Selected Recent and Forthcoming Presentations
"Re-Colonial Russia: Eco Scaping Putin's Paradise, from Authoritarian Freedom to Culture Z". Opening keynote at the Authoritarian Urbanism conference, Bauhaus University, Weimar, 9 November, 2023.
"Amputated Architectures of Post-Socialist Friendship". Invited talk at the Towards a Multifaceted History of Architecture and Internationalism workshop, Exeter University, 17 November, 2023.
"Post-Soviet/De-Colonial: Architectural Constellations". Joint invited lecture with Sofia Dyak at Yale University School of Architecture/MacMillan Center. Respondents: Craig Buckley, Keller Easterling, Marta Kuzma. November 30, 2022.
“Culture Z: Metamodernist fascism, Soviet revivalism and the recolonial architecture of Putin’s Russia”. Invited talk at the Architectures of Future Presence conference, Tbilisi, 22 October 2022.
“Futures of friendship: Decolonizing and demasculining (br)otherhood”. Invited talk at the Tbilisi Architecture Biennial, 9 October 2022.
“Towards a trans-socialist city: Imaginining Decolonial, Depatriarchalised Urban Futures”. Keynote talk at the Tender City convention, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, 2 October 2022.
“Trans-Socialist Heritage”. Invited keynote address at the annual summer school of the Société Internationale d´Ethnologie et de Folklore, Warsaw, 27 June 2022.
“Decolonising Socialist Realism”. Invited talk at the Architecture, patrimoine et politique au XXe siècle forum, Institut Français, Sofia, 9 June 2022.
“Corporeal Dismemberments of Socialist Realism”. Invited talk at the Collective Body Dismembered symposium, National Gallery of Art, Copenhagen, 30 May 2022.
“Is Socialist Realism (De-)Colonial: The Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw, 1952-2022”. Invited talk at the Markers of Ideology roundtable at the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung Belarus/University of Vilnius, 24 May 2022.
“Locating Trans-Socialism: Communism, Putinism and Human Nature”. Invited talk at the Confrontation Symposium at the Institute of Advanced Studies, UCL, 18 May 2022.
“From Culture Tree to Culture Z”. Invited keynote talk at the (De)Colonial Geographies of Power symposium, Royal University of Technology, Stockholm, 13 May 2022.
“Solidarity after 24.2.2022”. Invited talk at “Bodies Perform Resistance: Protest and Performance in Russia and East Europe Today” symposium, Yale University, 5 May 2022.
“The Aesthetics of Power”. Invited talk at Pushkin House London, in conversation with Evgeny Dobrenko and Katherine Zubovich, 29 September 2021.
“Falshfasad: Disavowed Infrastructure and Everyday Mate-realism in Wild Capitalist Moscow”. Invited lecture at the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia, New York University, 17 September 2021.
“Re-Centring the City”. Invited talk and book launch at the European Studies Council, Program in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, Yale University, 26 March 2021.
“The Politics of Plitka in the (Post-)Soviet City”. Invited inaugural lecture for the Urban Futures Chevening Network, 10 March 2021.
“DAU and Determinism”. Invited talk at the School of Cultural Studies, Higher School of Economics, Moscow, February 2021 (postponed).
“Potemkin Parliamentarism and the Project to Re-Design the Russian State Duma”. Invited paper, delivered with Dr Ben Noble, at the Parliament Buildings conference, UCL Bartlett School of Architecture, 18 February 2021.
"Mutations of Publicness: The Avant-Garde Through the Eyes of the 21st Century." Invited lecture at the Yeltsin Centre, Ekaterinburg, 27 October 2020.
"Architectural 'resistance' in Poland 1945-2020". Invited lecture at the London Festival of Architecture, 29 June 2020.
“The Palace Complex”. Invited book talk at Department of Anthropology, The University of Chicago, 18 February 2020. Respondents: Meghanne Barker and Magdalena Moskalewicz.
“Reconstructing Material Culture in the Post-Socialist City”. Invited keynote lecture at the All-Russian Models of Urban Identity Conference, Kazan, Tatarstan, 7-9 February 2020.
