Scenius and Genius

Brian Eno curated this year’s Vivid Sydney Music Fest in Sydney, Australia.  During a press conference, he discussed his idea of the “scenius” in contrast to the “genius.”

So, as I told you, I was an art student and, like all art students, I was encouraged to believe that there were a few great figures like Picasso and Kandinsky, Rembrandt and Giotto and so on who sort-of appeared out of nowhere and produced artistic revolution.

As I looked at art more and more, I discovered that that wasn’t really a true picture. What really happened was that there was sometimes very fertile scenes involving lots and lots of people – some of them artists, some of them collectors, some of them curators, thinkers, theorists, people who were fashionable and knew what the hip things were – all sorts of people who created a kind of ecology of talent. And out of that ecology arose some wonderful work. The period that I was particularly interested in, ’round about the Russian revolution, shows this extremely well. So I thought that originally those few individuals who’d survived in history – in the sort-of “Great Man” theory of history – they were called “geniuses”. But what I thought was interesting was the fact that they all came out of a scene that was very fertile and very intelligent. So I came up with this word “scenius” – and scenius is the intelligence of a whole… operation or group of people. And I think that’s a more useful way to think about culture, actually. I think that – let’s forget the idea of “genius” for a little while, let’s think about the whole ecology of ideas that give rise to good new thoughts and good new work.

I find the idea of “scenius” as an ecology of activities that activate new possibilities to be beautiful.  Something like it underlies my and others’ efforts to map the “scenescapes” of cities in order to discern how different forms of scenius – different constellations of ideas, establishments, audiences, networks, venues, industries, cafes, bars, and more — encourage, so to speak, different forms of genius.

My only concern would be that we take care not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.  Certainly the scenius of a place provides the ferment out of which something wonderful and new arises.  However, it takes special insight and talent to take that ferment, give it shape, and make it speak both within and beyond the scene.  And it is probably also the case that scenes frequently emerge through the efforts of a few people with special talents (“geniuses”) who plant the seeds that grow into scenes.  That is, scenius needs genius as much as genius needs scenius.

H/T: synthtopia.

And, to see some scenius in action, check out this youtube clip of Eno’s performance of “Pure Scenius” at the Sydney Opera House.