Join the conversation! The 12th SITE SANTA FE International Coffee and Conversation series will be hosted on the first Saturday of every month through the run of the exhibition. Discussion will focus on texts relating to the 12th International’s curatorial vision, the featured artists, and their inspirations.

September Reading

The Kekulé Problem by Cormac McCarthy

The Kekulé Problem is a 2017 essay by award-winning author Cormac McCarthy for the Santa Fe Institute (SFI), where he was a trustee and senior fellow. Published in the science magazine Nautilus, McCarthy analyzes a dream of August Kekulé, a nineteenth-century German organic chemist, in which he realized the ringed structure of the benzene molecule after dreaming of a snake eating its own tail. The essay discusses visual imagery in the unconscious mind and the origins of language. McCarthy argues that while the unconscious mind is a biologically determined phenomenon, language is not.

We will read the essay, and explore the artworks in the Lobby.