The Multidisciplinary Mind: A Journey from Fashion to Philosophy

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Welcome to the Crazy Wisdom Podcast. My guest today is Nico Sarian. He is a doctoral student in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto, and we met each other working at Invisible, doing some crazy stuff. Welcome to the show, Nico.

Thank you for having me. Great to be here.

So can you talk. Talk more about, like, what you've studied in the past and how it got you here today?

Well, okay, so it's a very long story, but I. So I. Initially. So I'll try and sum it up in like, two minutes. I. I finished high school. I worked in fashion for about a year, year and a half. Through fashion, I really got into art, into the art world. All of this was in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Then I had a sort of a spiritual crisis and I shifted from, like, let's say, the active side of things. So, like, doing art, working into the contemplative side of things. So I started studying, basically, and I studied art history and philosophy. So I got two degrees, never finished philosophy because in Argentina, when you study in a public university, it takes you about eight years. It's great, but it's like, you know, super long. I did finish art history. Then I worked in the art world with artists, galleries, museums. Then I felt I had a. Unfinished. Unfinished. I mean, I had a due with philosophy. So I did a master's in philosophy at King's College in London. I went there because I was interested in Indian philosophy and I wanted to study Sanskrit. Then I continue working in. In the art world. I used to work as a curator in Moscow in a museum called Garage, as an assistant curator. Then religion was always there in the background of. Especially, like, my approach to art. Like, all of the problems of the questions I had with contemporary art especially was like, linked to absence, lack of meaning. I mean, not specifically to me, but I feel like there's a problem here, like, you know, and I felt that I always referred to a. A. Well, this is kind of like my. My, you know, or like origin myths, like How I didn't go into religion. I had a. A meeting with my former boss there, who's Kate Fowell. She's. She's the Director at moment, PS1. Now, she was the only foreigner apart from me and the whole museum, you know, and I was like, you know, I was pursuing as a career as a curator. I really want to be a curator. And like. And I am kind of a. My way of working is very curatorial, I would say even, like, intellectually and as to like. So how do you define a curator? What does a curator do? Right? And she. So it's like, imagine there's a triangle. She says, right on one. And there's three things at each end. At each end of the. The triangle, right? There's works of art or objects, there is the public, and then there is space or architecture. No, and she's like. She said a curator has to trace all those three lines. If you only do two, you're a critique. If you only do one, you're. I don't know, you work in a museum, basically. But if you'd like, you know, do the three year. You could. You can be considered a curator. I was like, well, a priest does the same thing, you know, so. And. And that tied to, like. Yeah. And I mean, all of this, like. I'm saying all of this in like a very kind of, you know, like, I'm not talking about, like, what I was interested intellectually. That's a different story. So, yeah, I, you know, I. Some of my friends had gone into PhDs, like philosophy mostly in Europe. I was. I never really wanted to do a PhD, but then a year later, I started teaching. I was a lecturer at. It's a British college that has. A British art college that has a location in Moscow. It's called the British Higher School for Art and Design. The. The locals call it Britanka. I used to teach theory, aesthetics, philosophy there. I kind of like the experience of teaching. And then like, you know, it popped in my head, okay, like, yeah, maybe. Maybe it is a good idea to do a PhD. And I discovered the field of religion, which does not exist in many parts of the world as a kind of like, you know, your secular study of religion, which is like, what people. People do here at Toronto or. Well, I went to Colombia first. Started there, got a Masters, and then I came here. But it's the same field, religious studies, religion. So that's kind of like a, you know, the big picture, I guess, of my journey.