Brian Dillon and Ian Penman in Conversation with Olivia Laing

Brian Dillon and Ian Penman discuss looking closely, visual art, and their recent work with Olivia Laing.

Brian Dillon’s Affinities is a critical and personal study of a sensation that is not exactly taste, desire, or allyship, but has aspects of all. Featuring responses to and recollections of the work of Julia Margaret Cameron, Dora Maar, Claude Cahun, Samuel Beckett and Andy Warhol, Affinities is an at once dreamline and precise, quiet and revelatory, reflection on visual art.

Ian Penman’s Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors is a kaleidoscopic study of the late West German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945–1982). Written quickly under a self-imposed deadline in the spirit of Fassbinder himself, Penman presents Fassbinder as a pivotal figure in the moment between late modernism and the advent of postmodernism and the digital revolution.

Dillon and Penman’s intimate and affective books are ultimately about being moved by art and writing about what you see.

Brian Dillon was born in Dublin in 1969. His books include Suppose a Sentence, Essayism, The Great Explosion (shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize), Objects in This Mirror: Essays, I Am Sitting in a Room, Sanctuary, Tormented Hope: Nine Hypochondriac Lives (shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize) and In the Dark Room, which won the Irish Book Award for non-fiction. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Guardian, New York Times, London Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, Bookforum, frieze and Artforum. He is UK editor of Cabinet magazine, and teaches Creative Writing at Queen Mary, University of London.

Ian Penman is a British writer, music journalist, and critic. He began his career at the NME in 1977, later contributing to various publications including The Face, Arena, Tatler, Uncut, Sight & Sound, The Wire, the Guardian, the LRB, and City Journal. He is the author of the collections Vital Signs: Music, Movies, and Other Manias (Serpent’s Tail, 1998) and It Gets Me Home, This Curving Track (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2019). Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors is his first original book.

Brian and Ian will be in conversation with Olivia Laing. Olivia Laing is the author of six books, including The Lonely City, Funny Weather and Everybody.

Their conversation will be followed by an audience Q&A and a book signing. Doors will open from 6:45pm.

Tickets: £8 General Admission

Venue: The Auditorium (Level 6) at Foyles, 107 Charing Cross Road*

*Please note that the Auditorium at Foyles is fully accessible from the Ground floor lifts.