“Blagoustroistvo: Urban Infrastructure and the Construction of Welfare in Post-Soviet Moscow, 1917-2019”. Invited paper (presented with Markus Lahteenmäkki) at Welfare State Workshop, St Catherine’s College, University of Oxford, 24 January 2020.
“Politics & Architecture: Palaces, Paradises and Purgatories”. Masterclass at Pushkin House, 8 December 2019.
“Wild Capitalism in the City”. Invited CAMCREES Seminar at the Department of Slavic Studies, University of Cambridge, 29 October 2019.
'The Rise of the Public Self(ie): "Fake Architecture" and Sensory Utopia in Putin's Paradise'. Invited seminar in UCL Anthropology Department Material, Digital and Visual Culture Series, 7th October 2019.
'The Political Aesthetics of the Architectural Gift'. Invited talk at the Sterischer Herbst Festival, Graz, 26th September 2019.
'The Age of Culture T(h)ree, or Global Sobyaninism: Aesthetics, Ecology, Bezobrazie and Blagoustroistvo.' Invited lecture at New Holland, St Petersburg, 16th May 2019.
Keynote lecture at Annual Russian Folklore Studies Association Conference, Pereslavl-Zalessky, 2nd May 2019.
'The Palace Complex'. Invited book talks at Columbia University, Princeton University, The New School and the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal. 5th-20th April 2019 (dates TBC).
'Palaces for the People'. Invited talk following film screening at BOZAR, Brussels, 17th February 2019.
'The Park of Culture Tree: The Style, Shape and Political Economology of Re-Colonial Russia'. Keynote lecture at the Decolonising the Imagination workshop, Higher School of Economics, Moscow, 4th February 2019.
'Ethnographic Conceptualism in Warsaw and Moscow'. Invited talk at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 24 January 2019.
'The Social Condenser 1917-2017'. Invited talk delivered at Technische Universität München, 17 December 2018.
'Everything Was Infrastructure, Until It Became Superstructure.' Talk delivered at the the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies Convention, Boston, 8th December 2018.
'Re-Privatizing the Socialist City: Informality, Hierarchy, Violence'. Keynote lecture delivered at the First Tbilisi Architecture Biennale, 29th October 2018.
'From Zaryadyology to Permology'. Invited public lecture delivered at the "Genius Loci" Festival in Perm, 26th August 2018.
'From Zaryadyology to Ekatology'. Invited public lecture delivered at the Yeltsin Center, Ekaterinburg, 24th August 2018.
'The Path to Culture T(h)ree: From Palatial Communism to Paradisiacal Putinist Populism'
Paper delivered at the Social Aesthetics of Inequality symposium, Higher School of Economics, Moscow, 10 May 2018.
'Undead Urban Forms: Zombie-, Mutant- and Still-Socialism in Warsaw and Moscow'.
Invited public lecture at the Mohyla Academy Kiev, 19th April 2018.
'Zaryadyology: Infrastructure, Superstructure and Performance in ‘Putin’s Paradise’.' Paper at the Soyuz Symposium, Yale University, March 2018.
'Warsaw's Mounting Obsession with its Stalinist Skyscraper (and Other Seditious Syndromes of Still-Socialism in Capitalist Cities.' Invited public lecture at The New School/Parson School of Design, 28 February 2018.
'The House of Socialism. Or, People Make Buildings (and Buildings Make People), But Not Under Conditions of Their Own Choosing.' Keynote Lecture of the 'Building Lives' Winter School, Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn, 18 January 2018.
'The Still-Socialist Palace and The War Against Post-Communism'. Lecture in Warsaw, 11 December 2017, on invitation of Fundacja Równanie.
'Palaceology versus Post-Luzhkovology:
Ethnographic Conceptualism in Urban Research, from Warsaw to Moscow'. Lecture at the Higher School of Economics, 20 September 2017.
‘The Still-Socialist City’.
Paper delivered at ‘The Ins and Outs of Socialism’, a conference organised by the Second World Urbanity Network at the Centre for Urban History, Lviv, Ukraine, 25 August 2017.
