5x15 Special: Slavoj Žižek’s Cultural Orgy

What do Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, Donald Trump, Titanic, Pornhub, Stalinist propaganda and Bach have in common? According to Slavoj Žižek: everything.

Slavoj Žižek is one of the rare philosophers who treats cinema, music and popular culture as seriously as he treats Hegel. For more than three decades he has ranged effortlessly across philosophy, politics, opera, literature and film, uncovering unexpected connections between the stories we tell ourselves and the world we inhabit.

In this special 5x15 event, Žižek invites the audience into what he calls a Cultural Orgy: a fast-moving and unapologetically digressive journey through the films, music, artworks and political spectacles that have shaped his imagination. With the help of clips, images and musical extracts, he will move from Wagner to Hollywood, from Bach to internet pornography, from romantic comedy to totalitarian propaganda, revealing how our favourite cultural works illuminate the deepest structures of desire, ideology and belief.

Along the way, nothing is off limits. Love and sex. Religion and sacrifice. Revolution and political theatre. Catastrophe and apocalypse. Why are we moved by the death of Jack in Titanic? What does internet pornography tell us about the nature of desire? What can Stalinist cinema reveal about modern politics? And why do certain images continue to haunt us long after we have forgotten the stories from which they came?

But beneath the exuberance lies a more unsettling question. What if the films we love, the music that moves us and the stories we tell ourselves reveal more about our desires, our political fantasies and our deepest beliefs than we would ever care to admit?

Join us for an evening of film, philosophy and cultural mischief with one of the world's most provocative thinkers.