Iain Sinclair FRSL (born 11 June 1943 in Cardiff, Wales) is a British writer and filmmaker. Much of his work is rooted in London, most recently within the influences of psychogeography.

Life and work[link]

Sinclair was educated at Trinity College, Dublin (where he edited Icarus). He attended the Courtauld Institute of Art (University of London), and the London School of Film Technique (now the London Film School).

Development as author[link]

His early work was mostly poetry, much of it published by his own small press, Albion Village Press. He was (and remains) closely connected with the British avantgarde poetry scene of the 1960s and 1970s – authors such as J.H. Prynne, Douglas Oliver, Peter Ackroyd and Brian Catling are often quoted in his work and even turn up in fictionalized form as characters; later on, taking over from John Muckle, Sinclair edited the Paladin Poetry Series and, in 1996, the Picador anthology Conductors of Chaos.

His early books Lud Heat (1975) and Suicide Bridge (1979) were a mixture of essay, fiction and poetry; they were followed by White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings (1987), a novel juxtaposing the tale of a disreputable band of bookdealers on the hunt for a priceless copy of Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet and the Jack the Ripper murders (here attributed to the physician William Gull).

Sinclair was for some time perhaps best known for the novel Downriver (1991), which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the 1992 Encore Award. It envisages the UK under the rule of the Widow, a grotesque version of Margaret Thatcher as viewed by her harshest critics, who supposedly establishes a one party state in a fifth term. The volume of essays Lights Out for the Territory gained Sinclair a wider readership by treating the material of his novels in non-fiction form. His essay 'Sorry Meniscus' (1999) ridicules the Millennium Dome. In 1997, he collaborated with Chris Petit, sculptor Steve Dilworth, and others to make The Falconer, a 56 minute semi-fictional 'documentary' film set in London and the Outer Hebrides about the British underground filmmaker Peter Whitehead. It also features Stewart Home, Kathy Acker and Howard Marks.

London Orbital[link]

One of his most recent works and part of a series focused around London is the non-fiction London Orbital; the hard cover edition was published in 2002, along with a documentary film of the same name and subject. It describes a series of trips he took tracing the M25, London's outer-ring motorway, on foot. Sinclair followed this with Edge of the Orison, a psychogeographical reconstruction of the poet John Clare's walk from Dr Matthew Allen's private lunatic asylum, at Fairmead House, High Beach, in the centre of Epping Forest in Essex, to his home in Helpston, near Peterborough. Sinclair also writes about Claybury Asylum, another psychiatric hospital in Essex, in Rodinsky's Room, a collaboration with the artist Rachel Lichtenstein.

Psychogeography[link]

Much of Sinclair's recent work consists of an ambitious and elaborate literary recuperation of the so-called occultist psychogeography of London. Other psychogeographers who have worked on similar material include Will Self, Stewart Home and the London Psychogeographical Association. In 2008 he wrote the introduction to Wide Boys Never Work, the London Books reissue of Robert Westerby's classic London low-life novel. Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire: A Confidential Report followed in 2009.

In an interview with This Week in Science, William Gibson said that Sinclair was his favourite author.^[1] He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2009.^[2] Sinclair commented: "I have always admired the RSPCA. They do a lot of good work."

Iain Sinclair lives in Haggerston, in the London Borough of Hackney, and has a flat in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex.

Bibliography[link]

• Back Garden Poems, poetry, 1970
• The Kodak Mantra Diaries: Allen Ginsberg in London, documentary, 1971
• Muscat's Wurm, poetry, 1972
• The Birth Rug, poetry, 1973
• Lud Heat, poetry, 1975
• Suicide Bridge, poetry, 1979
• Flesh Eggs and Scalp Metal: Selected Poems 1970-1987, poetry, 1987
• White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings, fiction, 1987 (originally a limited edition from Goldmark but reprinted by Paladin)
• Downriver, novel, 1991
• Jack Elam's Other Eye, poetry
• Radon Daughters, novel, 1994
• Conductors of Chaos: a Poetry Anthology, editor 1996
• The Ebbing of the Kraft, poetry, 1997
• Lights out for the territory: 9 Excursions in the secret history of London. Granta Books. 1997. ISBN 1-86207-009-1. , non-fiction
• Slow Chocolate Autopsy, fiction, 1997
• Crash, essay, 1999
• Liquid City, non-fiction, 1999 (with Marc Atkins)
• Rodinsky's Room, non-fiction, 1999 (with Rachel Lichtenstein)
• Sorry Meniscus, essay, 1999
• Landor's Tower, novel, 2001
• London Orbital, non-fiction, 2002 (paperback edition 2003)
• White Goods, poems, essays, fictions, 2002
• Saddling The Rabbit, poetry, 2002 Etruscan Books
• The Verbals, in conversation with Kevin Jackson, 2003 Worple Press
• Dining on Stones, novel, 2004
• Edge of the Orison: In the Traces of John Clare's 'Journey Out Of Essex', non-fiction, 2005
• The Firewall (selected poems 1979 - 2006), poetry, Etruscan Books, paperback, 2006
• Buried At Sea, Worple Press, paperback, 2006
• London: City of Disappearances, editor, various essays about London psychogeography etc., 2006^[3]
• Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire: A Confidential Report, non-fiction, 2009
• “Sickening”, in Restless Cities, Edited by M. Beaumont and G. Dart, London: Verso, 2010. 257-276.
• Ghost Milk, non-fiction (memoir), 2011

