In conjunction with the exhibition Adjacent Realities, London based artist and Reader in Fine Art at the Royal College of Art Jasper Joseph-Lester gave a special lecture at the ACF. His work draws from the fields of architecture, design, urban studies, human geography, cinema and media studies, philosophy and spatial theory to explore the role that images play in determining urban planning, social space and subjectivity.
This talk discussed the phenomena of doubling in city planning, entertainment space and free economic zones. Replica monuments, streets and cities include Abbot Kinney's Venice of America in California, The Venetian in Las Vegas, the Eiffel Tower in the central Boulevard of Tianducheng China and the City of New Songdo in South Korea. These silent doppelgangers are built as adjacent worlds and are tailored to the interests of investors. Jaspar Joseph-Lester considers the conjunctions between the internal logic of the photographic image and embodied experience of the spatialised image to explore what he terms the mimetic drive of capital.