Lecture date: 2012-02-14
It’s Valentine’s Day. You’re all alone. No one to watch Love Actually with, for the 17th time. You’ll have to eat that dehydrated cupcake by yourself, after your microwave ‘meal For one’. You’re so very lonesome tonight. But, you know what? Sometimes loneliness is power not weakness.
Join Shumon Basar and Sam Jacob as they trawl through a hidden history of loneliness that includes Hugh Grant’s bitter face, Howard Hughes in the Desert Inn, Jesus Christ, North Korea, Edo-era Japan and French existentialists – as well as the conspiratorial evil commonly referred to as, ‘rom coms’. Plus some sad songs performed by Tamara Barnett-Herrin.
Tamara Barnett-Herrin is a London-based vocalist, songwriter and performer. She was the lead vocalist with the UK electronica act Freeform Five and has contributed vocal performances for various artists including Lindstrom, Mylo and Shinichi Osawa. Her new solo album, Born to Burn, is released in February by Bubbletease Communications. She has collaborated extensively with the Swiss artist Mai-Thu Perret at Migros Museum Zurich, Theatre de l’Usine in Geneva and the Performa Festival, New York.
Shumon Basar is a writer, editor, curator and director of the AA’s Cultural Programme as well as the live-magazine, Format. Translated By, the AA show he co-curated with Charles Arsene-Henry, has toured to CCA Kitakyushu, and goes to Salt, Istanbul in April. He is also directing Global Art Forum_6 at Mathaf, Doha and Art Dubai in March.
Sam Jacob is a director of London-based architecture office FAT, where he has been responsible for a range of projects spanning architecture, design and masterplanning. He is contributing
editor for Icon, columnist for Art Review and contributes to many other publications. He teaches at the AA and is Professor of Architecture at UIC.
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