London Trip
Last weekend I went to London. I presented my work at a giant academic conference, Historical Materialism! I decided I would take some more photos than usual so I could show off what it was like.
The view from the plane
My flight was on Thursday in the early morning. I got a börek from the bakery and made my way to the airport in the morning fog. As usual I asked the airline people if they could switch me to a window seat and this time it worked! I got to see the sun rise for two hours straight. It was mostly clear skies until we crossed into the UK and then there was nothing but clouds. It looked beautiful from above at least.
I landed in Heathrow a bit dazed, it was 7 AM or so. I was going to take the regular subway (sorry, the regular tube) but then at the machines I found that someone had forgotten to take their ticket for the much fancier Heathrow Express! Or they left it kindly for the next lucky traveller. The Express is really expensive usually and it goes straight into Paddington station without any stops. Paddington is pretty far from Bloomsbury, where I needed to go, so the tube route would have probably been more convenient. But this ticket was free and I had time and it seemed fortuitous in some way, so I took the opportunity to do a bit of walkabout sightseeing.
The streets look like this!
When I got to Paddington I (obviously) poked into the Paddington bear shop and then walked for about an hour to SOAS while listening to the Beatles. Seemed only right. Every time you cross the street there is big text on the pavement alerting you to ← look left, or to look right →. In general the signage is yappy and overbearing. I passed a lot of fancy shops and a lot of banks and things like that. But also a kind of Architecture Digest home and some nice wacky architecture mixed in.
I eventually got to SOAS and lined up for my badge and went to my first panel! It was about Fredric Jameson, and it was chaired by Esther Leslie who has a wonderful book on Walter Benjamin. Well, the whole rest of the day was all so packed that I forgot about my photo-taking mission. There was four timeslots a day and each had twenty (!) panels going on at the same time. If you ask me that is pretty extreme. No matter where I went I always felt I could have gone somewhere even better! So it was a test of fomo endurance.
I did see this great sign when I went to drop off my things at the hostel during the lunch break:
A music venue?
The most memorable bit of the conference was the courtyard. There were fifteen minutes between each panel, and in that gap everybody would stream outside and mingle. It was really sweet to see people reunite and hug each other very joyfully. But when I was outside without being in a conversation, it was easy to feel small and alone.
The courtyard
The final panel I went to that day was about soviet aesthetic theory. My friend Enda was presenting. Afterward, I stayed around talking with K who grew up in London and we got along well so they took me down to Soho, where they were going to meet a friend, and guided me to get chinese food. We had a really great talk and it felt all light and zippy. We talked about the conference and about movies and all things good.
Enda's panel!
This was probably the strangest thing that happened: Right after K dropped me off, I walked around the block (Soho was extremely lively and there were people everywhere) and I ended up back where I started. Then someone approached me. And told me that I looked like Keanu Reeves. Hello? Well, this guy R and I had a crazy hour-long conversation. He told me about being a bouncer and a drummer and a fitness trainer and being jewish and Jamaican and he asked me about the Olmecs and about William Blake and who knows what else. It was completely crazy. He kept coming back to some phrases, like they were pebbles stuck in his throat.
Well, I was feeling good having had two lovely social experiences in a row and decided to go home and rest on those laurels. On the way I got a terrible chicken sandwich from a visibly terrible shop. I looked them up and they have two stars on Google Maps. But I was pleased with the evening overall so it was no bother and I went home and went to bed. I will not trouble you with images of the hostel - I did not really fit on the bed, but that is how these things go.
Day two
The next day was probably my favorite. I started at a launch of an anthology on Hegel and McIntyre to see Michael Lazarus, whose book I really liked, and who is apparently working on a book on Gillian Rose which I'm sure will be fantastic. Tatiana Llaguno had some great points and I will check out her work! I tried to catch Lazarus afterward to have a conversation but I couldn't find him anywhere.
Michael Lazarus
At the conference there were some panels with different speakers giving papers, arranged around a loose topic, and others that were book launches. I ended up going to a lot of launches. I think it's the format I'm most used to, and I like that hearing a conversation in advance makes it so much easier to read the book afterward. It makes the conference something like a big sampler of new books. The cutting-edge stuff presented in the conference papers is less specifically interesting to me, mostly because this isn't where my research is. But I did go to some of those!
