167. World Glimpsing: On Death, Creativity, Ritual And Resistance To Categorisation / James Taylor-Foster

Today, I’m speaking with james taylor-foster - a curator, writer, and cultural leader investigating how the creativity of artists, designers, and thinkers reimagines our world – shaping popular culture and public life. Recently appointed Executive Director of Para Site, Hong Kong’s leading non-profit contemporary art centre, James's practice bridges contemporary art, design, architecture, and digital culture.

As a convenor and curator he blurs disciplinary boundaries, exploring unconventional ways of nurturing institutions and their audiences. This expansive approach is both greenhouse and staging ground: cultivating emergent ideas for wider cultural spheres while building ambitious platforms for assembling many forms of making into new ways of seeing, feeling, and imagining.

James’ work shines light on how creativity continually re-envisions reality, and it was in a talk he gave at the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute earlier this year, that I heard him speak about “world-glimsping” – a phrase he coined to describe the curious, evocative and transporting ways in which artists of all stripes can invite us into alternative experiences that both broaden and deepen our felt sense of the futures we might yet create together.

As our dominant social and generative AI platforms continue to commoditise, capture and corode not only our attention, but also our imaginations, I couldn’t resist asking James to come onto the show and share his vision of the power of creativity to shape what comes next.

WEBSITES

• https://james.tf/
• https://www.para-site.art/2026/03/16/welcoming-james-taylor-foster-as-para-sites-next-executive-director/

CHAPTERS

3:19 Homogenisation and Creativity

5:10 Design and Frictionless Society

7:06 Infantilisation and Technology

10:17 Crisis of Creativity

13:52 Death and Vulnerability

29:11 Transhumanism and Embodiment

30:00 Cultural Spaces and Information Overload

31:55 Monogamous Mind, Polyamorous Terror

39:21 Ritual, Non-Dualism and Initiation

46:34 World Glimpsing and Role-play

54:25 Reflection and Journaling