Naming the Unknown: A LARB Editor's Salon

Los Angeles Review of Books and the Planetary Program at the Berggruen Institute are thrilled to present Naming the Unknown, a LARB editor’s salon, exploring how language evolves  to name and make sense of emerging phenomena in a rapidly changing world.

Whether from political, philosophical, artistic, or literary vantage points, language is constantly evolving to capture the realities of the present. Terms like mansplaining, enshittification, and the latest internet fixation, mogging, show how new words emerge to name experiences that once went unarticulated. Our world is increasingly dominated by a new lexicon as we learn to adapt.

To discuss, LARB and the Berggruen Institute have brought together writers Dashiel Carrera, Gideon Jacobs, Jonathan Blake, and the artists behind the Bureau of Lingusitical Reality, Heidi Quante and Alicia Escott. Join us on the evening of March 26 at 7 p.m. at the Wende Museum for a defining conversation which will be moderated by LARB editor-in-chief Medaya Ocher. 

The Editor’s Salon series is a part of our member programming and allows LARB members to take part in conversations between LARB’s own editors and a range of leading experts and voices in their fields. In advance of the event, LARB members are invited to join us for a cocktail hour in the garden of the Wende.

Not a member? Join us today for exclusive access and to support the work of the Los Angeles Review of Books, a literary non-profit.

This event is made possible with the support of the Planetary Program at the Berggruen Institute. The Berggruen Institute is a think tank with centers in Beijing, Venice and Los Angeles that develops foundational ideas to shape the future, building new conceptual frameworks that transcend academic disciplines and cultural boundaries while connecting a global network of thinkers to generate ideas with real-world impact. Within this work, the Planetary program addresses the political, philosophical, and institutional challenges of an interconnected Earth system, recognizing that issues such as climate change, technological systems, and ecological breakdown exceed national borders and require a fundamental rethinking of politics, responsibility, and interdependence at a planetary scale.

Dashiel Carrera is a novelist, Human-Centered AI researcher, and media artist. A Visiting PhD Researcher at Columbia University, his research explores how Generative AI will affect the trajectory of contemporary literature. Also the author of The Deer (Dalkey Archive Press, 2022) and an Assistant Editor at Conjunctions, his work has been published in Los Angeles Review of Books, LitHub, FENCE, and BOMB and his research has taken him to the MIT Media Lab and Harvard’s metaLab.

Gideon Jacobs writes fiction and nonfiction, contributing to The New Yorker, The New York Times, Artforum, BOMB Magazine, The Drift, Heavy Traffic, and others. He is currently performing a one man show and working on a novel, both about images.

Jonathan Blake is Director of Programs at the Berggruen Institute, where he directs the research projects and wider research agenda for the Planetary Program. Blake is the co-author, with Nils Gilman, of Children of a Modest Star: Planetary Thinking for an Age of Crises (2024) and author of Contentious Rituals: Parading the Nation in Northern Ireland (2019). He previously held research positions at the RAND Corporation, Columbia Global Policy Initiative, and the Chumir Foundation. His writing on planetary politics, governance, ethnic conflict, migration, and more have appeared in Noema, where he’s Associate Editor, The Atlantic, Boston Review, The Nation, Los Angeles Review of Books, and scholarly journals.

Heidi Quante and Alicia Escott are the creators behind The Bureau of Linguistical Reality, a public participatory artwork focused on creating new language as an innovative way to better understand our rapidly changing world due to manmade climate change and other Anthropocenic events. The vision of the artwork is to provide new words to express what people are feeling and experiencing as our world changes as climate change accelerates. We will be using these new words to facilitate conversations about the greater experiences these words are seeking to express with the view to facilitate a greater cultural shift around climate change.