Royal Academy Of Arts

In the final lecture of the series, Farshid Moussavi discusses architecture’s function as an agent in shaping everyday life. For Moussavi, architecture “produces platforms for the way people engage with uses of buildings” – an idea which she has explored through practice, education and research. A co-founder of Foreign Office Architects, which won international attention with the Yokohama Ferry Terminal, Moussavi established her own practice in 2011, which has since completed the acclaimed Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art in Ohio. Moussavi is Professor in Practice of Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and has published a number of books deriving from her research and teaching. Image caption: Farshid Moussavi RA © Dan Stevens

Spaces of freedom are typically seen as synonymous with public space, where freedom of assembly and expression are inherent rights. Increasingly, though, public space, especially in cities, is being eroded by private, often commercially driven forces. At the same time, we have seen the rise of the digital realm heralded as a new free and democratic space for self-expression and debate. This, however, is also under attack through both corporate and state-sponsored surveillance and data collection. While services on the Internet are “free” to use, the business models that sustain them depend on the collecting and commercialisation of our every digital interaction. Image caption: Granary Square, Kings Cross © Monica Wells/Alamy

In this podcast, Reiner de Graaf reflects on architecture’s different roles in today’s globalised world. An architect, academic and writer, de Graaf is a partner of OMA and director of AMO, the practice’s think tank and research studio based in Rotterdam. AMO’s work extends beyond architecture to encompass media, politics, sociology, renewable energy, technology, fashion, curating, publishing, and graphic design. In addition to his work for AMO, De Graaf is responsible for a number of the OMA’s building and master-planning projects in Europe, Russia, and the Middle East. In this lecture, de Graaf considers architecture’s social, economic and political role in today’s globalised world. Image caption: Reinier de Graaf © Ekaterina Izmestieva/ Strelka Institute

In this podcast, our expert panel consider what architecture’s responsibilities should be to the public good and whether it is time for architects to adopt a new code of ethics. Today with architecture in thrall to private interests to a greater degree than perhaps ever before, it is time to reassess architects’ responsibilities beyond those to the client, and to the broader public good. Do architecture and architects require a new code of ethics? If so, what should be the parameters and who should decide them? Speakers include Jane Hall, founding member of Turner prize-winning Assemble and Christine Murray, editor of Architectural Review (chair). Image caption: Tower construction © Artur Bogacki/Alamy

Architect and theorist, Patrik Schumacher, considers the various parameters for architectural practice today. One of architecture’s foremost designers and polemicists, Schumacher is a director of Zaha Hadid Architects, which he joined in 1988, and is involved in all the practice’s projects, playing an active role in each phase of design development. He has taught at architecture schools across the world and has been co-director of the Design Research Laboratory at the Architectural Association since 1996. His writings have frequently appeared in print and across the media. In this lecture, Schumacher reflects on the range of issues and agendas that “burden” architecture in the twenty-first century. Image caption: Patrik Schumacher / Courtesy Zaha Hadid Architects

The work of the German architect Jürgen Mayer H stands at the intersection of architecture, design and digital technology. His practice operates across scale and typology: from master-planning to buildings, product design to art. For Mayer, emerging media and materials allow a fundamental rethinking of how we understand space and the potential for new forms of human activity and communication. Mayer kicked off the season with a discussion of his work and its reflection on the potential for architecture to act as a conduit for freedom through participation and social interactivity. Image caption: Jürgen Mayer H © Joseph Wolfgang Ohlert

When Liotard travelled to London, his reputation was at its summit. This podcast, with curator William Hauptman, examines Liotard’s astonishing portrait work while there, his impact on the London art scene and his connections with the Royal Academy between 1773 and 1774.

In this podcast, Tate conservator Rosie Freemantle and conservation curator Jo Crook discuss the development of the medium of pastel in the 18th century.

In this podcast, curator MaryAnne Stevens gives an introduction to the work of the artist Jean-Etienne Liotard. Travelling across Europe to Constantinople, patronised by rulers, aristocrats and the professional middle class, Liotard was internationally acclaimed for his mastery of pastel and his unflinching observation of reality, which he brought to his portraits, genre scenes and exceptional trompe l’oeil compositions.