‘The Social Condenser: Keyword’.
‘Keywords: At the Boundary of Ethnography and Art’. Conference at the Institute of Polish Culture and Department of Social Anthropology, University of Warsaw, 22 June 2017 (invited lecture).
‘The Social Condenser: Mutations and Wanderings of a Communist Architecture Horizon’.
Lecture at the New Academy Architecture Summer Program, The Culture Sauna, Helsinki, 19 June 2017 (invited lecture).
‘Palaceology in Warsaw and Minsk’.
Discussion seminar at the Department for Visual Culture, Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw.
April 3 2017 (invited lecture).
‘A Still-Socialist Palace in a Leftless Country’.
Lecture and student consultations at the Parsons School of Design, New York/School of Form, Poznań MA Design Studies Course ‘The Palace of Culture: An Exploration in Design, Humanities and Social Science’. Warsaw, March 18-25 2017.
‘The Palace Complex: Stalinist Legacies in Warsaw’
Lecture at the Sixth Minsk Architectural Forum. Minsk University of Technology, March 5-15 2017 (invited lecture and seminar series)
'Late Putinist Hellenism? Zombie Monumentality, from Palmyra to Moscow.'
Situating Architecture Lecture Series, The Bartlett School of Architecture, 31 October 2016.
‘Re-Activating the “Public Spirit”: Communist Afterlives in Warsaw.’
114th Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Denver, November 2015.
'Marxist Morphologies: A Critique of Flat Infrastructures, Fuzzy Property and Complexified Cities'.
UCL Material, Digital and Visual Culture Seminar, Monday 12th October 2015.
"The Art of Dissident Domesticity: Incarceration, Sovereignty, Information".
With Khadija Von Zinnenburg Carroll and Jesse Weaver Shipley.
UCL FRINGE Centre Launch Event, 6th October 2015.
"Kompleks Pałacu". Book launch. Rudnev Room, Palace of Culture, 28th July 2015.
‘The Political Morphology of Utopia’
12th Congress of the International Society for Ethnology and Folklore, University of Zagreb, June 2015.
‘"A Squadron of Lunatics, Storming the Heavens!"
The Jewish Architects of Socialist Warsaw’
Institute for Jewish Studies, University College London, June 2015 (invited paper)
‘Letters to a Stalinist Social Condenser’
SSEES, UCL, May 2015.
‘Dissident Domesticity: Ethnographic Conceptualism, House Arrest, Diplomatic Asylum’ Centre for Studies of the Home, Institute for Historical Research, University of London, February 2015 (invited seminar)
‘Authoritarian Urbanism: Geometrically Effective, Politically Defective?’
113th meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Washington DC, December 2014
‘Ethnographic Conceptualism in the City’
Cities Methodologies, UCL Urban Lab, October 2014 (with Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll and Jesse Weaver Shipley)
‘The Prison House: Domesticity Under Arrest’
13th EASA Biennial Conference, Tallinn University, August 2014.
‘Movements Between Art and Anthropology: Conceptual Art and Ethnographic Inquiry’ (with Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll)
CRASSH (Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Cambridge), invited seminar,
‘Testing the Strength of the Last Instance: Political Economy, Anthropology, Architecture’
17th IUAES World Congress, Manchester University, August 2013
‘Palaceology, or Palace-as-Methodology: Ethnographic Conceptualism, Total Urbanism and a Stalinist Skyscraper in Warsaw’
Understanding Urban Conflicts, workshop at University of Paris-1 Pantheon- Sorbonne, July 2013 (invited paper)
‘A Stalinist Social Condenser in a Capitalist City’
Illusions Killed by Life: Afterlives of Soviet Constructivism, Princeton University, May 2013
Recent and Forthcoming Events Organised
PPV (Perverting the Power Vertical: Politics and Aesthetics in the Global East). A series of seminars and events supported by the SSEES Fringe Centre, UCL Institute for Advanced Studies Octagon Fund, the Centre for Study of Contemporary Art. Held at UCL and other venues in London. Co-convened with Masha Mileeva and Denis Maskimov/Avenir Institute. Ongoing since 2018. https://www.ppv.life/
"Translational Histories of Architecture." A London Symposium in Honour of Jean-Louis Cohen. Institute for Advanced Studies, UCL, 27 November, 2023. Co-organised with Markus Lahteenmakki.
