1.
Arnove: So, first of all, Michel, I want to
thank you. I just think this is a really truly remarkable film. And.
2.
Gondry: Thanks.
3.
Arnove: And it’s a real gift, I think, in a
way a work of art really can genuinely be a gift. And I also think you’ve done
a remarkable thing in that I’ve knownNoam around twentysixortwentysevenyears; I
was able to get him to a film once in that entire twentysevenyearperiod. You’ve
now managed to get him to see this film twice in less than oneyear. So I think
that’s also a remarkable gift toNoam and to the world, to drag him away from
the computer for a few hours and get him out and to bring him here with us. So
I want to thank you for that, as well, Michel.
4.
Gondry: Thanks. I’m glad.
5.
Arnove: I wonder if you could start by talking, this
process started 2005 and, what the germ of it was for you, and then a bit of
what the journey was to being here today.
6.
Gondry: Well, I met withNoam actually, yes,
2005, because I was visitingMIT as an artist in residence. That was organised byMichèleOshima, who
is here. And I realised that Noam was, I guess, stillteaching there at the time,
and I was visiting a lot of student and teacher to see all the programs
and—because there is this work that’s being done there that’s really bridging
between Art and Science, which is a territory that I always was interested. by
So I met withNoam, and after a few session, I proposed toNoam to do a series of
interviews and use abstract animation to illustrate them. And I don’t know if
you remember, Noam, I showed you a little clip that I had done. And it was a
starting point, and you said yes immediately. And I was alwaysvery, of course,
impressed by your work, and as well because what was reallyattracting me is
your scientificwork, and it’s alwaysgreat to see, to be able to capture the
image or the voice of somebody alive who hasalready such a huge legacy, because
I watch. I was talking aboutRichardFeynman and all of these greatscientists who
are not here anymore, and I wish I had known them. And I thought it was
important for me to try to establish that.
7.
Arnove: So, Noam, I wonder if I could ask you a
bit about this intersection that Michel is raising about connections betweenArtAndScience.
You know, one of the fascinating things about this film is we see Michel’sprocess
as an artist as he’s trying to engage with your ideas and his misunderstandings
and other currents of thinking. I wonder if you could talk about your own
practice of doingScience. What does it actually look like for you? What is your
process, you know, when you’re tackling a scientificquestion, when you’re
coming up against an aporia in your work?
8.
Chomsky: It’s kind of like what Michel captured
so, with such remarkable artistry in the film. It’s
usually a matter of going for a walk and thinking about things, talking to
somebody, hoping that somehow what looks paradoxical or impossible will somehow
fall into place. How it happens, I don’t think anyone knows. It’s, I’m
sure it’s the same when you’re, anyone is creating an artistic work. It just
somehow comes.
9.
Arnove: What would be a problem like right now
that you would say you’re dealing with in your work or in a particular aporia
currently?
10.
Chomsky: Currently?
11.
Arnove: Yeah.
12.
Chomsky: Well, the point that Michel emphasised,
correctly, is, and at least has been a driving force to me, not for everyone in
the field, is to try to show what ought to be true, to try to demonstrate what
ought to be true. It ought to be true for various reasons, some of which
indicated in the film, that the basic essential nature ofLanguage is, first of
all, uniform for allLanguages, which is why children can learn any of them. And
it is also fundamentally verysimple. But when you look at the data ofLanguage,
it looks extremelycomplex. But that’s true of anything you don’t understand. If there’s anything you don’t understand that looks
hopelesslycomplex. The idea is to try to see if you can extricate from the complexity
fundamental principles, which somehow make things fall into place which
otherwise didn’t make any sense, like the one principle that was mentioned at
the end of the film about seeking a minimal structural distance. You can pursue
that much farther. And a lot of things fall into place, including the
way in which quite complex sentences are interpreted, if you continue to pursue
the idea that there just has to be fundamentally simple processes that
interplay in a way which yields observed complexity. So that’s the basic work
that I’m involved in, just that onepaper coming out. I have another one soon. A
lot of technical questions about this.
13.
