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SUMMARY:Dialectic of Nature and Capital: Subjects of the Eco-imaginary
DTSTART:20201210T143000
DTEND:20201210T160000
DTSTAMP:20260916T194625Z
UID:d13fde68d389990544dc807ccec79a05937874b6d6fd53cc34c8d0fd
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Douglas Spencer is Director of Graduate Education and Pickard 
 Chilton Professor in Iowa State University’s Department of Architecture.
  He has previously taught at the Architectural Association\, the Royal Col
 lege of Art and the University of Westminster. He has delivered keynote an
 d guest lectures internationally\, and contributed essays for publications
  including Log\, The Journal of Architecture\, Radical Philosophy\, Ar
 chitectural Design\, e-flux\, The Avery Review\, AA Files\, New Geogra
 phies\, and Volume. He has also contributed chapters for collections such
  as Architectural Affects after Deleuze and Guattari (Routledge\, 2020)\
 , Architecture and Feminisms (Routledge\, 2017)\, Landscape and Agency
  (Routledge\, 2017)\, This Thing Called Theory (Routledge\, 2016) and 
 Architecture Against the Post-Political (Routledge\, 2014). His The Arch
 itecture of Neoliberalism (Bloomsbury 2016) has become a critically accla
 imed\, widely-cited\, and standard point of reference in the analysis of c
 ontemporary architecture. His subsequent book\, Critique of Architecture:
  Essays on Theory\, Autonomy\, and Political Economy\, is published by Bir
 khäuser/Bauwelt Fundamente in 2020.\nThis lecture is organized in the fra
 me of the PDM Workshop at ALICE.\n\nCapital progressively subjects everyth
 ing in nature to its own apparatus of accumulation. At the same time\, it 
 has still to posit nature as its outside in order to stage and re-stage 
 the performance of its own mystery play\; the struggle in which this natur
 e is subdued\, conquered and colonized. From Robinson Crusoe to The Mar
 tian\, from European settler-colonialism to Musk’s and Bezos’ dreams o
 f planetary conquest\, capitalism naturalizes its own history and its own 
 version of the human: the entrepreneurial\, innovative and resourceful fig
 ure of homo economicus. Nature\, thus naturalized\, is then reimagined as
  an aesthetic resource\, repurposed as a platform for a romanticized harmo
 nization of man and nature.\n \nThis dialectic of nature and capital is i
 n some sense unchanging\, inevitably caught in and condemned to endlessly 
 play out and perform its own contradictions. Yet\, impelled by the existen
 tial threat of environmental crisis\, the techno-utopianism to which much 
 contemporary architecture and urban design is attached presents this diale
 ctic in an especially exasperated form. This is the eco-imaginary of cap
 ital\, to which this talk will attend\, examining some of its current mani
 festations in the work of Foster + Partners and BIG.\n 
LOCATION:https://epfl.zoom.us/j/84843755514
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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