Skip to content

Jonathon Keats

Experimental Philosopher and Conceptual Artist

Jonathon Keats is a San Francisco-based experimental philosopher who has, over the years, sold real estate in the extra dimensions of space-time proposed by string theory (he sold a hundred and seventy-two extra-dimensional lots in the Bay Area in a single day); made an attempt to genetically engineer God (God turns out to be related to the cyanobacterium); and copyrighted his own mind (in order to get a seventy-year post-life extension.

Keats's bold experiments raise serious questions and put into practice his conviction that the world needs more "curious amateurs," willing to explore publicly whatever intrigues them, in defiance of a culture that increasingly forecloses on wonder and siloes knowledge into narrowly defined areas of expertise. 


If curiosity is your curriculum the best way in which that curriculum can be undertaken is for all of your students to cut school and that’s a great idea, but it really won’t work at an institutional level in most universities. 
I decided that I would attempt to scientifically figure out where on the phylogenetic tree, which is the master map of all the species on earth, where you might put God. 
I have begun to use pheromones in place of color pigments to make honest paintings laden with emotion. I call it olfactory expressionism.
I don’t know that I have any ideas. I have notions maybe. I have curiosity. I have a deep appreciation for serendipity. I have a way of living my life, […]
The idea of forgery resonates more than ever today in a culture in which "the open exchange of ideas has been rebranded as piracy."