Mood Curriculum, Episode 3: Simon Critchley

In the third episode of Mood Curriculum, Kristian Vistrup Madsen speaks with philosopher Simon Critchley about his book On Mysticism (NYRB, 2024). With On Mysticism Critchley offers a roadmap to mystical practice and thought within the Christian tradition. He understands mystical experience as experience in its most intense form – mysticism is mediated immediacy. It is an antidote to melancholy, as Julian of Norwich puts it, "to the heaviness with which the self is attached to itself, riveted to itself. " It is also a call to intensify the senses: "God is all mouth", he quotes from Madame Guyon, and a movement away from the self: to write, in the words of Annie Dillard, "without a face". Music by bitsy Knox and Roger 3000. Cover art by Tolia Astakhishvili.

Om Podcasten

Simian is an independent art center in the district of Ørestad in Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded and run by artists as a non-profit organization, Simian aspires to support and present experimental exhibition projects by national and international artists from emergent and established positions. Through an extensive programme, Simian seeks to engage in critical artistic and social discourses, with the aim to generate discussion, reflection and agency.