Arnove: Michel, I think there’s a veryinteresting
theme that runs throughout the film, and I wonder if it doesn’t also speak to
your other films. As I read them, I feel like there’s a fundamental curiosity
that drives your work in a, what Noam refers to as a puzzlement, that, looking
at things that might appear to be obvious, but being puzzled by them. I wonder
if that is something that you think of in your own practice and if it might
apply not just to this film, but to your earlier work, as well.
14.
Gondry: Yes, sure. I mean, I always, like any
kid, I ask many questions to my parents, and they alwaysask why. And at some
point they get tired of it, and you have to figure out somehow yourself. So,
there is something that I remember figuring out by just my questioning, my own
questioning. And sometime I would verify the answer, but I always have this
curiosity to understand what was going on with the world. And when I was a kid,
Catholicism didn’t work, we went to some cult and had some, my mother took me to
some meeting that were reallyweird, and they didn’t satisfy me, and I found inScience
some, some moreconstructive answer, that the idée that you can build something
on the ground that people agree upon, and it’s one of the things that attracted
toNoam’s-work and -Philo. It’s this idea that you are, like french philosopher,
they say, Oh, everything is up in the air, and it’s foggy, and it’s, it’s veryabstract.
And I think it’s important that you can like try to agree on the ground, so you
can build on that. So in my movies, I mean, it’s not necessarilyapparent, but I
alwayshad this curiosity.
15.
Arnove: And could you, I’d actually like to ask
both of you about this, the difference between kind of the process of
selfEducation and your formalschooling, because it seems like both of you have
engaged in a process of learning outside of or that went beyond the period of
formalEducation. And, you know, in your case, maybe you could start, Michel,
talking aboutArtschool and your experiences in art school and the limitations
of formalschooling in your own experience.
16.
Gondry: Yes, I went toArtschool pretty early,
like highschool was Artschool. So I didn’t develop the academic veryverymuch. I
was intrigued and interested intoGeometry, and I was prettygood at it, and
perspective. I remember being good at that, but I never, maybe I thought that Art,
or that’s why I use this abstraction in animation. I could translate complexity
without to go through all of those books that you’ve read. I mean, I read a little,
and I still reading, but of course it’s, I don’t feel veryup to Noam’slevel. That’s
why I use abstraction here, because I think I’m not trying to demonstrate
Noam’sfindings. I’m trying to convey my feelings on the. I think it’s moreaccurate
this way. I mean, only at the end I really. I mean, actually, all the time, at
the end I really did the work, and I’m sort of proud of, like choose a sentence
and really to [inaudible] from your graphic. And it was difficult, but I wanted
to reallyunderstand it, the difference between the structural and the linear
length of the, position of the word, of the verb. So, I’m not sure I remember
the question now. Sound of laughter. But sorry.
17.
Arnove: It’s fine. It took us to an interesting
place, Michel. What about you, Noam? Could you talk about, I mean, obviously
you grew up in a family of educators, and you did go through a formal process
ofEducation, but you’ve continued yourEducation in veryprofound ways and
outside of some of those formal boundaries, as well.
18.
Chomsky: Well, I don’t want to be corrupting the
youth, so I’m not sure.
19.
Arnove: No, no, we want to be corrupting the
youth.
20.
Chomsky: I’m not sure I ought to tell the truth.
But.
21.
Arnove: Tell the truth.
22.
Chomsky: The truth is, I have absolutely no
professional credentials literally, which is why I’m teaching atMIT. Sound of
laughter. That’s absolutelytrue. They didn’t care. You know, it’s a Sciencebased
university. They didn’t care if you had a guildcard, something or other. We saw
a little of it there. But I hated highschool. It was the[most]academic highschool
in the city, the one that all the kids went to who were going to go to college,
so teachers didn’t really have to work veryhard, because we were going to pass
the exams anyway, and I couldn’t stand it. And this is 1945, so there were no
questions about going to some college somewhere else. You lived at home, you
worked, you went to the localcollege, period. Localcollege happened to be theUniversityOfPennsylvania.
I, as a highschoolstudent, looked at the, looked through the catalogue. Looked
reallyexciting, all these great courses in all sorts of different fields. I was
really looking forward to getting out and going to college. After my firstyear
of college, each course I took in everyfield was so boring that I didn’t even
go to the classes. I mean, the way, I was quite interested inChemistry, but the
way I passed theChemistrycourse was because I had a friend, a young woman about
my age, who took extremelymeticulous notes in red and blue and so on, and she
lent me her notes, so I didn’t have to go to class, and I could pass the exams.
