Join us for an evening talk by writer, journalist and blogger Owen Hatherley who will take us from the municipal Modernism of Sean Edward’s exhibition Maelfa, to his very own brand of ‘Militant Modernism’.
In Militant Moderism, his first book, Hatherley's readings of modern design, film, pop and architecture attempt to reclaim a revolutionary modernism against its absorption into the heritage industry and the aesthetics of the luxury flat. Militant Modernism argues for a Modernism of everyday life, immersed in questions of socialism, sexual politics and technology.

Hatherley's most recent book, A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain, proposes that urban environments became the laboratories of the new enterprise economy under New Labour, suggesting that the resulting generic riverside apartment complexes, shiny new castles of culture and amorphous shopping centres are ultimately a transplant of America at its worst, producing “a vision of a future alienated, blankly consumerist, class-ridden."

Owen Hatherley was born in Southampton in 1981, and has lived in South East London for the last decade. He is a regular contributor to Blueprint, New Statesman, Socialist Worker, and The Wire and writes a monthly topical column on architecture in Building Design. He is on the editorial boards of Historical Materialism and Archinect, and is currently completing a PhD thesis at Birkbeck College on Americanism in the Weimar Republic and the USSR. Militant Modernism (2008) is published by Zero Books and A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain (2010) is published by Verso.

This event has been programmed in response to Spike Island's upcoming exhibition, Maelfa by artist Sean Edwards.

Tickets are £4 full, £2 concession (Spike Island studioholders, Spike Associates, students, over-60s and disabled people). Please reserve your place by calling 0117 9292266 or emailing admin@spikeisland.org.uk and pay on the door.