Book club: The Lonely City by Olivia Laing — the city and the artist

Join us for book discussion of The Lonely City by Olivia Laing, hosted by Secret Reading Society specially for Art Seeding Festival.

16 May, 1 p.m.
Warehouse 33
Discussion in Russian

Published in 2016, The Lonely City has become one of the defining contemporary books on loneliness, urban life, and artistic existence within the modern metropolis. Blending memoir, cultural criticism, biography, and art writing, Olivia Laing reflects on solitude through the lives and works of artists including Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol, David Wojnarowicz, Henry Darger, and Klaus Nomi, tracing how cities can simultaneously isolate, expose, and shape those who live within them.

Written after Laing’s move to New York, the book examines loneliness not as a purely personal condition, but as a social and spatial experience deeply connected to the structure of the contemporary city itself. Moving between literature, visual art, queer history, and urban observation, The Lonely City became an international critical success upon release, was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize, and has since been translated into numerous languages, becoming a key reference in conversations around art, intimacy, visibility, and metropolitan life.

As part of the discussion, we will explore together with artists the idea of the city not simply as a backdrop, but as an active participant in artistic life — a structure of observation, alienation, desire, and mutual attention. We will speak about the relationship between the artist and the urban environment, about visibility and anonymity, loneliness and spectatorship, and about the ways cities influence artistic sensibility, behaviour, and modes of living.

Reading the book in full is welcome, but not required to join the conversation.

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