Owen Hatherley's Eyeful

Writer Owen Hatherley, curator David Ellis and special guests explore the art, film, music and ideas of Central European émigrés through a live assemblage of words, images and sound. About The Alienation Effect begins with Owen Hatherley as 'Eye Casualty', and his re-emergence from the Eye Department of St Thomas Hospital – coiled, nervy, squinting – taking in, with fractured vision, Naum Gabo's kinetic sculpture Revolving Torsion. This revolutionary 400 tons of twisted metal [outside St Thomas’s] initiated Hatherley’s literary jaunt through the 1930s of Central European émigrés, bolters, refugees, displaced eggheads, escapees from the Nazis, and Thule Society cranks. It was a disparate group, including artists Kurt Schwitters, John Heartfield, Oskar Fischinger, and others – forced to hurriedly stuff newspaper-wrapped paprika, photographs, incomplete scripts and architectural blueprints into leather valises in Leipzig or Prague for the gruelling long haul to a place of safety, and into exile. ‘Others’, who'd loiter in an unmanly, ‘un-English’ manner in NW3 cafés, tapping out communiqués and manifestos on bulky Wanderer 340 Typewriters, that might, or might not, be published – unaware that whilst tapping away, they'd also begun chipping away, transforming Britain, dragging it reluctantly into the 20th century. Owen Hatherley's Eyeful is an anti-lecture/live assemblage with writer-cultural critic Owen Hatherley, plus curator-performer David Ellis, incorporating spoken address, film shorts and musical extracts sourced by Ellis – inspired by the designs, texts, films and music referenced in Hatherley’s The Alienation Effect . Hatherley and Ellis will also be joined by special guests Professor Tom Kuhn (translator of Bertolt Brecht, writer on exile and anti-fascist literature), Anna Thew (artist, painter, performer, film-maker and musician), and Simon Tyszko (cross-disciplinary artist, broadcaster, and conceptual "mischief-maker"). Read more Toggle Film / Video Performance / Live Art Design / Fashion Audio / Sound