The series
Since its foundation in 2009, the philosophy/aesthetics publisher Zer0 Books has injected wit, wisdom, and energy into an otherwise moribund intellectual scene. Putting a stamp on the early 2010s, a series of provocative, ebullient texts (by writers such as Mark Fisher, Owen Hatherley, Nina Power, and Carl Neville) have bypassed a staid publishing industry to bring fresh, radical ideas to a popular readership.
While liberal Britain has become increasingly inured, lifestyle-obsessed, and forgiving of the excesses of neoliberalism, Zer0 has helped to reinstate an empowered critical avant-garde. The Zer0 model has provided a new blueprint for cultural and theoretical writing, one that exposes the hermeticism, careerism, and sheer sterility of much modern academic discourse.
The 2011-12 Zer0 Lecture Series at Oxford aims to provide a forum for the dissemination and debate of forthcoming or recently published Zer0 texts. Taken together, the six sessions represent a summary of the full range of cultural writing in the UK at the start of the new decade: from the philosophy of video games, to the failures of 19th century architecture; from the class politics of the band Pulp, to future possibilities in avant-garde music making; from the ethics of sexual exhibitionism to the shortcomings of the BBC and the Guardian newspaper.
Lectures will take place in Room 2 at the Taylorian Institute in weeks 2 and 6, at 5.30pm on Tuesday evenings, and will be followed by a Q&A session.
The provisional line-up is as follows:
Michaelmas Term
Tuesday 18th October (wk 2): Chris Bateman, author of Imaginary Games.
Tuesday 15th November (wk 6): Owen Hatherley, author of Uncommon.
Hilary Term
Tuesday 24th January (wk 2): Adam Harper, author of Infinite Music.
Tuesday 28th February (wk 7): Douglas Murphy, author of The Architecture of Failure.
Trinity Term
Tuesday 1st May (wk 2): Kate Gould, author of Exposing Phallacy (due to come out in 2012).
Tuesday 29th May (wk 6): Stephen Harper, author of Beyond the Left.
Further information about these texts can be found on the Zero Books website.
Karen Zouaoui and Alex Niven
Are these talks open to the general public? Thanks.
Absolutely! Next talk is tomorrow, 5.30pm at the Taylor Insitute, Oxford.
Is Stephen Harper’s lecture on course for the 29th of May, and are these still open to members of the public? Many thanks. John
Yes it’s still on and all are welcome to both the talk and the informal drink at the pub afterwards.