Iain Sinclair » cyberpresence

Patience (After Sebald)

admin — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 21:08:32 +0000

“Diehard Sebaldians may seek to retrace the footsteps that formed the basis of WG Sebald’s meditative masterpiece The Rings of Saturn. Or they may choose to watch Grant Gee’s film tribute instead. Patience (After Sebald) takes as its fulcrum the German expatriate’s category-defying memoir-cum-history, travelogue-cum-novel – which was published in 1995 and is considered by many to be his greatest work – and it attempts to recreate the book’s physical and mental landscape. An ambitious undertaking, it only partly succeeds.

Excerpts from the novel are beautifully read by Jonathan Pryce (one is almost hypnotised by that richly textured, mellifluous voice), and talking-head contributors include artist Tacita Dean, writer and psychoanalyst Adam Phillips (who provides by far the most interesting insights), psychogeographer Iain Sinclair and poet Andrew Motion. The film therefore is also part appreciation, part lit crit and part unadulterated fandom.”

Read the full article on The Arts Desk: Patience (After Sebald)

STONE TAPE SHUFFLE (updated 16/12/2011)

admin — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 17:26:37 +0000

About the LP: I have now discovered that the pressing with be 400 copies, 26 of which in a special edition will come with additional handwritten material and other extras. It won’t be available until March. (I think the number of copies echoes the original Albion Village Press edition of ‘Lud Heat’.)

The Test Centre Publications is a youthful group who have decided to launch an LP (vinyl) series, in all its retro glory.

An accurate reflection of present day Hackney.

The LPs will come out in limited editions of – what? – a couple of hundred (just like the Albion Village Press books when I started).

I’ve been working on the first of these LPs, walking over old traces, St Anne’s Limehouse, Shadwell, Wapping, Whitechapel, Bunhill Fields. Familiar territories with readings, in situ, from my old books: Lud Heat, Suicide Bridge, Downriver, White Chappell Scarlet Tracings. The LP will be called ‘Stone Tape Shuffle‘. And may be available by Christmas. With copious sleeve notes & photos.

Other LPs, it is hoped, from Chris Petit, Stewart Home, Tom McCarthy.

Iain has kindly provided a preview of the LP sleeve.

STONE TAPE SHUFFLE

Dansette delirium. Blunt needle trenching grooves in the curve of an eye. Locked gates. Leathery interior of padded limousine. Mercenaries in crypt. Vegetal voices fed through reel-to-reel recorder. Templar bandages. Saffron. Herbal Hill.

Archaeologist of morning. Bookdealers at stall. Butchers in boozer. Medics in travesty. Manson is innocent. Sardonic glitter below the lintel. Access denied. So re-record the retrospective. Eavesdrop on entropy. Posthumous postcards.

You dip into Heraclitus. Identity dissolves in river’s chains. Midge helmet. Pulling legs from crabs. Sheppey. Limehouse. Ratcliffe. Marmosets in abandoned graveyard. Cinnamon from blind warehouse. Junkies herbing Shadwell bunkers.

Trawling for spooks. Tapping obelisks. Suicide Bridge. Parchment confession in corneal graft. Scarlet Tracings.

Streams of silver from infant coffin. Bare feet ridged on cobbles she understands the talk of the tide. Abney Park.

Tower Hamlets. Chingford Mount. A moment of intense disorder and counter-purpose embedded in narrative as a foreign body encysted and then expelled. We pass over vicars and vagrants. Ripped stockings muffle the mic. Red Eye suppressed. Fear of burial absolutely must be so. As we walked out that one and ever morning. No ley lines said the parson chewing candles in his attic. The evidence is all there is of what there is. Of this. And that. And before. His noise.

Your irritation. For a while. Foreign. Intimate. Unheard.

German translation of “The Shipwreck” poem.

admin — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 16:12:22 +0000

Jürgen Ghebrezgiabiher has translated a second Iain Sinclair poem, The Shipwreck, in German.

Click here for the first translation.

“I made a pastiche of Iain’s introductory words insinuating “the literary journalistic wave that swept my almost 10-year commitment to Iain’s cause away. I am not naming names! So I think that should be fine. “ JG.

View this page in German for the translation.

“Rodinsky’s room” translated in Italian

admin — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 09:46:57 +0000

Out now in Italy a second book translated in Italian, Rodinsky’s rooms, co-authored with Rachel Lichtenstein.

Postmodernism: The Substance of Style, V&A

admin — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 17:31:02 +0000

Iain make a short appearance in this documentary about Postmodernism. He appears towards the end.

Postmodernism is the notoriously slippery subject tacked by the V&A’s new exhibition, ‘Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990′. This fast-paced film features some of the most important living Postmodern practitioners — Charles Jencks, Robert A.M. Stern and Sir Terry Farrell among them — and asks them how and why Postmodernism came about, and what it means to be Postmodern.

‘Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990′, 24th September 2011 – 15th January 2012. Purchase Tickets here