International Jean Gebser Society Conference
October 23-25, 2026
Online only, via Zoom
Gebser’s Relevance Today:
Manifestations of His Thinking in the Arts, Architecture, Sciences, and Beyond
Gebser’s prescient vision foresaw many of the developments of the emergent era. His thinking continues to be relevant in the Arts, Architecture, Sciences, and beyond. This conference aims to provide an open forum for the Gebser community and newcomers to address how Gebser continues to be relevant in so many different aspects of contemporary life.
Arts: In 1977, Marshall McLuhan, writes: “The new way does not consist of seeing then doing, but of tuning oneself to the proper frequency, the right wavelength. It’s our whole idea of communication that has changed.” How do McLuhan’s words complement Gebser’s intent to show “the concrescence of the spiritual” and his statement that “Creativity is not bound to space and time, and its truest effect can be found in mutation…” This question concerns all the arts, in every practice, and in every environment.
Architecture: Perhaps The Oculus (above), designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava for the World Trade Center Transportation Hub in lower Manhattan, offers an example, on a large scale, of an “attempt to concretize time, and thus realize and become conscious of the fourth dimension”? As we continue to experience planetary transmutation, how might the architectural imagination, which organizes space for human purposes, also manifest at every scale “the effectual reality of all time phases: yesterday, today, tomorrow, and even the pre-temporal and timeless” ?
Sciences: Thomas Kuhn, in his1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions introduced the concept of paradigm shift, a term which has since become ubiquitous in all fields, not limited to science. Gebser preceded such an idea a couple decades earlier with the idea of mutations of consciousness. How might Gebser’s more expansive concept serve us better to understand the rate of change, the multi-dimensionality and magnitude of changes in science and technology? What means and/or modes of expression are useful to describe what is happening in science now?
And beyond…
In 1949, seventy-seven years ago, Gebser wrote “of the nascence of a new world and a new consciousness… based on insights into mankind’s mutation…” How does this language resonate with the lived realities and hyper-realities of world-life in 2026?
The present book is the account of the nascence of a new world and a new consciousness. It is based not on ideas or speculations but on insights into mankind’s mutations from its primordial beginnings up to the present—on perhaps novel insights into the forms of consciousness manifest in the various epochs of mankind: insights into the powers behind their realization as manifest between origin and the present, and active in origin and the present. And as the origin before all time is the entirety of the very beginning, so too is the present the entirety of everything temporal and time-bound, including the effectual reality of all time phases: yesterday, today, tomorrow, and even the pre-temporal and timeless. —EPO page 1
Much of what has been rationalistically posited, particularly the rationalistic and stereotyped thought forms and systems, must be de-rigidified and de-posed in order to open up an arena for the power and intensity that are pressing toward manifestation. So long as we think that we can master such intensities as time by forcing them into a system, the intensities will simply burst such systems apart. —EPO 306
Creativity is not bound to space and time, and its truest effect can be found in mutation, the course of which is not continuous in time, but rather spontaneous, acausal, and discontinuous. Creativity is a visibly emerging impulse of origin which “is” in turn timeless, or more accurately, before or “above” time and timelessness. And creativity is something that happens to us, that fully effects or fulfills itself in us. —EPO page 313
How to submit your proposal
Please submit the following information to jeangebsersociety@gmail.com
*Your name:
*Institution (if applicable) Student? If so, where?
We encourage students to submit, to explore Gebser’s ideas and apply them to your field of interest or embody/manifest them.
Students whose presentations are chosen will be awarded a certificate and entered to win random prizes, including books and a cash prize of $200.
*Summary/abstract/overview (maximum 500 words)
*Example of artistic expression with proposed elaboration (maximum 250 words + three images/videos/recordings
*Time allocation requested (specify 15 to 45 minutes)
Submit to jeangebsersociety@gmail.com
Submission deadline September 1
(submission acceptance notifications sent by September 15)
Registration fee: $25
