Guest lecture Esther Leslie

The latest guest lecture in the series connected to Re:place was given by Esther Leslie on 12. November. Leslie is Professor of Political Aesthetics at Birkbeck College, University of London, and is co-author of the blog Militant Esthetix. She has written several books and has contributed to numerous publications and journals. 

Her lecture was wide-ranging in scope and historical perspective, covering Baudelaire, Benjamin and Adorno, the aesthetics of urban culture in early modernism, constructivism and futurism, contemporary radical poetry that re-imagines texts of Baudelaire, and the current cultural landscape that she characterizes as a field of "liquid crystal". She raised many questions that are relevant to the discussions within the framework of Re:place and provided useful tools and terms for further investigation. We hope to have an ongoing exchange with Esther, and look forward to her forthcoming book on the liquid crystal condition.

Esther Leslie speaking, slide of Marinetti's futurist sound poetry

Text from Baudelaire's poetics of hashish

Tatlin's tower - a recurring ikon in our discussions of urbanity, art, imagination

"Instead of storming under a confused compulsion to the conquest of strange stars"

Re-generative poetry

From the middle ages to the 21st. century in one hour.