’s a watertight unassailable piece of
history we know where it’s from we know
what it is we are comfortable with its
certainty but I wasn’t comfortable the
problem with both of these objects is
they ignore the idea that there might be
multiple possible meanings in every
object that doesn’t work if you have
completed things and in the grand scheme
of life it’s very unusual that we get a
set of beliefs or a set of hopes intact
we generally make them and I don’t know
is a large part of that decision-making
technique but how do we find these
shards these fragments where do they
come from
now I’ve talked about my course so there
might be someone like me telling things
which could be used as fragments but
it’s also your parents it’s your
children
it’s those forgotten conversations on a
bus it’s a pop lyric it’s a television
program they are all shards that can be
added together to create a myriad
glittering kaleidoscope of possibilities
and so my first is could take the
next-door neighbor’s dog and the way it
box is one shot and a piece of obscure
French philosophy on the other and put
them together to make something
extraordinary but how are they going to
get through to a point that they stick
together so what is the glue that holds
them together for me it’s curiosity and
the gold dust the thing that makes it
truly precious is that desire to learn
now where to go from there it creates a
sense of self which is puzzled together
it’s placed in different ways and
actually if we look at someone like
Socrates who said that the first path to
wisdom the first step on the path to
wisdom was knowing that you knew nothing
well on that basis I must be extremely
wise as I stand here and advocate for
the pursuit of uncertainty but there’s a
caveat I’m not saying that we shouldn’t
search for pieces of knowledge I’m
asking that we shouldn’t demand that you
know what shape they’re going to make
back to the for sure
tide and time work for no man and that
movement through time is one that keeps
on catching the purity of I don’t know
we don’t know what time’s going to throw
up in both senses
but I feel like we need to validate I
don’t know at this point I’ve talked
about it in terms of generative nests
I’ve talked about it in different ways
so let’s go to the late great Douglas
Adams in his book The Hitchhiker’s Guide
to the galaxy he suggested that the
meaning to life was the number 42 now
for their tech people amongst you you’ll
know that if you go to an ASCII computer
program and type in 42 you get an
asterisk an asterisk a wild-card search
in a boolean search engine like Google
gives you anything or I don’t know so I
don’t know it’s fundamentally the
meaning of life so I’m going to leave
you with a manifesto but first can I
just ask has anyone made anything with
their pieces of paper aeroplane
aeroplane fan very good cool stay and a
boat I didn’t know whether you were
going to play along with me today I
didn’t know and it was slightly
unnerving but actually that feeling of
not knowing is wonderful it’s exciting
it’s free I don’t know if suddenly
meaning challenge me persuade me bring
me that horizon I don’t know what’s over
it so I don’t know is the meaning of
life and here’s a couple of points to
leave you with
firstly take a punt at it forgive
yourself for the nub leanness of what
you’ve made this was meant to be a mouse
I think it looks a bit more like a rat
but you know what it’s interesting and
it’s not that easy to talk and make
origami I’ve learnt something in the
uncertainty admit it when you don’t know
say I don’t know it’s not a mark of
failure it’s not a lack of success it’s
a celebration of taking a risk of giving
yourself a chance to learn something new
and that means that if you get to the
end of a long day and you’ve been
looking for an answer and you don’t know
that’s not a failure either because what
that allows is for you to add to your
tray of shards it allows for you to
think of solutions to questions that no
one’s asked yet uncertainty allows
risk-taking
embrace your inner mud look you know
that bus conversation I was talking
about that might be the key to an energy
crisis allow yourself to glean the
unexpected from wherever you finds it
and finally actively pursue the I don’t
know don’t feel guilty don’t say that
you’re sorry that you don’t know which
is what we all do most of the time I’m
sorry I don’t know be happy you don’t
know allow yourself to be thrilled or
don’t because fundamentally I don’t know
[Applause]
you
[Applause]
have one it is a blank sheet there is
nothing on it
it is laden with nothing but possibility
right now and while I’m talking today
I’d like you to have a play I’d like you
to make something out of your piece of
paper I don’t know what scrum pull it up
into a ball or perhaps you can make me a
paper aeroplane or a boat I don’t mind
what but have a go and I will try and
walk and talk and make it’s going to be
an interesting session back to the
pursuit of uncertainty what if instead
of saying I don’t know as a bad thing we
said that I don’t know is an outcome in
itself what if instead of thinking
uncertainty needed justification it was
only the first step on the road to the
road away from ignorance what if instead
we thought that it was a goal in its own
right what if it was okay not to know
well if it was okay to sit on the fence
what if it was okay not to know who to
vote for not to know who to love what if
you couldn’t tell the difference between
spin and alternate fact and that was
alright
what if fundamentally the truth that I’m
searching for was unknown
