Book Talk: Intuition by R. Buckminster Fuller

Please join us to celebrate the launch of Intuition by R. Buckminster Fuller, reissued by David Zwirner Books this fall, with a film screening and a conversation. The film screening will begin at 5:30pm, with the conversation beginning at 7:00pm.  Attendees are encouraged to join the conversation at 7:00pm even if they are unable to attend the film screening.
 
Written in 1968 and first published in 1972, Fuller’s epic poem is both a meditation and a call to action. It argues that intuition is not the opposite of logic, but its highest expression and an essential function of human understanding. Drawing on decades of experience as a systems thinker, Fuller – the renowned inventor, artist, and creator of the geodesic dome – demonstrates how intuitive insight allows us to grasp complex, interconnected realities. Intuition is an inquiry into synergy and the order of things – an inherently plural universe where the behavior of whole systems is unpredicted by the behaviors of the parts taken separately. The conversation with Isi Litke and Eva Diaz will discuss Intuition in the context of Fuller’s life and work, and the book’s relevance to contemporary systems of design and architecture.
 
The conversation will be preceded by a screening of the 1974 film The World of Buckminster Fuller, directed by Robert Snyder.  Perhaps the most comprehensive film on Fuller’s work, this 80-minute documentary is told entirely in Fuller’s words and is a personal message from Fuller to our fragile world.
 
Speakers:
Isi Litke, Core Faculty, Events Manager; Brooklyn Institute for Social Research
Eva Diaz, Professor of Contemporary Art History; Pratt Institute
 
Speaker Bios:
Isi Litke is on the Core Faulty at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. She teaches at the intersection of politics and aesthetics, with a particular interest in 20th century avant-garde movements, critical theory, visual studies, and the politics of memory. She is currently working on several writing and curatorial projects related to the sculptor Jacques Jarrige and the architect and filmmaker Laszlo Rajk Jr.  She holds a Master of Arts in Political Theory from Princeton University and an MSc from the Oxford Internet Institute.
 
Eva Diaz is Professor of Contemporary Art History at Pratt.  Her reaching and scholarship are informed by historical and contemporary interdisciplinary collaborations between artists and other cultural producers.  Her first book, Experimenters: Chance and Design at Black Mountain College, was released in 2015 by the University of Chicago Press. Diaz’s new book is After Spaceship Earth, analyzing the influence of R. Buckminster Fuller in contemporary arts, was published by Yale University Press in 2025.  She holds a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley and a Ph.D and M.A. from Princeton University.  She was in residence at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles as a Getty Scholar in 2023-2024, and has been awarded a grant from the Huntington Library for her current work on a book that explores non-visual experiences in art.