Events


Verdurin is a space for serious, engaged, and occasionally difficult conversations on vital aspects of today’s culture. We are committed to free expression and welcome diverse views. Our events will nurture debate without insisting that it leads to shallow agreement.

Our events include screenings, lectures, and reading groups on topics such as conspiracy theory and non-contemporary art history, as well as artistic interventions.

  • Iconoclasm

    Nina Power
    Iconoclasm

    6 August 2024  – 27 August 2024

    This four-part course will examine the question of images, their effect on us and what use we make of them.

  • What was Aesthetics?

    Jacob Koster
    What was Aesthetics?

    29 May 2024  – 31 July 2024

    Long considered a moribund discipline, aesthetics has made a surprise comeback. In its current form, however, aesthetics has little to do with the Enlightenment notions on which it was originally based. This seminar led by Jacob Koster asks what aesthetics was before it was subjected to a radical critique since the mid-19th century.

  • Cinema Cruelty

    Cinema Cruelty

    Fortnightly

    A screening series exploring moral and social questions and examining cruelty, suffering, and evil in filmic artefacts chosen by members.

Past events

  • What We May Also Do by Oliver Bennett

    Oliver Bennet
    What We May Also Do

    2 July 2024  – 3 July 2024

    A reading of a new play by Oliver Bennett exploring ideas of transference and authoritarianism, specifically written to accompany Anna Sebastian’s exhibition with which it shares its title.

  • Beyond Left and Right?

    Beyond Left and Right?

    20 July 2024

    Does the marriage of economic progressivism with social conservatism signal a politics beyond Left and Right?

  • The New Normal

    Café Américain
    The New Normal

    21 June 2024

    How can we confront the post-Covid onset of the totalitarian New Normal? Café American editors and contributors Elana Lange, George Hoare, Daniel Hadas, and Chris Bateman discuss censorship and free speech, collectivist ideology, and societal vulnerability.

  • The Psychoanalyst and The Artist

    Jamieson Webster
    The Psychoanalyst and The Artist

    12 June 2024

    New York psychoanalyst and author Jamieson Webster explores the relationship of art and psychoanalysis, with the artist’s studio and the analyst’s couch as sites of convergence.

  • Theory Underground: Tough on anti-intellectualism, tough on the causes of anti-intellectualism

    Theory Underground
    Tough on anti-intellectualism, tough on the causes of anti-intellectualism

    24 May 2024

    American anti-intellectualism is rampant and spreading. Theory Underground’s European tour brings a cast of “American Idiots” to London as unofficial counter-ambassadors of this movement.  

  • Envy/Desire and Josō

    Envy/Desire and Jōso

    23 February 2024

    A screening of Josō by David Panos and Sharon Kinsella and Envy/Desire by Aimee Armstrong, with a discussion led by Nina Power.

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