Double Major, Carleton University Art Gallery’s (CUAG) monthly talk series, asked audience members to delve into the disparities caused by our deepest desires, Nov. 12.
The talks, entering their second year, feature one speaker from the Carleton community and another from the Ottawa-Gatineau region to discuss their areas of expertise.
Each speaker talks about his or her topic for about 20 minutes, followed by a question and answer period.
Sandra Dyck, the gallery’s director, initiated Double Major at Carleton, adopting the idea from a similar series of lectures at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver entitled “Mixed Tastes.”
Now Fiona Wright, the education and community outreach manager, organized Double Major as an event to bring people into the gallery and become aware of the events they hold. The goal is to have friendly discussion and make new connections between people and ideas, she said.
This November, the talks featured Cindy Deachman and Vida Panitch speaking on food cravings and global surrogacy, respectively. Deachman, a writer from outside of the Carleton community, expanded on the idea of how food-related compulsions affect our daily lives.
“There are certain foods we associate with certain experiences,” Deachman said.
The lecture asked audience members to reflect on how social and emotional situations can cause us to over-eat and crave the foods we do.
Panitch, a professor in the Department of Philosophy at Carleton, unpacked the subject of global surrogacy and its moral implications in today’s society. She looked at the issues that ensue when women around the world are paid to carry children. Commercial surrogacy is illegal in many places including Canada and this has caused a global market to ensue, Panitch said.
“It looks to me like the global surrogacy transactions cause more concerns then domestic transactions,” Panitch said during her discussion.
Although these two topics may seem widely different, the audience and speakers were able to draw connections between the two, relating them both back to our basic human desires.
Certain members of the audience established that the same type of emotions are involved in the want for a child and the want for food—they bring a similar type of satisfaction. People are willing to go to such extreme lengths for a child and we are certainly programmed with the need to be fed. In the end, these are both a part of the same kind of psychological processes.
“The emotions are high and we want to be satisfied,” said Deachman. “If we want something we’ll go to many lengths to get it.”
Panitch agreed, saying we should know how to restrict ourselves in terms of our drives and be aware about how much they lead to harm.
