Writer's Talk: Owen Hatherley

About

Join us for an evening talk by writer, journalist and blogger Owen Hatherley, author of 'A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain', who will take us from the municipal Modernism of Sean Edward's exhibition Maelfa, to his very own brand of ‘Militant Modernism'. In Militant Moderism, his first book, Hatherley's readings of modern design, film, pop and architecture attempt to reclaim a revolutionary modernism against its absorption into the heritage industry and the aesthetics of the luxury flat. Militant Modernism argues for a Modernism of everyday life, immersed in questions of socialism, sexual politics and technology. Hatherley's most recent book, A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain, proposes that urban environments became the laboratories of the new enterprise economy under New Labour, suggesting that the resulting generic riverside apartment complexes, shiny new castles of culture and amorphous shopping centres are ultimately a transplant of America at its worst, producing “a vision of a future alienated, blankly consumerist, class-ridden.