LIAS Lecture: Art as a Battleground
19. Jan
LIAS warmly invites everybody interested to join us for a LIAS Lecture with renowned political theorist, curator, and writer Françoise Vergès. In “Art as a Battleground,” she explores the role that art plays in times of political and environmental crises.
Date: 19 January 2027, 6.30–8 p.m.
Place: Campus | Lecture Hall 3
Françoise Vergès, Paris | Susanne Leeb, LIAS Co-Director (introduction) | LIAS Fellow Maddalena Fragnito (moderation)
In these dark times, marked by neoliberal authoritarianism, imperialist war, genocide, and climate devastation, how can art become a battleground for liberation, abolition, and justice? How can we resist the use of art as a means of pacification and its capacity to obscure or erase asymmetries of power?
Françoise Vergès is a political theorist, curator, and writer. Her work addresses the racialised production of premature death, decolonial feminism, the limits of decolonising Western museums, climate catastrophe, and antiracist and anticapitalist politics centred on vital needs. She collaborates with artists and, since 2015, has curated public performances bringing together artists and activists. She is currently developing a film on anticolonial struggles in Réunion Island through her parents’ personal archives and her own. She is also an editorial consultant for choreographer Benjamin Millepied’s Paris Dance Project and serves on the scientific council of the Fondation pour la mémoire de l’esclavage.