Timescapes of Urban Change: Iain Sinclair

What stories resonate through the temporal layers of the city? How does our perception of it change when we put time at the center of the urban landscape? As part of the Timescapes of Urban Change project, writer and filmmaker Iain Sinclair reflects on how our temporal attachments to the city relate with city life and its transformations.

The Last London: A City Abolished

Contemporary approaches to understanding city life tend to focus on how its spatial characteristics shape the lives of citizens. Yet cities are also temporal constructions. For instance, urban regeneration projects often seek to "revitalize" historic districts by introducing modern modes and rhythms of consumption, altering its natural rhythms. The stones of a centuries-old cathedral represent a compression of geological time that accelerates with the cement, steel and glass of towering skyscrapers. What stories resonate through the temporal layers of the city? How does our perception of it change when we put time at the center of the urban landscape?

These are questions that have long been at the centre of Iain Sinclair's writing. A pioneer of psychogeography, his work maps out a London that is often hidden from view. Within the framework of the Timescapes of Urban Change project, Iain Sinclair will reflect on how our temporal attachments to the city relate with city life and its transformations. The session will include a reading of selected passages from Lud Heat: A Book of the Dead Hamlets, a work with which Sinclair introduced a new approach to writing and poetic practice, which has just been translated into Spanish for the first time by Adolfo Barberá and published by Fire Drill.

Live stream:

The lecture will be live streamed from 17.30 GMT / 18.30 CET. Audio will be available in both English and Spanish - please visit the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) website for details of how to choose which language audio is played.

Further links:

• CCCB event page