Avuncular Architectures: Queer Futurity and Life Economies
Lecture by Tim Waterman

Zachęta – National Gallery of Art
entry included in ticket price, registration via form at bottom of page

In Sarah Ensor’s essay “Spinster Ecology: Rachel Carson, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Nonreproductive Futurity” (2012), the avuncular figure of the spinster figures a model of “queer ecocritical practice” and a “model of care that allows distance, indirection, and aloofness to persist and that transforms the vexed concept of ‘enoughness’ from a chastening limitation to a quietly affirmative state.” This talk explores how models of care involving a critical (or queer ecocritical) distance can provide a different frame of thinking for art and design, based in the idea of life economies and a life drive. Examples range from the 1950s new town of Harlow in Essex to Jacques Tati’s influential film Mon Oncle. The figures of the body and the other appear in this talk in ways that complement Prinz Gholam’s creative practice. 

The meeting will be held in English. The recorded material will be available with Polish subtitles.
Lecture translated simultaneously into Polish.

Leading: Ewa Majewska


Tim Waterman  Professor of Landscape Theory and Inter-Programme Collaboration Director at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. His research addresses imaginaries: moral, political, social, ecological, radical, and utopian. This forms the basis for explorations of power and democracy and their shaping of public space and public life; taste, manners, belief and ritual; and foodways in community and civic life and landscape. He is the author of The Landscape of Utopia: Writings on Everyday Life, Taste, Democracy, and Design and editor of Landscape Citizenships with Ed Wall and Jane Wolff, Landscape and Agency: Critical Essays with Ed Wall, and the Routledge Handbook of Landscape and Food with Joshua Zeunert.

Ewa Majewska – feminist philosopher and cultural studies scholar, project leader of Public against their will. The production of subjects in the archives of "Hiacynt Action".

Sign up form






Dziękujemy. Formularz został wysłany.
event accompanying the exhibition
  • 07.09 – 03.11.2024
    Prinz Gholam

    Prinz Gholam is the collaborative name of two artists, Wolfgang Prinz and Michel Gholam, who have been working together since 2001. Hailing from different cultural backgrounds — German (Prinz) and Lebanese (Gholam) — their art transcends national contexts. They draw inspiration from diverse cultures and eras, incorporating these elements freely into their work. Their creative practice encompasses performance pieces and choreographies staged in the presence of viewers or for the photographic or film camera, as well as large-scale drawings, stone sculptural objects, and distinctive masks, the latter influenced by the 2020 pandemic.

    Zachęta – National Gallery of ArtZachęta
Upcoming events
all
  • 22.02 (Sat) 12:15
    Saturday ArtWalk
    Guided tour in English
    Zachęta – National Gallery of ArtZachęta
  • 22.02 (Sat) 14:00
    Double Life. My film poster
    (in Polish)
    Zachęta | entrance from ul. Burschego (down the stairs)Zachęta | entrance from ul. Burschego (down the stairs)
  • 23.02 (Sun) 12:15
    Sunday guided tour
    (in Polish)
    Zachęta – National Gallery of ArtZachęta
  • 27.02 (Thu) 18:00
    A common space and two worlds. On the profession of a maid and the reality of her work in interwar Poland
    (in Polish)
    Zachęta Project RoomZPR
  • 28.02 (Fri) 18:00
    Luty is for Lynch
    Zachęta | entrance from ul. Burschego (down the stairs)Zachęta | entrance from ul. Burschego (down the stairs)
  • 01.03 (Sat) 13:00
    What does Prussian blue have to do with photography?
    (in Polish)
    Zachęta / workshop room (entrance through the main hall)Zachęta / workshop room (entrance through the main hall)
  • 04.03 (Tue) 18:30
    Repeat after Me II
    catalogue promotion (in Polish)
    Zachęta – National Gallery of ArtZachęta