Weeds: A Germinating Theory

We’re thrilled to be joined by Kwan Queenie Li, the author of Weeds: A Germinating Theory, for a very special edition of the AA Book Group, in collaboration with MACK Books.

For over a decade, artist and theorist Kwan Queenie Li has been photographing weeds across the world. From Jerusalem to Shanghai, Varanasi to Athens, Cairo to Mexico City, she has trained her attention on these unintended but ubiquitous inhabitants of the contemporary urban sphere, finding them dwelling in corners and cracks, in spaces suspended between uses, in ruins and on construction sites.

This essay in image and text proposes a new view of cities that learns from the weed’s point of view, dissolving familiar categories and temporalities to see cities as evolving and often undefined spaces, replete with opportunity. Weeds organically defy phenomena that are taken for granted as immovable: walls, borders, history, and prescribed identities. They are registers of the real lives of cities – of disuse and neglect, but also freedom and porousness. Out-of-place by definition, they offer a new perspective on the idea of ‘place’ itself, and the ways it shapes and is shaped by its inhabitants.

Sightlines is a series of essays looking at architecture from distinct points of view, each taking the perspective of a particular entity, history, discipline, or form of writing, published by MACK Books.

Anyone who has read the book is welcome to join but RSVP is necessary. Click below to reserve a ticket or RSVP to bookshop@aabookshop.net.

Attendees of the book group will be able to buy the book with a discount of 20% (£15, RRP £19).