IKA HITZE Lectures

The Architecture of Injustice, and the Architecture of Justice

COVID-19 and its variants have arrived overwhelmingly in our lives as terrible afflictions and tragedies. Tragedy is, by its nature, often humanly preventable, and enters our lives as a message and a teaching. COVID-19 has shockingly exposed longstanding inequality, injustice, and toxic human and environmental degradation that are lethal to life on this planet.  We have 10 years to make major changes in the ways we are living. Of course, most of our institutions are resistant to change, and devastatingly slow to demonstrate real change. How do we, as artists, de-institutionalize our thinking and our actions to demonstrate meaningful, powerful, and liberating change in our lives and in the world?

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Peter Sellars has gained international renown for his groundbreaking and transformative interpretations of artistic masterpieces and for collaborative projects with an extraordinary range of creative artists. He has staged operas at the Dutch National Opera, English National Opera, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Opéra National de Paris and the Salzburg Festival among others.
Recent projects include a new production of Doctor Atomic at the Santa Fe Opera, a staging of Claude Vivier’s Kopernikus for Festival D’Automne (Paris), and a production of Mozart’s Idomeneo for the Salzburg Festival.  Late in 2020 Sellars conceived and directed “this body is so impermanent. . .,” a film created in response to the global pandemic inspired by text from the Vimalakirti Sutra.
Sellars has led several major arts festivals, including the 1990 and 1993 Los Angeles Festivals and the 2002 Adelaide Arts Festival. In 2006 he was Artistic Director of New Crowned Hope, a festival in Vienna for which he invited artists from diverse cultural backgrounds to create new work in the fields of music, theater, dance, film, the visual arts and architecture for the celebration of Mozart’s 250th birth anniversary. He served as the Music Director of the 2016 Ojai Music Festival.
He is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures at UCLA, a resident curator of the Telluride Film Festival, and was a Mentor for the Rolex Arts Initiative. Sellars is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, the Erasmus Prize for contributions to European culture, the Gish Prize, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been awarded the prestigious Polar Music Prize and been named Artist of the Year by Musical America.

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IKA HITZE LECTURES

HITZE [heat] as a property of bodies, spaces and regions has shaped and continues to shape our thinking about architecture and cities. The lecture series, part of IKA’s 2019/2020 special programme HITZE TAKES COMMAND, examines the spatial culture of temperature, and its broader social and political implications, through the eyes of a number of contemporary thinkers. The historians, artists, scientists and architects assembled in this lecture series will explore the topic of HITZE in dimensions ranging from the soup pot to the troposphere.

Who can think of the future today without consideration of HITZE? Every exceptionally warm day is imagined as portending future disaster, while a sudden cold day provides hope that the ravages of climate change might be mitigated. Our experience of HITZE is overburdened with dread and yet, HITZE is also a form of pleasure – integral to sensations of taste, comfort and sexuality. We hope to discover and understand more about the realm of HITZE in explorations of fields that will shape the future of architecture and urbanism.

The lecture series is organised and curated by Hannes Stiefel.

12 May 2021

Brian Cody
Head of the Institute of Buildings and Energy, Graz University of Technology
Form follows Energy

19 May 2021

Claudia Bosse
Choreographer and Director, theatercombinat, Vienna
HEAT and ORGAN reading – an assemblage of texts, thoughts and acts

27 May 2021

Peter Sellars
Distinguished Professor, UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance
The Architecture of Injustice, and the Architecture of Justice

The HITZE TAKES COMMAND project 2019/2020 is generously supported by IMMOBILIEN PRIVATSTIFTUNG.

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Information concerning the Lecture Format: Please notice that the lecture will be recorded. When entering the meeting, you will be prompted to consent. In order to have a pleasant experience for all viewers, please keep your video turned off and your microphone muted at all times. Refrain from using the general chat during the lecture as it might disturb the person talking. It is advised to hide all participants without video, therefore go to the ^-sign next to the “start/stop video” button and in the video-settings tab enable “hide non-video-participants”. After the presentation there will be the possibility to ask questions via the chat or in person. If you want to enter the discussion please raise your hand digitally by pressing the blue icon-hand in the participants-panel. The questioners are ordered chronologically and the moderation will then ask you to “unmute audio/show video“ and join the discussion. Thank you!