You had to go to. There was a lab. And I knew, you know, if I try to carry out
a labexperiment, it’s not going to work, but there was a labmanual, and it was
obvious what the answers had to be, so I just filled in the answers, and I
never even went to the lab. And then I had my comeuppance when I had to apply
thenextsemester, because I was charged seventeendollars, which was a lot of
money in those days, for labbreakage. And I couldn’t tell them, Look, I never
went to the labs, so I had to pay them. But it sort of went on like that. I
neverreally had an undergraduatedegree. By the time I was, I started
mainlytaking a scattering of graduatecourses without much background in them. I
then was luckyenough to get a fouryearfellowship, graduatefellowship, just did
my own work and essentially never had, I never had much of a formalEducation. It
was, one of thegreatestEducations, educational experiences, I ever had in those
fouryears was atHarvard. It was to have a desk in the stacks. In those days,
the stacks were open, not anymore. A graduatestudent
had a little desk in the stacks, and you had the whole ofWidenerLibrary, this amazing library, there. You can kind of walk around
and pick things out from all kind of places, things you never heard of, and
pursue them. That was a fantastic experience. I
think it’s a great way to get anEducation. And then I was, again, verylucky.
I got toMIT, which is a researchinstitution. They didn’t care what, didn’t care
about credentials. You could work on what you wanted to, and it turned out verywell.
But it’s just a series of accidents. I think veryfew people are luckyenough to
have an experience like that. So I’m notsuggesting that you don’t go to college
and do your work and get your degree.
23.
Arnove: At the beginning of the film, Michel,
you mention [documentary]ManufacturingConsent, and I just want to acknowledge
some people in this room worked veryclosely withPeterWintonick, a great canadian filmmaker,
who made that film withMarkAchbar
and who passed away this monday, you know, a real loss for the
documentarycommunity. Noam, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about
working with Peter and that film from, which must have started in the1980s,
really, and then came out in1992.
24.
Chomsky: Well, actually, I can’t really claim to
have worked with. I spent a lot of time with him and enjoyed talking to him, veryimaginative,
thoughtful, dedicated person, who spent, reallyspent his life, not only then,
but for many years afterwards, doing veryadmirable work of all kinds, often
turned out in documentaryfilms, but on serious issues which were hard to
investigate. He was, did a lot of courageous, imaginative work. As far as that
film is concerned, I had about as much to do with it as the moon has if people
take photographs of the moon. You know, I was giving talks and giving
interviews. And Peter
and MarkAchbar was, I don’t know what you call him technically, producer
or something. They’d come around and film, and we’d have some interviews, and
they put it together. And I have to admit, I never saw it. I can’t stand
watching myself, so I neversaw the film. But I’m told it was a prettyimpressive
film. Sound of laughter. They did a verygood job. I know one thing that they
did that I was verypleased about, was to take one issue that I’d been spending
a lot of time working on, and it was a verydifficult case. There were a small
number of people working on it. None of us ever thought it would get anywhere.
It was the case of eastTimor, which maybe you know about, which was invaded in1975
byIndonesia, with strongUSsupport. It ledalmostquickly to virtual genocide. I
don’t like the term, genocide much, but this one came prettyclose, maybe 200.000
people killed out of a population of 600.000 or 700.000, all with
fullUSsupport. US could have cut it off [stopped it] in twominutes. England, France, others also joined in to try to
pick up a bit of the spoils. Indonesia is a rich country, lots of
resources and a lot of incentive to support them. And there was veryasmall
number of people who were trying to work on it, trying to bring some attention
to it to see if something could be saved from the wreckage. Went on for a long
time. AmyGoodman here was one of the people in1991
who, she and AllanNairn went and were practicallybeaten to death in a
demonstration. They got, did some verygood work and got some, a lot of
important publicity. And now, finally, in1999,
PresidentClinton, under a lot of pressure, international and domestic,
essentially[stopped it] called it off, with a phrase. He essentiallytold
the indonesian generals, Game’s over. They left. That’s what it means to be a
powerfulState. Now, there’s a lot to learn from that. But onething I was
pleased about in Peter’sfilm is that they emphasised this and did veryevocative
and imaginative work about it, which I think probably informed plenty of people
about it. So it maybe saved a lot of lives.
