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Recommended: New Dark Age by James Bridle

10.21.2018 by Ollie //

New Dark Age by James Bridle
£16.99 / hardcover

Reserve

The most significant crises of our age - climate change, spiralling economic inequality, fundamentalist politics, and information overload - are, for James Bridle, chiefly crises of cognition above all else. While the internet has made the world feel more visible than ever before, our inadequate ability to think this new world has led us into a paradoxical age of darkness, a time in which the knowable becomes ever more distorted by the complex informational systems in which we are fully embedded.

The links Bridle explores between state surveillance, global financial systems, computational thinking, climate change, platform capitalism, and right-wing populism (not to mention the startling, nightmarish world of children's YouTube) provide little salve next to the scale, complexity and urgency of these issues. However, what New Dark Age does offer is a crucial lens through which we might begin to think the systems we have built, a lens that recognises the legacies of colonial power which emerge through them, and understands that deleting your Facebook is not enough.

Published by Verso on 19th June 2018

Categories // Recommended Tags // Politics, Technology

Event: Ruins of Modern London: Peter Watts and Owen Hopkins in conversation with Dave Hill

04.19.2018 by Pages of Hackney //

Lost Futures: The Disappearing Architecture of Post-War Britain by Owen Hopkins

In association with On London.

We are delighted to welcome Peter Watts, London specialist and author of Up In Smoke: The Failed Dreams of Battersea Power Station, and architecture writer Owen Hopkins, author of Lost Futures: The Disappearing Architecture of Post-War Britain, to discuss the mixed fortunes of some of the capital’s most striking modern buildings.

Peter and Owen and will discuss the heroic ambitions, falls from favour and sometimes total demolitions of London landmarks ranging from the East End’s Balfron Tower and Heathrow’s Terminal One, both of which were built after the war, to the legendary BPS itself, which was mostly constructed in the 1930s.

All of these buildings were bold and new in their visions and designs, reflecting values and ambitions of their eras. Yet many have struggled to stand the test of time. Their fates raise large questions about the purpose of architecture, Londoners’ feelings about their physical surroundings, and the current, heightened tensions between the desire to conserve and arguments for change.

Peter Watts is one of the best contemporary writers about London, contributing pieces about aspects of the capital to the Times, the Guardian, the Observer and a host of magazines. Up In Smoke tells the extraordinary story of Battersea Power Station, from its magnificent, cathedral-like creation, through its long years as a loved but functionally redundant Thames-side icon, the succession of ambitious and eccentric plans for its re-invention that never happened, to its partial preservation within the opulent and controversial Nine Elms development scheme. Peter also keeps a blog called The Great Wen.

Owen Hopkins is not only a writer but also a historian and senior curator of exhibitions and education at Sir John Soane’s Museum. He was previously architecture programme curator at the Royal Academy of Arts. Lost Futures documents the high ideals that informed a great variety of new, modern buildings of many kinds in the capital and elsewhere in Britain and how those ideals were often lost. The book describes the rise and demise of housing estates, restaurants, offices and schools in the capital which were often praised when they were born only to descend into disrepute and rubble.

The event will be chaired by Dave Hill of On London, with which this event is co-promoted.

Tags // Architecture, Politics

Event: Xenofeminism: Helen Hester in conversation with Joanna Walsh

03.29.2018 by Pages of Hackney //

Xenofeminism by Helen Hester

*Please note that this event will take place on 29th March, not the 22nd as previously advertised.*

Join us as we welcome Helen Hester to talk about her new book, Xenofeminism, with Joanna Walsh.

In an era of accelerating technology and increasing complexity, how should we reimagine the emancipatory potential of feminism? How should gender politics be reconfigured in a world being transformed by automation, globalization and the digital revolution?

These questions are addressed in this bold new book by Helen Hester, a founding member of the Laboria Cuboniks collective that developed the acclaimed manifesto 'Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation'. Hester develops a three-part definition of xenofeminism grounded in the ideas of technomaterialism, anti-naturalism, and gender abolitionism. She elaborates these ideas in relation to assistive reproductive technologies and interrogates the relationship between reproduction and futurity, while steering clear of a problematic anti-natalism. Finally, she examines what xenofeminist technologies might look like in practice, using the history of one specific device to argue for a future-oriented gender politics that can facilitate alternative models of reproduction.

Challenging and iconoclastic, this visionary book is the essential guide to one of the most exciting intellectual trends in contemporary feminism.

Helen Hester is Associate Professor of Media and Communication at the University of West London, and co-founder of the Laboria Cuboniks collective. She is also the author of Beyond Explicit: Pornography and the Displacement of Sex, and editor of the collections, Fat Sex: New Directions in Theory and Activism, and Dea Ex Machina.

Joanna Walsh is a writer, journalist, and campaigner whose work has appeared in Granta Magazine, gorse journal, The Guardian, The New Statesman, The Stinging Fly, and many others. Her new book, Break.up, is due to be published by Semiotext(e) in April 2018, and her previous books include Worlds from the Word's End, Vertigo, and Hotel. 


Tags // Feminism, Politics, Technology

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Thu 21

Event: Desire! Desire! – a solo exhibition from Ross Head

February 21 @ 19:00 - 21:00

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