Lecture by Federico López Silvestre

While the “progressive” sociology and urban planning of the early 1990s still looked kindly on the “generic city”, today nobody finds inspiration in any Western city. The logic of standardization has fascinated many of the most creative people. However, against the perfect symmetry of horror preached by the heirs of Ernst Neufert or Galton’s Biometrika (e.g., the promoters of New Urbanism), a compensatory process can be discerned. To judge by the shapeless peculiarities of the old “ethnographic surrealism” (Bataille) or the satanic laughter of the most recent American narrative (David Foster Wallace), one gets the impression that literature and art have for decades been perceiving the neurotic processes of urban objectification and proposing some territories outside them.

Federico L. Silvestre is Professor of Art History and Aesthetics at the Santiago de Compostela University (USC). He has published, among others, the following books: El paisaje virtual (2004), Os límites da paisaxe (2008), A emerxencia da paisaxe (2009), Micrologías o historia breve de artes mínimas (2012) and Los pájaros y el fantasma (2013). He co-directs the collection ‘Paisaje y teoría’ from Biblioteca Nueva and 'Vita aesthetica' by Díaz & Pons Publishers (both from Madrid). He co-directed the ‘Master of Art,  Museology and Contemporary Criticism’ by the USC (2007-2012) and has attended research residencies and seminars in Europe, America and Oceania.

14th May 2015. 7 p.m.
Exhibitions Hall, Fabra i Coats – Centre d’Art Contemporani