25.
Arnove: Michel, could you talk, I know tomorrow night
the film opens at theIFCCenterdowntown. You’ll be there at 6:10, 8:15, after
both of those screenings, also on saturday. Could you talk about the wider
plans and aspirations for this film?
26.
Gondry: Well, I focused on Noam’s scientific
approach. And I, it’s not that I dismiss the politicalwork, and I’m aware that
the goal is to save lives. I think where people are
toomuch talking about the past, and they sort of get, obstruct their view of
what’s going on. I reallyunderstand Noam’swork into trying to basically
save life and to acknowledging people of what is going on now. So, but I felt I
could do a job into getting people to knowNoam as a thinker, and maybe they
would, especially in my country, where we have verylittle access toNoam,
because I think deep down it’s because you critique theMedia, and we have the
news. I mean, the connexion withNoam could, should be done by theMedia. But
since they have been criticised, they pretend, and inFrance, we have to choose
sides. So, basically, if you pick, if you don’t pick one side or, and they
judge you from what, that’s what you call, you talk about with a pretense of, you
know, there is all this thing inFrance with theGayssotLaw, about, they don’t have exactly
the same sense ofFreedomOfSpeech as we have here. So, I thought that my people
inFrance maybe would pay moreattention to the politicalwork ofNoam if I would
introduce, notintroduce, but emphasise on the morescientific, unpersonal
aspect.
27.
Arnove: So, it’s.
28.
Gondry: That was a little bit my goal. And as
well, as I said before, I’m very, to me, Science entertains me muchmore thanFiction,
for instance.
29.
Arnove: And, Okay, so it’s coming out inFrance.
How wide is the release here? I know IFCFilms is bringing it out. Is it going
to be on iTunes, Netflix? How are people going to be able to the film? How can
people here help get the word out about the film?
30.
Gondry: Oh, yes. I mean, you want me to
advertise. Sound of laughter. Well, yes, go.
31.
Arnove: I do, I do.
32.
Gondry: See the film.
33.
Arnove: This is the moment. And then we’re
actually going to have time for, I think, around twoquestions from the
audience. I wish it was more, but Noam literally has a flight to catch verysoon.
So but, sorry, Michel.
34.
Gondry: It’s going out, I think, in 10, I mean,
gradually to tenscreens. And hopefully it’s going to go bigger. I mean, I don’t
have any sense of how, how much it can reach. I neverknow in advance. But what
I’m thinking is I do a, maybe do a contribution, and it could last, and in a
few years people will learn about it, and it would still going, be going on. I
remember thefirsttime, when I showed thefirsthalf of the film to you, Noam, you
said, basically, at the end of, I showed it to you on my computer, as you’ve
seen the film, you said, Okay, I agree with it. Basically, you were saying that
you agreed with yourself. Sound of laughter. Which I think is, which is great.
And, to me, I mean, I understand what you meant, basically. It meant that, and
I was veryhappy about it. It meant that I had not distorted what you were
saying. But then you added, But it’s going to take a few more generation for
people to accept that, talking about, still aboutGenerativeGrammar and the whole
conception of the referential assumption, for instance. And I was telling you, So
you’re not upset that you won’t be here to witness that? And you said, No,
I don’t care about that. What I care is like maybe nobody will be here because
of the climatechange. Sound of laughter. And all the risk. And I
think it’s, I really wanted to add that at the end, but I didn’t do it. But I
think it’s summarisedNoam’spriorities.
35.
Arnove: So, there are some audiencemics, and I
think there’s some people coming around. And there’s time for just a couple
quick questions, maybe starting right there with the hat.
36.
How are you doing? Thank you both for your work,
let me say. Noam, you went to a Deweyan school, and you talk aboutJohnDewey
often, or at least that’s, I see it online. I read about it. You, in many ways,
whether you’d like to own that or not, are our moderndayDewey, as like a
leading social philosopher. I come from bluecollarbackground, and now I’m a
Columbiastudent. And I oftenget, you know, the argument that, you know, we can
no longer have these radical critiques, because we’re now part of this
cosigning, contributing, co-opted entity that’s, you know, usurping properEducation
and indoctrination. How do you reconcile the two, being, you know, inside the
system, part of the system, but alsotrying to change it and not be co-opted?
