Protein LECTURE with Ruby Justice Thelot: Why Are There No New Aesthetics?

​Join us on Thursday 27th August at Ashley Saville to examine why contemporary culture so often feels as though it's stopped producing genuinely new aesthetics.

​The lecture will be led by Ruby Justice Thelot – artist, designer, researcher, and professor of design and media theory at NYU – and will assess the conditions under which new forms emerge, and the economic, technological, and cultural forces that prevent them from reaching the mainstream.

​Moving from the Beaux-Arts and Bauhaus to the Seagram Building, contemporary African architecture, Hollywood sequels, Pitchfork, video games, internet collage, experimental performance, fashion, and artificial intelligence, the lecture argues that aesthetic stagnation is not simply a failure of imagination. It is also the result of industrialisation, financial risk aversion, algorithmic recommendation, and the growing weight of the cultural archive.

​For a taste of what you can expect, read the Aesthetic Stagnation SEED on Protein.XYZ.

​You'll also have the opportunity for a private view of the current exhibition at Ashley Saville: La Belle et La Bête. The exhibition takes its title from Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve’s fairytale of the same name; a story that resists simple binaries of good and evil. Desire and abjection, duty and transgression, ideals and outsiders are not fundamental oppositions; rather, they are intricately imbricated aspects of life and love. Five artists have been invited to respond to this broad line of inquiry however they wish. Artists include: Erika Trotzig, Tess Tomassini, Jason Shulman, Simon Periton and Chantal Goulder.

​Doors: 6.30pm
Lecture: 7 – 8pm
Discussion & Private View: 8 - 9pm
Address: Ashley Saville, First Floor, 193 Fleet St, London EC4A 2AH. Please note, there is no lift.

Space is limited so please ensure you RSVP, and let us know if you can no longer attend.