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'Soft Scoop'

In the hard-nosed realm of international politics, ‘soft’ power is often referred to as the ability to co-opt rather than coerce, shaping preferences through appeal and attraction, rather than force. In 2010, the media company Monocle combined a range of statistical metrics to measure the soft power of 26 countries, using approximately 50 factors including the number of language schools, Olympic medals, the quality of architecture and business brands. Monocle’s Quality of Life Index has grown into an annual rundown of the top places to live in the world, dominated (predictably) by the global North, with a few exceptions like Sydney, Melbourne, and Auckland.Ìý

International exhibitions like the Venice Biennale are powerful ways to shape cultural capital and opinion. The Laboratory of the Future, the 18th International Architecture Exhibition, which opened in May 2023 tried to address hard-edged concerns such as decolonisation and decarbonisation within ‘soft’ power frameworks of narrative, aesthetics, and atmosphere, positioning imagination and creative enquiry as the most powerful tools of liberation. In this hour-long lecture, the exhibition curator, Prof Lesley Lokko, explores whether ‘soft’ is a useful or effective strategy for confronting the extremes of social, racial, and environmental inequity that characterise our times?Ìý

Lecture: G6 LT,Ìý31-34 Gordon Square (18:00-19:30)
Reception: North Cloisters (19:30-20:30)

Image credit:ÌýAlix McIntosh

Previous speakers include:

• 2023 Anne Anlin Cheng:Ìý'Strange Life: Apparitions of the Yellow Woman'
• 2022ÌýJaÅ› Elsner: "Presence, Absence and the Problems of Comparison: Archaeological Art History from Buddhism to Byzantium"Ìý
• 2021 Griselda Pollock: 'Monroe’s Mark: Why is a feminist art historian writing about a screen idol?'Ìý
• 2019 Martha Roslen: 'Representation, Dispossession, and the Conquest of Space: An Artist’s Talk'
• 2018 Isaac Julien: 'Choreographing Capital'
• 2017 Professor Caroline Walker Bynum: 'Holy Beds and Holt Families'
• 2015 Professor Beatriz Colomina (Princeton University): 'X-Ray Architecture'
• 2013 Professor Kaja Silverman: 'Unstoppable Development'
• 2012 Professor Susan Buck-Morss (Cornell University): 'Seeing Global'
• 2011 Professor TJ Clark (Visiting Professor, University of York): 'Do Landscapes have Identities?'
• 2010ÌýProfessor Homi Bhabha (Harvard University): 'The Humanities and the Anxiety of Violence'
• 2009 Professor Jacqueline Lichtenstein (Université Paris-Sorbonne Paris IV): 'The Philosopher and the Art Historian: An Impossible Dialogue'
• 2008ÌýProfessor Molly Nesbit (Vassar): 'Light in Buffalo; Michel Foucault Lectures on Manet at the Albright-Knox, April 8, 1970'
• 2007ÌýOkwui Enwezor (Curator): 'Incarcerated Life: Contemporary Art and the Security State'
• 2006ÌýProfessor Anne Wagner (University of California Berkeley): 'Nauman's Body of Sculpture'
• 2005ÌýWilliam Kentridge (Artist): 'Reading Shadows: The Pleasures of Self-Deception'