This is video documentation of a public program where the Norwegian philosopher and writer Lars Svendsen delivered a lecture on the subject of his book, "A Philosophy of Boredom."

This book, investigates one of the central preoccupations of our age as it probes the nature of boredom, how it originated, how and why it afflicts us, and why we cannot seem to overcome it by any act of will. Lars Svendsen brings together observations from philosophy, literature, psychology, theology, and popular culture, examining boredom's pre-Romantic manifestations in medieval torpor, philosophical musings on boredom from Pascal to Nietzsche, and modern explorations into alienation and transgression by twentieth-century artists from Beckett to Warhol.

Lars Svendsen is associate professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Bergen in Norway.

This program took place on November 1, 2008 at Kadist Art Foundation's gallery space in Paris, France. It was organized as part of the exhibition "Archaeology of Longing" curated by Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy. The exhibition was on view at that gallery from 19 September - 9 November, 2008.

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