RCA Public Lecture Series
Curator, 2020-
Bureaucratic Capture, 2025-2026 w/ Dubravka Sekulic
During periods of political turbulence and emancipatory potential, the interaction between spatial justice and bureaucracy is crucial but overlooked. Bureaucratic Capture brings policy-writers, legal scholars, municipal workers, activists and campaigners together to explore and develop planning from below.
Rather than referring to the enclosure and immobilisation of movements and horizons by paperwork and policy,we instead explore the ways in which bureaucracy itself can be captured and made to work for the many.
Our First event, Bureaucratic Maneuvres in the Dark, welcomed Liza Fior, founding partner of muf architecture/art and Professor of Architecture and Spatial Practice at UAL, to speak with Cllr Aydin Dikerdem, eho works in the Queenstown Ward, Battersea and Nine Elms area of Wandsworth, South West London. Aydin is a Cabinet Housing Member and the author of the borough’s Homes for Wandsworth Mission Statement.
Our second event, Legal Space and Social Struggle, welcomed author and barrister Nick Bano, who specialises in representing homeless people, residential occupiers, and destitute and migrant households. He is the author of ‘Against Landlords: How to Solve the Housing Crisis’ &‘A Practical Guide to the Public Sector Equality in Housing’ (2023).
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Reposession, 2021-2022 w/ Dubravka Sekulic
See here
Visual Identity w/ Testen Studio
We see possession as relating to oneself and one's place. It is both material and ethereal. It can be reclaimed and reoriented. In the spirit of social movements that seek to both take back and push forward,6 we refer to repossession as the struggle for an emancipated ownership: an object, state or practice of (re)produced belonging, felt as equally outward and inward, reciprocally individual and collective.
Repossession is a challenge to pr operty: it is permeable and responsive, contingent on belonging and unbelonging.
Over the course of the series we will reach into and out from the earth and the body; searching for ways to repossess and reimagine them.
We will begin by excavating the relationships between geological, decolonial, and architectural practices, before exploring corporeal acts and atmospheres, somatic limitations and horizons, and the embodiment and enactment of emancipated selves and spaces, where a form of repossession is paramount.
We will trace the lines that are drawn to oppress, extract, and , but we will also outline the alliances9 that can unsettle colonial logic.
With these discussions we seek a practice that can harness the moments and movements that both shape space and strengthen struggle in the search for repossession.
The series works to collect together an intentional community,11 situated in the affordances of now but oriented towards an other future. By mapping the emancipatory routes between ground and horizon, we want to get to the heart of the matter: to stretch out and open up where it meets, holds, and forms us; to foreground the ideas and artefacts that build memory, militancy, solidarity, imagination, and action otherwise.
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Curator, 2020-
Bureaucratic Capture, 2025-2026 w/ Dubravka Sekulic
During periods of political turbulence and emancipatory potential, the interaction between spatial justice and bureaucracy is crucial but overlooked. Bureaucratic Capture brings policy-writers, legal scholars, municipal workers, activists and campaigners together to explore and develop planning from below.
Rather than referring to the enclosure and immobilisation of movements and horizons by paperwork and policy,we instead explore the ways in which bureaucracy itself can be captured and made to work for the many.
Our First event, Bureaucratic Maneuvres in the Dark, welcomed Liza Fior, founding partner of muf architecture/art and Professor of Architecture and Spatial Practice at UAL, to speak with Cllr Aydin Dikerdem, eho works in the Queenstown Ward, Battersea and Nine Elms area of Wandsworth, South West London. Aydin is a Cabinet Housing Member and the author of the borough’s Homes for Wandsworth Mission Statement.
Our second event, Legal Space and Social Struggle, welcomed author and barrister Nick Bano, who specialises in representing homeless people, residential occupiers, and destitute and migrant households. He is the author of ‘Against Landlords: How to Solve the Housing Crisis’ &‘A Practical Guide to the Public Sector Equality in Housing’ (2023).
Reposession, 2021-2022 w/ Dubravka Sekulic
See here
Visual Identity w/ Testen Studio
We see possession as relating to oneself and one's place. It is both material and ethereal. It can be reclaimed and reoriented. In the spirit of social movements that seek to both take back and push forward,6 we refer to repossession as the struggle for an emancipated ownership: an object, state or practice of (re)produced belonging, felt as equally outward and inward, reciprocally individual and collective.
Repossession is a challenge to pr operty: it is permeable and responsive, contingent on belonging and unbelonging.
Over the course of the series we will reach into and out from the earth and the body; searching for ways to repossess and reimagine them.
We will begin by excavating the relationships between geological, decolonial, and architectural practices, before exploring corporeal acts and atmospheres, somatic limitations and horizons, and the embodiment and enactment of emancipated selves and spaces, where a form of repossession is paramount.
We will trace the lines that are drawn to oppress, extract, and , but we will also outline the alliances9 that can unsettle colonial logic.
With these discussions we seek a practice that can harness the moments and movements that both shape space and strengthen struggle in the search for repossession.
The series works to collect together an intentional community,11 situated in the affordances of now but oriented towards an other future. By mapping the emancipatory routes between ground and horizon, we want to get to the heart of the matter: to stretch out and open up where it meets, holds, and forms us; to foreground the ideas and artefacts that build memory, militancy, solidarity, imagination, and action otherwise.
Separation/Reparation, 2022-2023 w/ Thomas Aquilina
Visual Identity developed w/ Klimaite Klimaite
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Visual Identity developed w/ Klimaite Klimaite
Ascensions 2023-2024 w/ Thomas Aquilina
Visual Identity template: (RCA ALumni) Plan B
Post-Covid, really felt the need to re-energise the school on cultural terms. We wanted to connect students to their horizons and remind them of how sacred and generative the school can be – encouraging them to make the most of the time they have on-site and with each other, emphasising how physical
presence and social relationships play a crucial role in both practice and praxis.
So, we thought to draw together a number of inspirational alumni to talk about how they arrived, moved through and ascended the school, and how this informs their outlook, ambition and achievements today. Events were themed around issues relating to themes such as class, collectivity, the Biennale (Lesley Lokko’s 2023 edition showcased a record number of RCA alumni work) and advocacy.
We informalised the Lecture Series format and hosted it instead at our newly-opened (and hard-fought for by the SU) Artbar, where some of the best ideas and deepest connections have been fostered at the school, to create a more discursive atmosphere. Guests chose three images and three pieces of music to act as prompts for presentation and discussion, allowing us to talk, think, listen and generally just be together.
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Visual Identity template: (RCA ALumni) Plan B
Post-Covid, really felt the need to re-energise the school on cultural terms. We wanted to connect students to their horizons and remind them of how sacred and generative the school can be – encouraging them to make the most of the time they have on-site and with each other, emphasising how physical
presence and social relationships play a crucial role in both practice and praxis.
So, we thought to draw together a number of inspirational alumni to talk about how they arrived, moved through and ascended the school, and how this informs their outlook, ambition and achievements today. Events were themed around issues relating to themes such as class, collectivity, the Biennale (Lesley Lokko’s 2023 edition showcased a record number of RCA alumni work) and advocacy.
We informalised the Lecture Series format and hosted it instead at our newly-opened (and hard-fought for by the SU) Artbar, where some of the best ideas and deepest connections have been fostered at the school, to create a more discursive atmosphere. Guests chose three images and three pieces of music to act as prompts for presentation and discussion, allowing us to talk, think, listen and generally just be together.