Cameos[link]

Iain Sinclair's friend Alan Moore has included the character of Andrew Norton, the Prisoner of London, from Slow Chocolate Autopsy in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume III: Century. Norton's appearance in the comic is identical to that of Sinclair.^[4]

Notes[link]

External links[link]

• Iain SInclair's Official Unofficial WebSite (sanctioned by the author)
• Iain Sinclair at the Internet Movie Database
• A Small Catalogue of the Uncurated - article by Iain Sinclair, Untitled Books
• Literary Encyclopedia page on Iain Sinclair
• Iain Sinclair at the Complete Review
• Reader Flattery A critical analysis by John Barker in MetaMute
• Iain Sinclair:Revolutionary Novelist or Revolting Nihilist?
• Londonostalgia Critique of Sinclair
• London Books
• Transit - a collaboration with Emily Richardson in Triple Canopy (online magazine)

Interviews[link]

• When In Doubt, Quote Ballard Extensive interview with Iain Sinclair about psychogeography, writing and J.G. Ballard
• Londonist interview
• 3:AM interview
• Robert Bond, Iain Sinclair, Salt Publishing, ISBN 978-1-84471-100-0
• Swandown

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Susan Philipsz (born 1965 in Glasgow) is a Scottish artist who won the 2010 Turner Prize.^[1] In her youth, she sang with her sisters in a Catholic church choir in Maryhill. She studied at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee from 1989–1993 and then at the University of Ulster in Belfast in 1993-4.^[2] She was a Director of Catalyst Arts in Belfast for several years. Philipsz is represented by Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in New York, Ellen de Bruijne Projects in Amsterdam and Isabella Bortolozzi Galerie, Berlin. She currently lives and works in Berlin.

Originally a sculptor, she is best known for her sound installations. She records herself singing a cappella versions of songs which are replayed over a public address system in the gallery or other installation.

Her 1998, work "Filter", consisting of versions of songs by Nirvana, Marianne Faithfull, Radiohead and The Velvet Underground, has been played at a bus station and at a Tesco supermarket.^[3][4] Her 1999 work "The Internationale" consists of a solo a cappella version of the revolutionary song.^[5] She sings the Irish ballad "The Lass of Aughrim" in her 2000 work "The Dead".^[6][7] In her 2003 work, "Sunset Song", she sings the male and female parts of the 19th-century American folk ballad Banks of the Ohio, with the volume level changing according to light levels.^[7][8][9] She used a vibraphone for her 2009 piece, "You are not alone", commissioned for the Radcliffe Observatory in Oxford.^[10] In 2010, she was commissioned by the Glasgow International Festival. Her piece, "Lowlands", was three versions of what she called^[11] a 16th-century Scottish lament, Lowlands Away.^[3][12] It was played under three bridges over the River Clyde in Glasgow - George V Bridge, the Caledonian railway bridge, and Glasgow Bridge.^[2] "Lowlands", was subsequently exhibited at Tate Britain, winning her the 2010 Turner Prize.^[13]

Philipsz has exhibited at the Melbourne International Biennial 1999, Manifesta 3 in Ljubljana in 2000, the Tirana Biennial in 2001, at Triennal of British Art at Tate Britain in 2003, the 16th Biennale of Sydney in 2008, and at the 55th Carnegie International in 2009. She gave a solo exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 2008.^[14] She was commissioned to create a work for the rotunda at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2010.^[15][16]

In 2011, Philipsz was commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago to create a sound installation.^[17] This piece titled We Shall Be All draws from Chicago’s labor history, specifically the 1886 Haymarket Affair and the International Workers of the World (IWW), also known as the Wobblies.^[18] Also part of her 2011 exhibition at the MCA was a presentation of her work The Internationlale in the building’s atrium. In addition to her MCA exhibition, she presented her 2002 work Pledge at the Jane Addams Hull House Museum located on the University of Illinois at Chicago campus.^[19]

She was nominated for the Beck's Futures award in 2003^[20] and won the 2010 Turner Prize for a sound installation that features her singing three versions of a Scottish lament.^[21] She received the £25,000 prize at a ceremony at Tate Britain that was disrupted by protests over the British Government's educational cuts.^[21]

Philipsz is one of six sisters. Philipsz's father is Burmese. His family's life was "pulled apart by the war," and he came to the UK in his twenties.^[22]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Tate: Turner Prize 2010: Susan Philipsz The artist talks about her work Lowlands that won her the 2010 Turner Prize. 22 October 2010