Architect Chris Wilkinson RA and painter Humphrey Ocean RA discuss what it is to draw, and why the process is central to their work.

Ai Weiwei has used and reused a wide range of materials throughout his career, including Han dynasty urns as well as modern porcelain sunflower seeds, and the columns of demolished Ming temples alongside pearls and plastics, marble and gilding. In this podcast, Craig Clunas, Professor of Art History at the University of Oxford, explores this materiality in the context of Chinese art of the past and present.

In this podcast, curator Philip Tinari and architects Daniel Rosbottom and Simon Hartmann explore Ai Weiwei’s architectural practice. Architecture is an important but perhaps lesser-known aspect of Ai Weiwei’s practice. Along with a huge number of buildings realised over a decade with his studio FAKE design and in collaboration with international architects, architectural thinking permeates his art, writing and curatorial practice.

In this discussion, artists Christian Marclay and Cornelia Parker RA – with historians Professor Dario Gamboni and Dr Ros Holmes – discuss the impact of the “readymade” and the destructive process in art, as seen in the work of Ai Weiwei. Many of the strategies that Ai Weiwei employs as an artist can be easily aligned within the legacy of iconoclasm and the notion of art under attack. Works such as Dropping a Han-Dynasty Urn (pictured below), Han Dynasty Urn with Coca-Cola Logo and Kippe all possess an action or process by the artist which subverts the original visual representation and meaning of an object.

In this introductory podcast, exhibition curator Adrian Locke explains how Ai Weiwei, since his return to China in 1993, uses his art, not just his words or cyberspace to comment on contemporary Chinese society today. Locke also explores the meanings and stories behind his materials and methodologies, including his use of found rebars (steel rods used to hold buildings upright) in the deeply moving installation Straight.

Will Self is the author of ten novels, five collections of shorter fiction, three novellas and five collections of non-fiction writing. His latest novel, Umbrella, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and was described by The Daily Telegraph as, “Self’s most ambitious novel to date”. He regularly appears on television and is a frequent contributor to publications including The Guardian, The New York Times and the London Review of Books. Self also writes columns for New Statesman, The Observer and The Times. In this podcast – in association with Pin Drop – Self reads his own short story, The Shore. Photo: Roy Matthews

Joseph Cornell is one of the most famous yet mystifying characters in modern American art. Cornell scholar Lynda Roscoe Hartigan explores what recent studies in creativity and cognition have contributed to understanding his distinctive constructions, collages and films.

Kentridge’s work has been exhibited widely throughout the world and appeared in this year’s Summer Exhibition at the RA, where the Small Weston Room was dedicated to a display of his ink drawings and prints of indigenous South African trees. In this podcast, the RA’s Artistic Director Tim Marlow talks to the recently elected Honorary Royal Academician about his diverse artistic practice, which encompasses films, drawings, theatre and opera productions.

Joseph Cornell has often been referred to as an ‘outsider’ but he was accepted into the art market as a partial Surrealist at a time when the art of the self-taught had no name or definition. If he had been defined as an outsider, would he have had difficulty being accepted into the canon of 20th century art history? How would this definition change our approach to the display, interpretation and market for his work? This panel discussion considers what the new spaces are for outsider art and what the responsibilities are for those involved in the interpretation, collection, curation and sale of these works within the context of today’s art world.

A short story reading by Graham Swift, the Booker Prize-winning author of ‘Waterland’ and ‘Last Orders'. In partnership with Pin Drop, a unique initiative that communicates the unforgettable power of storytelling in inspiring settings. Image caption: Graham Swift / Image courtesy Simon + Schuster

American assemblage artist Joseph Cornell (1903–1972) has been described as one of modern art’s best-kept secrets. In this podcast, join RA curator Sarah Lea to explore the life and work of this enigmatic artist, including a biographical overview, a discussion of Cornell’s working processes and a detailed look at the key collages, box constructions and films presented in the exhibition. The curator considers in particular Cornell’s interest in fields as diverse as natural history to ballet, which fed his long distance love affair with Europe, a place he visited only in his imagination.