Iain Sinclair Likes to Talk

British writer and subject of my dissertation Iain Sinclair quite enjoys participating in public discourse. His books are his most significant contributions, but he also writes essays and op-ed pieces, sits for taped interviews and on panels, and records walking commentary. Here are a few of his more recent videos and podcasts:

As part of the Story of London festival, Michael Moorcock, Alan Moore, and Iain Sinclair got together at the British Library on June 29 for an amiable conversation. The video is here.

At the July 16 launch party for the new annual British arts magazine Corridor 8, Sinclair narrated a psychogeographical walk through Manchester. The audio tour, read by Swen Steinhauser, is part of a series organized by the Urbis Centre in Manchester and available as a podcast.

Sinclair has been an outspoken critic of the heavy-handed approach to urban renewal surrounding the 2012 Olympic Games. So outspoken, in fact, that his neighborhood library in Hackney banned him from giving a talk on his most recent book there. The Guardian posted this interview/walk in February, when Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire came out.

Members of the now-defunct BBC Collective filmed Sinclair in Abney Park cemetery in Newington as he talked about London: City of Disappearances, the "anthology of absence" he edited and published in 2006.

And finally, there is a rather odd 25-minute Audi commercial (2-minute trailer here) that shows Iain Sinclair and filmmaker Chris Petit driving around northern England trying to find some sort of psychogeographic significance in what they encounter while saying nice things about their shiny black Audi V10. Psychogeography being what it is, especially in the hands of Sinclair, I would have expected a bit more. But hey, they got to go on a roadtrip in a brand-new A6. Who would turn that down?