lecture → jan 27 '23
School's Out! #30 With Robert Bevan
Independent School for the City - Delftsestraat 33 - 3rd FloorFor the first School's Out! of 2023, the Independent School for the City, has invited journalist, author and heritage consultant Robert Bevan, to talk about his latest book "Monumental Lies - Culture Wars and the Truth about the Past" on how statues, heritage and cities have become the battleground for the culture wars. Next to this talk, you can expect drinks, bites and a short movie handpicked by AFFR curator Jord den Hollander. Doors open at 18:00, lecture starts at 19:00. Tickets available for 5 euro.
The past is weaponised in culture wars and cynically edited by those who wish to impose their ideology upon the physical spaces around us. Holocaust deniers use details of the ruins of the gas chambers Auschwitz to promote their lies: ‘No Holes; No Holocaust’. Yet long-standing concepts such as ‘authenticity’ in heritage are undermined and trivialised by gatekeepers such as UNESCO. At the same, time, opposition to this manipulation is being undermined by cultural ideas that prioritise memory and impressions over history and facts.
In Monumental Lies, Robert Bevan argues that monuments, architecture and cities are material evidence of history. They are the physical trace of past events, of previous ways of thinking and of politics, economics and values that percolate through to today. When our cities are reshaped as fantasies about the past, when monuments tell lies about who deserves honour or are destroyed and the struggle for justice forgotten, the historical record is being manipulated. When decisions are based on misinformed assumptions about how the built environment influences our behaviour or we are told, falsely, that certain architectural styles are alien to our cities, or when space pretends to be public but is private, or that physical separation is natural, we are being manipulated. There is a growing threat to the material evidence of the truth about history.
Next to this talk, you can expect drinks, bites and a short movie handpicked by AFFR curator Jord den Hollander. Doors open at 18:00, lecture starts at 19:00. Tickets available for 5 euro.
In Monumental Lies, Robert Bevan argues that monuments, architecture and cities are material evidence of history. They are the physical trace of past events, of previous ways of thinking and of politics, economics and values that percolate through to today. When our cities are reshaped as fantasies about the past, when monuments tell lies about who deserves honour or are destroyed and the struggle for justice forgotten, the historical record is being manipulated. When decisions are based on misinformed assumptions about how the built environment influences our behaviour or we are told, falsely, that certain architectural styles are alien to our cities, or when space pretends to be public but is private, or that physical separation is natural, we are being manipulated. There is a growing threat to the material evidence of the truth about history.
Next to this talk, you can expect drinks, bites and a short movie handpicked by AFFR curator Jord den Hollander. Doors open at 18:00, lecture starts at 19:00. Tickets available for 5 euro.