"Radical Reconstruction: Re-Rooting the Ukrainian Commons." Discussion Programme at the 8th Construction Festival, Dnipro Centre of Contemporary Culture, Ukraine, 10-12 November, 2023. Co-curated with Katya Rusetska.
“Socialist Realisms in the World (of Russian Imperialism).” Roundtable at the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies Convention, Boston, 10 November 2022. With Maria Mileeva and Christina Kiaer.
“Trans-Socialist Futures”. A symposium at the Tbilisi Biennale of Architecture. Co-convened with Elena Markus and Tinatin Gurgenidze. 9 October 2022.
“The Reconstruction of Ukraine: Ruination / Representation / Solidarity”.
A UCL FRINGE Centre/Yale/Lviv Centre for Urban History Conference. Co-convened with Sofia Dyak, Marta Kuzma, Daria Anosova and Dan Roche. 9-11 September 2022.
“Decolonising Russia’s War on Ukraine”. A PPV/Reference Point symposium. Co-convened with Vlad Vazheyevskyy, Anna Engelhardt and Anna Shestakova. 26 March 2022.
Birzhastation, piraMMMida's pavilion at the 2nd Tbilisi Biennial of Architecture, October-Novemer 2020.
PiraMMMida.life, an online exhibition curated by PPV in collaboration with the Bartlett School of Architecture, the UCL European Institute and David Roberts, July-November 2020.
Everything Was Infrastructure, Until It Became Superstructure. Panel at the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies Convention, Boston, November 2018. With Cassandra Hartblay.
The Social Condenser Now! Moscow special issue launch at ZIL Workers' Club. With Jane Rendell, November 2018.
Zaryadyology: A series of events considering Zaryadye Park as a window onto the political-aesthetics of post-Luzhkov era Moscow.
November 2017-, Moscow.
State of the Art: The Anthropology of Art and The Anthropology of the State. Panel at the RAI Conference "Art, Materiality and Representation". British Museum, June 2018. Co-organised with Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov.
‘A Century of Revolution in Architecture and Urbanism, 1917-2017’.
Panel discussion at the Calvert 22 Foundation, London, 14th June. Speakers: Nina Power, Eszter Steierhoffer, Jane Rendell, Owen Hatherley, Victor Buchli and Andrew Willimott.
‘Moscow Makeover: Architecture and Power in Putin’s Russia’.
Lecture Series at Pushkin House, London, April-July 2017. Speakers include Vladimir Paperny and Yuri Luzhkov.
'Towards a Critical (East European) Area Studies'.
Roundtable at the Association of Slavonic, East European and Eurasian Studies Convention, Washington DC, November 19 2016.
The Centre Cannot Hold? Neo-Monumentality, Neo-Modernism and Other Zombie Urban Utopias’.
Two-day conference at UCL SSEES, March 2016. Founding event of the FRINGE Centre for the Study of Social and Cultural Complexity.
‘Eastern Europe Without Borders: Area Studies in the 21st Century’
One-day workshop at UCL SSEES (with Wendy Bracewell), November 2015.
‘Re-Activating the Social Condenser: Architecture against Privation’.
One-day workshop at UCL SSEES and the Bartlett School of Architecture (with Jane Rendell), May 2015.
Podcast available here.
‘“The Center Cannot Hold?” Pivotal Spaces and Political Geometries in the Polycentric City.’
Panel at the 113th Meeting of the AAA, Washington DC, December, 2014 (with Jonathan Bach)
‘Inflexible Cities’: City Seminar at CRASSH (Cambridge Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities). Series of Seminars featuring invited speakers, 2011- 2012 (with Edward Saunders and Gruia Badescu)
‘Ethnographic Conceptualism’. Panel at the 110th Meeting of the AAA, Montreal, November 2011 (with Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov and Felix Ringel)