I’m a great fan of the serendipitous the
oh look what I found
as we meander through life and mud
Larkin the practice of wandering along
the banks of a river and picking up
forgotten shards and thinking about them
it’s one of my favorite conceptual
sports I love the idea of picking up
something which is a couple of thousand
years old I love the idea of a falling
crown mess Ling up against a washed-up
paper bag I love the absurdity
I love the possibility but most of all I
love the uncertainty I don’t know what
I’m going to find when I go mud Larkin
and I would hate it if someone could
tell me the joy is fundamentally in not
knowing this is an image of the Thames
at Cannon Street those with eagle eyes
might be able to just spot in the
distance a little bit of Tower Bridge
and this it’s a tray of things that I
found when I went wandering a Sunday
morning a couple of weeks ago there’s
the whole history of London in it we
have up at the top here we have some
green glazed medieval shards of pottery
on the left-hand side there some blue
and white West Thomas Delftware
hand-painted other is transferware it’s
descendants made in England there’s
Pompey Bellamy we’re down at the bottom
they’re stripy Bakewell where there is a
chronology of London’s history but you
know the thing that really links them
it’s not just that I picked them up all
on the same day it’s that they’re
worthless
there is there is no value here apart
from the uncertainty apart from the fact
that I know I will never find the rest
of these vessels I know but there’s a
possibility that someone might have a
few of the pieces of these shards how
about these things down in the bottom
here in the bottom right corner can you
see the little pins ancient rusty who
knew a 21st century mudlark was going to
come across and pick them up and spot
them that’s a different story
and then the little Nobles their little
bubbles that are there those are garnets
semi-precious stones uncut and they’re
an anomaly nobody knows why you find
them on this particular piece of
foreshore in such profusion
I’ve asked archeologists nobody knows
again they have no value apart from to a
magpie mind like mine and my pipelines
like mine that wants to ferret out
forgotten stories that wants to perhaps
assign meaning to objects but those
meanings and those stories are
provisional they are not certain I don’t
really know who owned those pins I don’t
know why they ended up in the Thames and
if the archaeologists can’t tell me what
are you those garnets are there in such
profusion well I certainly don’t know it
leads me on however to another of my
favorite things a Japanese practice
called kintsugi
knocking Sookie is the decision to mend
with the precious so you take a broken
vessel which perhaps has some kind of
emotional value and you mend it with
gold one of our most precious subjects
you make that mending visible you make
that mending extremely visible in fact
it becomes one of the most beautiful
things about the piece of pottery that
you have and obviously when looking an
active pursuit of the uncertain what a
lovely metaphor mudlark skin sugi could
be so I set myself a task I decided to
make a thing I call it a thing because I
certainly didn’t know what it was going
to be when I started I took an oyster
shell with its edges rubbed smooth by
time from the Georgian era and I placed
little shards of pottery around it until
it began to resemble and as you can see
resemble is a big whale its year around
and then I decided to try and stick it
together and then I changed my mind a
couple of hundred times I started to try
and make it into a vessel of sorts but I
forgot something I don’t have limitless
access to gold so I used glue and gold
dust instead I found a pretty blue shard
of glass which had been mineralized by
the Thames and rendered opalescent I
found unlikely perfect fits my hand
started to become part of the process
I took on the mantle of mica I lost a
glove because I stuck it to the thing I
tried to make it more and more perfect a
thing began to emerge but in the
language of nursery school it was
perhaps a key holder or a candle holder
it was definitely not watertight and
worse than that in all my enthusiasm I
had forgotten I put all the pretty bits
on the bottom so actually it’s
functionally useless but it’s still
interesting because the thing that kept
on striking me was how was I
choosing what to keep and what to
discard how did I know which pieces were
important and which pieces were not how
did I choose and remember I was
specifically documenting this process
but at the end of it I didn’t know my
rationale how can I talk about the
generative and powerfulness of
uncertainty when I can’t justify the
reasons behind this the answer perhaps
lies in the profusion of objects that I
brought from the riverbank but also I
think more so in the course that I teach
at Kingston University in fine art and
art history every year
I bring in an amazing group of
innovators and the same thing strikes me
I assure them into three years of higher
education 50,000 pounds worth of debt
how do they know they want to do it how
can they be so certain how can they be
so secure in their decision if we think
about experience and influences as the
mudlark shards of our lives how do they
know which pieces to keep how do we know
which pieces to keep I then in the
course in the process of the course I
ask them to take positions on enormous
philosophical debates the kind of ones
which don’t have answers the ones which
are still going after 2,000 years of
thought and I give them a series of
tools with which to decide an opinion