37.
Chomsky: It’s always been a. First of all, I
don’t. My own impression over seventyfiveyears of activism is that the level of
energy and dedication and commitment, especially on the part of young people
today, is as high as anything I can remember, outside of maybe a few verybrief
peaks, like maybe 1968, [19]69. But it's quite substantial. But you’re right
that there are veryintensive pressures to try to beat it back. You used the
phrase indoctrination. That’s actually the phrase that’s used at the liberal
end of the spectrum, by those who are deeply concerned about the activism,
independence, courage, great contributions of young people of the[19]60s, who
reallycivilised the society. Right after that, there was a reaction, and across
the spectrum at the sort of liberal end, theTrilateralCommission, that's
basically Carterliberals, they staffed theCarteradministration, a veryimportant
book, which called for trying to reduce, to introduce what they called moremoderation
inDemocracy, lessparticipation. People should become morepassive and obedient
and apathetic. And as [SamuelHuntington] put it, And maybe we can get back to
the good old days when Truman was able to run the country with the help of a
few WallStreet[Manhattan] lawyers and financiers. That would be Democracy. But
one of the things they emphasised was what they saw the "failure of the
institutions", I’m quoting, "responsible for the indoctrination of
the young." Schools, universities, churches, they were notindoctrinating
the young properly. So therefore, we have to do more to indoctrinate the young.
And there’s been quite a. Since that time, there’s been quite a campaign, from
kindergarten to universities, in many different ways, to try to impose
discipline, obedience, apathy, atomisation, keep people separate from one
another, all kinds of things. Those of you of that age have all been through
it. But you can struggle against it. And plenty of people are doing it, and
there’s a lot that has been done. A lot more can be done. And I think there’s, I
mean, what you mentioned is a problem, but I don’t
think it’s a paradox. You can live, we do live within the society. We can’t pretend
we live somewhere else. You can live within the
institutions, and work hard to change them.
38.
Arnove: Okay, we have time for onemorequestion.
A woman would be great. Yes, right there in back. Beautiful. Can someone bring
a mic to the woman right there in the middle? Thank you.
39.
Hi. First of all, it was really enjoyable,
and you guys are such a great combination. I’m a huge fan of both of you.
My question was forNoam about death. So, when I think about death or when I
think about life, really, because I don’t really think about death, I think
that the thing that is alive in me is not behind my eyes, and it’s something
that’s bigger than anything that I could ever possibly imagine. So, when you
say this spark of, how did you put it, this spark of consciousness goes, if you
wanted to convince me that, you know, the way that you see it, like from dusttodust
and then nothing happens, how would you explain that? Is that a question? How
would you explain to me where that spark of consciousness goes?
40.
Chomsky: Well, actually, that was my tenyearsoldself.
I did used to have nightmares about the idea that when I die, there is a spark
of consciousness which basicallycreates the world. Is the world going to
disappear if this spark of consciousness disappears? And how do I know it
won’t? How do I know there’s anything there except what I’m conscious of? So if
this spark disappears, it’s all gone. Later,
when I got older, I thought that this is a ratherclassical concern, and a lot
of thought and writing and agony, and so on about it. But as you get older, you just realise that’s nottrue. The
world is going to go on. Your children will be alive, your grandchildren, your
friends, other people’s children, the children of those villagers inColombia
who you saw there, and so on. And the world will go on. It’ll go on without me,
but okay, it went on for a long time without me, and a lot of it goes on
without me, and that will continue to happen. It’s, it just seems like, to
me, at least, it seems like less and less of a problem as you get older. It
becomes easy to understand why this is reallynotsomething to be concerned
about. My personal feeling.
41.
Arnove: Well, on that verycheerful note,
everyone. Sound of laughter. Thank you toMichelGondry and toNoamChomsky and toDOCNYC
for an amazing week of programming. Sound of applaud. ToSchoolOfVisualArts, toIFC,
all the volunteers here.
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