OPEN event with Iain Sinclair and Anna Minton at Cafe Oto, Sunday 6th May

Two of contemporary Britain's most perceptive and lucid writers, Iain Sinclair and Anna Minton, will be presenting and discussing their work at this OPEN event which will start at 7pm on Sunday 6th May at Cafe Oto, Ashwin Street, Dalston E8.

Multi-award winning writer and journalist Anna Minton's book "Ground Control - fear and happiness in the twenty-first century city" has been republished with a new chapter on our Olympic legacy. Described as a "revelatory and passionate defence against the privatisation of our streets and the disturbing reality of Britain today" Anna's book breaks the 'social silence' and reveals the answers to questions that few people have dared to ask.

..."this is the architecture of extreme capitalism, which produces a divided landscape of privately owned, disconnected, high security, gated enclaves side by side with enclaves of poverty which remain untouched by the wealth around them. The stark segregation and highly visible differences create a climate of fear and growing mistrust between people which...erodes civil society." Anna Minton 'Ground Control'

Photo from Hackney Podcast

Writer, poet and film maker Iain Sinclair's book "Ghost Milk - calling time on the grand project" has now been published in paperback. Iain's book explores landscapes ravaged by vanity architectures shaped from smoke and mirrors. It has been described as Iain's "most powerful statement yet on the throwaway impermanence of the present".
"Ghost milk? What does this mean?" Sinclair is asked
"CGI smears on the blue fence", he replies, "Real juice from a virtual host. Embalming fluid. A soup of photographic negatives. Soul food for the dead. The universal element in which we sink and swim"
"You can't write about this. They'll never believe it" Anna Sinclair warns Iain, her husband.
But he did write about it. All of it. Ghost Milk.

"A wonderful kind of alchemy is at work" J G Ballard observed in Sinclair's writing. The Sunday Times described his work as "remarkable, compelling, bristles with unexpected, frequently lurid life".

Iain and OPEN's founder & saxophonist Bill Parry-Davies will perform a new collaboration at the event.

Followers of this blog will recall previous OPEN cultural events have been packed. We have presented Iain with Patrick Wright, the film maker Winstan Whitter with poet Michael Rosen, and a politico-cultural soiree at St Barnabus. Well, here's another unmissable one for your diary. You can get on-line tickets from Cafe Oto here ( for £5, or £3 for concessions) but otherwise there may be some left on the door.