but they internalize some of those and
they become part of that tray of King
Suki but which ones how do they know how
are they able to decide which bits of
experience are important and which bits
aren’t how do any of us make those kind
of
decisions it made me think that maybe my
thing wasn’t what we needed it made me
think maybe we needed this this is a mug
from a well-known Swedish brand it’s
cheap and I took hammer to it I
shattered it into a series of pieces and
I can sue get it back together to make a
watertight vessel why well I was
interested to see whether I would have
an emotional connection to it and the
answer was strangely yes this thing that
had no importance had somehow gained
value by being made truly worthless and
then repaired but I wasn’t comfortable
with that as an answer so I went to the
mud locks this is an Elizabethan money
box it was found just outside the Globe
Theatre and it’s complete it has some
cracks in it but it was stuck back
together it is perfect it is invisibly
mended it’s a very different thing
it’s a watertight unassailable piece of
history we know where it’s from we know
what it is we are comfortable with its
certainty but I wasn’t comfortable the
problem with both of these objects is
they ignore the idea that there might be
multiple possible meanings in every
object that doesn’t work if you have
completed things and in the grand scheme
of life it’s very unusual that we get a
set of beliefs or a set of hopes intact
we generally make them and I don’t know
is a large part of that decision-making
technique but how do we find these
shards these fragments where do they
come from
now I’ve talked about my course so there
might be someone like me telling things
which could be used as fragments but
it’s also your parents it’s your
children
it’s those forgotten conversations on a
bus it’s a pop lyric it’s a television
program they are all shards that can be
added together to create a myriad
glittering kaleidoscope of possibilities
and so my first is could take the
next-door neighbor’s dog and the way it
box is one shot and a piece of obscure
French philosophy on the other and put
them together to make something
extraordinary but how are they going to
get through to a point that they stick
together so what is the glue that holds
them together for me it’s curiosity and
the gold dust the thing that makes it
truly precious is that desire to learn
now where to go from there it creates a
sense of self which is puzzled together
it’s placed in different ways and
actually if we look at someone like
Socrates who said that the first path to
wisdom the first step on the path to
wisdom was knowing that you knew nothing
well on that basis I must be extremely
wise as I stand here and advocate for
the pursuit of uncertainty but there’s a
caveat I’m not saying that we shouldn’t
search for pieces of knowledge I’m
asking that we shouldn’t demand that you
know what shape they’re going to make
back to the for sure
tide and time work for no man and that
movement through time is one that keeps
on catching the purity of I don’t know
we don’t know what time’s going to throw
up in both senses
but I feel like we need to validate I
don’t know at this point I’ve talked
about it in terms of generative nests
I’ve talked about it in different ways
so let’s go to the late great Douglas
Adams in his book The Hitchhiker’s Guide
to the galaxy he suggested that the
meaning to life was the number 42 now
for their tech people amongst you you’ll
know that if you go to an ASCII computer
program and type in 42 you get an
asterisk an asterisk a wild-card search
in a boolean search engine like Google
gives you anything or I don’t know so I
don’t know it’s fundamentally the
meaning of life so I’m going to leave
you with a manifesto but first can I
just ask has anyone made anything with
their pieces of paper aeroplane
aeroplane fan very good cool stay and a
boat I didn’t know whether you were
going to play along with me today I
didn’t know and it was slightly
unnerving but actually that feeling of
not knowing is wonderful it’s exciting
it’s free I don’t know if suddenly
meaning challenge me persuade me bring
me that horizon I don’t know what’s over
it so I don’t know is the meaning of
life and here’s a couple of points to
leave you with
firstly take a punt at it forgive
yourself for the nub leanness of what
you’ve made this was meant to be a mouse
I think it looks a bit more like a rat
but you know what it’s interesting and
it’s not that easy to talk and make
origami I’ve learnt something in the
uncertainty admit it when you don’t know
say I don’t know it’s not a mark of
failure it’s not a lack of success it’s
a celebration of taking a risk of giving
yourself a chance to learn something new
and that means that if you get to the
end of a long day and you’ve been
looking for an answer and you don’t know
that’s not a failure either because what
that allows is for you to add to your
tray of shards it allows for you to
think of solutions to questions that no
one’s asked yet uncertainty allows
risk-taking
embrace your inner mud look you know
that bus conversation I was talking
about that might be the key to an energy
crisis allow yourself to glean the
unexpected from wherever you finds it
and finally actively pursue the I don’t
know don’t feel guilty don’t say that
you’re sorry that you don’t know which
is what we all do most of the time I’m
sorry I don’t know be happy you don’t
know allow yourself to be thrilled or
don’t because fundamentally I don’t know
[Applause]
you
[Applause]
Please follow and like us: