Owen Hatherley's Eyeful

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").