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").

Owen Hatherley writes regularly about aesthetics and politics for the Architectural Review, the London Review of Books, Sidecar and Tribune. He is the author of many books, most recently Walking the Streets/Walking the Projects (Repeater, 2024), and The Alienation Effect – How Central European Emigres Transformed the British Twentieth Century (Penguin, 2025). He is a commissioning editor at Jacobin, the presenter of the Inter-Cities podcast for Open City, and the writer and presenter of The Story of Solent City for Radio 4.

David Ellis is a writer/curator and performer, trained under maverick dancer and movement teacher Lindsey Kemp. In 1994, he founded Puzzle Club, the anarchic art platform for then-emerging artists, i.e The Tiger Lilies. His curatorial work has included live literary events with writers Iain Sinclair (Lights Out for the Territory, 1997) Andrea Dworkin (Ice & Fire, 1986) and Philip Olterman (The Stasi Poetry Circle, 2022). In 1993, funded by the Arts Council Of England he travelled to Vilnius, Lithuania initiating 35 years of excursions into Eastern Central Europe. As a performer, Ellis is known principally for his improvised anti-lectures – more recently 'Extended Play' an audio-visual digression on the UK's Pop history at DIGITAL:CANVAS, Timișoara , Romania. In November, he concludes his Romanian project with 'Night Train: In Search of that extraordinary ordinary'.

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