Cultures of Capitalism: Growth

Thursday 7 March, 7pm
Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London E1
Price: £7.00 / £5.00 concessions (includes free glass of wine).

Does progress always have to mean expansion? Is culture dependent on increasing space, numbers and activity? The final Salon in the IMCC series on Cultures of Capitalism at the Whitechapel debates our cultural and political obsessions with growth. Speakers include Sarah Chaplin, Stephen Escritt and Allan Stoekl.

Sarah Chaplin is an architect, academic and urbanist. Formerly head of architecture at Kingston University and a professor specialising in Japan working in the field of visual and spatial culture, she now divides her time between writing and consultancy, and is currently working on the placemaking strategy for Battersea Power Station.

Stephen Escritt is a Director at Counterculture Partners. He has worked at the British Museum and the Whitechapel Gallery, where he was Director of Strategic Development. He is the author of two books on late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century architecture and design, published by Phaidon Press. He has recently worked with Art on the Underground and Kent Architecture Centre.

Allan Stoekl is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Pennsylvania State University. Allan’s many publications include the books Politics, Writing, Mutilation: The Cases of Bataille, Blanchot, Roussel, Leiris and Ponge (University of Minnesota Press, 1985); Agonies of the Intellectual: Commitment, Subjectivity, and the Performative in the Twentieth-Century French Tradition (University of Nebraska Press, 1992); and Bataille’s Peak: Energy, Religion, and Postsustainability (University of Minnesota Press, 2007). Allan is currently working on a new book provisionally entitled Avatars of the Postsustainable City.

Book your ticket at: http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/shop/product/category_id/22/product_id/1538?session_id=13608477991e2790ead5092a4e07ee56485172feaf