Brian Larkin: The Political Aesthetics of Generators

Distinguished Carl Schlettwein Lecture followed by a reception

The Centre for African Studies invites you to its distinguished Carl Schlettwein Lecture followed by a reception. The lecture is part of the series Aesthetics from the Margins.

Like a living being, the generator ingests and expels. At one end of a generator, petrol pours in. At the other, electricity, smoke, fumes, and sound flood out. In Nigeria, generators emerged as a response to breakdowns in the electric grid but are now so broadly disseminated they have become formalized into a system of their own. Ubiquitous in all urban and rural areas, coming in all sizes, their sound, smell and presence is integral to what Nigeria is and how it functions. In this lecture Brian Larkin examines generators as aesthetic objects, drawing on the older idea of aisthesis as a felt experience. He examines how generators shape the technologized, ambient environment of urban Nigeria – how it is one feels, hears, or smells the world one lives in – and how that environment is part of the reshaping of Nigerian urban life.

Brian Larkin (Columbia University) is the Director of Graduate Studies and a Professor of Anthropology at Barnard College, Columbia University. He is also Co-Director of the Comparative Media Initiative at the same university and co-founder of the University Seminar on Media Theory and History. His research focuses on the ethnography and history of media in Nigeria, the introduction of media technologies and the religious, political, and cultural changes they bring about. He explores how media technologies comprise broader networked infrastructures that shape a whole range of actions from forms of political rule, to new urban spaces, to religious and cultural life. Larkin has published widely on issues of technology and breakdown, piracy and intellectual property, the global circulation of cultural forms, infrastructure and urban space, sound studies, and Nigerian film. He is the author of Signal and Noise: Media Infrastructure and Urban Culture in Nigeria (Duke University Press, 2008) and, with Lila Abu-Lughod and Faye Ginsburg, co-editor of Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain (University of California Press, 2002).

Download: Flyer Carl Schlettwein Lecture (pdf)

Lecture Series Aesthetics from the Margins:
The lecture seriesAesthetics from the Margins (course no. 52040-01, 3 CP) proposes historical and theoretical inquiries into questions of sensual perception and world-making. By considering different aesthetic forms, media and practices – among them photography, literature, language, and the performing arts – we will explore colonial and postcolonial ways of being in and making sense of ‘world(s)’, especially if these are articulated from a perspective of marginality.

Organizer: Lorena Rizzo & James Merron

All dates in this series:

27.09.2018 Erica Carter (King‘s College, London): White Bodies in Motion

11.10.2018 Christian Crouch (Bard College, New York): Queen Victoria‘s Captives

25.10.2018 Henri-Michel Yéré (University of Lausanne): If Language Could Speak

8.11.2018 Brian Larkin (Columbia University, New York): The Political Aesthetics of Generators

22.11.2018 Darren Newbury (University of Brighton): Visual Mobility & Cordiality in the Cold War

13.12.2018 Jane Taylor (UWC, Cape Town): Ne‘er So Much The Ape

Download: Flyer Aesthetics from the Margins (pdf)

Seminar: The seminar Aesthetics from the Margins (course no. 52043-01, 3 CP, Friday 9-12h) complements the lecture series and allows for intensive exchange with the invited speakers.

Contact: lorena.rizzo@clutterunibas.ch ; james.merron@clutterunibas.ch

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