Amateur Architecture: Possibilities of rural-urban co-existence in China — part of Co-liberation: International Lecture Series
27 November 2020 | 10am
This event will be live-streamed via Zoom.
Free
Join the School of Architecture for the third event of the 'Co-Liberation' International Lecture Series 2020-21.
Wang Shu & Lu Wenyu (Amateur Architecture Studio and China Academy of Art School of Architecture) will be in conversation with Jingru (Cyan) Cheng (RCA). Pritzker Prize-winning architects and educators Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu will discuss their architectural practice and educational experiments, rooted in Chinese history, culture and the practices of everyday life, rethinking possibilities of rural-urban co-existence in China.
The talk will be introduced by the RCA Deputy Vice Chancellor and Provost Naren Barfield and the Dean of School of Architecture Adrian Lahoud.
Book via the link at the top of the page and you will be sent the link to this Zoom webinar.
Co-Liberation: the RCA School of Architecture International Lecture Series 2020-21
‘As long as we are resisting we are free’ echoes the lingering battle-cry of the late Egyptian Marxist Samir Amin. For Amin, revolution was a process, a non-linear struggle forged in the long-now. This is revolution crafted in acts of resistance, in everyday opposition to an oppressive, profit-over-people logic which would seek to foreclose access, movement and imagination. This is revolution enacted through acts of freedom, through dangerous dreaming, alternative occupations and the construction of infinite, previously unthinkable possibilities in the face of enclosure. This is revolution as a home, a place of warmth, care, mutual aid, and solidarity across globally dispersed sites of interconnected struggle. This is a revolution that considers the days after the revolution as an integral part. It does not forget to think about those who will, after the revolution, as artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles reminds us, 'pick up the garbage on Monday morning'.
This year’s series of lectures – under the theme Co-Liberation – draws these acts of resistance and freedom close and into dialogue, understanding that they operate both in time and space. We know that revolution is not a one time event and ask what unspent fuel remains from previous struggles to be reignited today? What can we learn from those who are on the front lines as we seek to imagine and build a more just, equitable world and how can we engage in constructing active forms of solidarity? We offer the International Lecture Series to all those who seek the warmth of a home of revolutionary thought today: from confronting the spatial instruments of racial capitalism, the violence of gender binaries, and the settler colonial underpinnings of the urban, to emancipatory Black re-constructions of the archive, the poetic, the performative and the sonic that reach back in time, grab hold off glowing embers of liberations gone-by and bring them to the fore, ready to be set alight with the strength of our collective breath, our desire to live and live free.
Learn more about MA Architecture and how to apply.