21 August 2024, 3:30pm
UKS, Keysers gate 1
Close Readings
Brian Larkin: The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure
UKS is pleased to introduce Close Readings, our new no-preparation-needed monthly reading group. This autumn, Close Readings will be developing a vocabulary of infrastructural critique. Together we will work to understand a theoretical framework for the multiple processes, institutions, technologies and networks that form the arena in which we live.
For this gathering we will focus on excerpts of anthropologist Brian Larkin’s ‘The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure’ from 2013. In the text, Larkin first defines infrastructures as material forms that allow for the possibility of exchange over space. They are physical networks through which goods, ideas and power (among other things) travel. He also examines dimensions of infrastructures that ‘release different meanings and structure politics in various ways: through the aesthetic and the sensorial, desire and promise’.
You can read the article in advance but do feel very welcome to come unprepared. This is a long but relatively lucid text, from which excerpts will be chosen for us to study together. All levels of engagement and questions are welcome. We want to create a safe and open environment for reflection and learning, even when the reading material is challenging.
Everyone is welcome to join!
Access
The event is spoken in English.
UKS is wheelchair accessible.
We do not have sign language interpretation. Please contact Maria Stephansen on m.stephansen@uks.no if you require sign language interpretation and we will do our best to accommodate your needs.