5-4-1 interview with Bert Olivier

Bert Olivier works as Honorary Professor of Philosophy at the University of the Free State, South Africa. His work is interdisciplinary and he has published academic articles and books across a wide variety of disciplines such as philosophy, architecture, literature, psychoanalysis, cinema and social theory, although his home discipline is philosophy. Bert was awarded the Stals Prize for Philosophy by the South African Akademie vir Kuns en Wetenskap in 2004, and a Distinguished Professorship by the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, South Africa, in 2012.

Bert has published a number of books, including Philosophy and the Arts: Collected Essays (2009), Philosophy and Psychoanalytic Theory: Collected Essays (2009), Philosophy and Communication: Collected Essays (2009), Intersecting Philosophical Planes: Philosophical Essays (2012), and Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Culture and Society (2021).

Here are Bert’s five things:

1. A Thousand Plateaus, by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari Link

2. Karsten Harries Link

3. J.M.W. Turner’s painting The Fighting Temeraire Link

4. Falling down a cliff as a child

5. Philip Glass’s soundtrack to the film Powaqqatsi Link