WHAP! stands for the West Hollywood Aesthetics and Politics lecture series. Launched in the Fall of 2011, the series is co-hosted by the City of West Hollywood and the Aesthetics and Politics MA program at CalArts. Armen Avanessian studied philosophy and political science in Vienna and Paris. After completing his dissertation in literature, he worked at the Free University Berlin from 2007-2014. He has previously been a Visiting Fellow in the German Department at Columbia University and in the German Department at Yale University and visiting professor at various art academies in Vienna, Nuremberg and Basel. He is editor in chief at Merve Verlag Berlin. In 2012 he founded a bilingual research platform on Speculative Poetics, including a series of events, translations, and publications.  Admission is free.  For more information visit http://aestheticsandpolitics.calarts.edu/lecture-series/whap or call (323) 848-6460.