Hans Ulrich Obrist was born in Zurich in May 1968. He joined the Serpentine Gallery as Co-director of Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects in April 2006. Prior to this he was Curator of the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris since 2000, as well as curator of museum in progress, Vienna, from 1993-2000. He has curated over 200 exhibitions internationally since 1991, including do it, Take Me, I'm Yours (Serpentine Gallery), Cities on the Move, Live/Life, Nuit Blanche, First Berlin Biennale, Manifesta 1, and more recently Uncertain States of America, First Moscow Triennale, Second Guangzhou Triennale (Canton China), and Lyon Biennale.

In 2007, Hans Ulrich co-curated Il Tempo del Postino with Philippe Parreno for the Manchester International Festival. In the same year, the Van Alen Institute awarded him the New York Prize Senior Fellowship for 2007-2008.

Hans Ulrich has written a number of books including a Conversation Series with artists and architects such as Zaha Hadid and Glibert & George, and most recently Formulas for Now is the seminal part of an ongoing project during which he invited over 100 contributors from the fields of art, science, mathematics, performance, music, architecture, design, literature and sociology to devise their own unique equation to express their understanding of contemporary life in the twenty-first century- including David Adjaye, J.G.Ballard, Louise Bourgeois, Richard Dawkins, Damien Hirst, Michel Houellebecq, Yoko Ono and Peter Saville.

Adrian Searle has been chief art critic for The Guardian since 1996. He began writing in 1976 and continues to contribute to art magazines and journals, and to El Cultural in Spain. His publications include a recent Phaidon monograph on Peter Doig (2007) and a forthcoming book on the writings of Juan Muñoz. He has curated several exhibitions in the UK, Europe and the USA, including the first retrospective of Brazilian sculptor Lucia Nogueira (1950-98), for the Fundação de Serralves in Portugal. He was a Turner Prize juror in 2004, and is currently on the jury for the Kurt Schwitters Award in Hanover. Searle is a Visiting Professor at the Royal College of Art in London.

This is part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Weekend, the LSE's first ever Literary Festival, celebrating the completion of the New Academic Building. It is organised in conjunction with LSE Arts, an extension of the popular Talking Pictures series.

Podcast

A podcast of this event is available to download from the LSE public lectures and events podcasts channel.

Media queries: please contact the Press Office if you would like to reserve a press seat or have a media query about this event, email pressoffice@lse.ac.uk