I was very indecisive about what I should do for my second panel on Friday. Someone I met but don't know very well was presenting a book on Laura Mulvey. The Otolith group was presenting - one of whose members I later chatted with in the courtyard with K. I was completely stuck, darting around the venue but not going inside any room! In the end I decided to go to a panel on value-form theory where Patrick Murray was speaking, and there turned out to be a good paper on crypto as well. I realized there that the guy who had asked a somewhat rambling question at the morning session was... Patrick Murray. I obviously got there quite late, so I had to listen in from the hallway. It was nice to see some famous people sitting there in the hallway as well. If it's good enough for them, it's good enough for me, I thought.
Nick Nesbitt listening to Patrick Murray
This is probably getting tedious, just telling you how I went to all these different panels, but it will get exciting soon. The third slot was very much fomo-inducing and a lot of great things were on. I ended up going to "Marx and the Non-European" which was alright. I think I will get Ericka Beckman's new book on literature from the hemisphere. The Q&A was a bit slow, though, so I headed out early and ran into acquaintances from Berlin! We went around the corner to get a coffee and had a really lovely walk and chat. It was also their first time at HM and it was nice to reflect a bit on the strange social dynamics in nice company. We also passed by a ceremony where they were putting up one of those blue plaques they have in London to commemorate famous people but I don't remember who it was.
The final panel of the day was in a super-big and super-packed room. I spoke to my seat neighbor J a little. We were both there to see Charmaine Chua, who convened the panel, but she was ill and was not there at all. Still, the panel was amazing. All three papers were very thorough and clever interventions in big and public debates. Sometimes the topics get really technical and niche, but I think here they managed to surface them and make them land. The standouts were Salar Mohandesi and Nasser Abourahme. Alberto Toscano asked a very eager and very good question - this will be important for Saturday - and the vibe was generally great, very comradely.
There was one more panel, the plenary with a bunch of people including Sophie Lewis but I was too tired to go. I hung out around the courtyard instead. I saw someone who had asked a question in the morning and we started chatting, and turns out they wanted to ask Alberto Toscano a question. I tagged along and at some point I had a chance to speak! I blew it, but it was funny. I asked Toscano about a paper he had written on civilizational critique. He said he'd never written anything about that, and he tried to remember but did not, and said I was probably mixing it up with something else. Well, I didn't remember it very clearly either, and being pretty nervous about the whole encounter I just mumbled back. He then asked if I was suggesting he doesn't remember his own work...
After that mess I met up with K again to debrief a bit after everything. We hung out in a park and played some Wordle style phone games. Beverley Best walked by. There was a man crawling on the grass and training with a coach, Rocky style. K and I kept each other company and it was (you guessed it) generally lovely and wholesome.
We both had to leave soon after, I had to catch a bus. I was headed to the Barbican, a surreal concert hall complex where they filmed Andor and which feels completely utopian. I'm talking masonry passageways, neat and packed apartments next to giant brutalist waterworks. It feels like that one Escher print with the hallways leading all impossible ways. It's crazy.
Side alleys at the Barbican
I had no idea of any of this when my friend R suggested we meet there. We had a fancy drink at the fancy Barbican bar, I got a Dark and Stormy and some wasabi snacks, and then we went to get delicious noodles with A and S. We got some absurdly spicy sauce. We talked about Camp Miasma and about GIllian Rose and about AI agents and about Spinoza and all good things. Then we ended up in an AI slop pub. The bathrooms really do say gents and they really do ring the bell for the last orders.
Headed home
I stayed up really late tinkering with my paper. I was feeling majorly underprepared compared to all the panels I had seen. I shared my charger with a man in the hostel and he got me a Bounty from the snack machine. I went to bed around 3:30.
Day three
I woke up early and kept writing away. This was all surely overkill, I knew it even then. Well, the panels were starting at 10:00 but I was still feeling focused, so I went to Tesco to get a breakfast meal deal on my way to the conference, but I ended up turning around and going back to the hostel to keep working a bit more and to rehearse my timings. This was a terrible mistake! I got the schedule wrong, and some panels I wanted to see were in this first slot and not the second. I was so upset at having missed them.
Having slept so little did not help at all and I was crashing out. I had to calm down and so ended up skipping the next session as well and going instead to a bookstore around the corner, Waterstones, and that helped a lot for clearing my head. I came back to SOAS and with newfound energy I found an empty area and sat down to finish my edits. A sign on the door nearby said 'no entry, live bees.'
At that point I had missed two panels and wasn't about to miss a third one. So although my own panel was up next I went to see Jasper Bernes. I was not focused but the book he was launching sounds great and really well written, so I kind of curled up cozy and zoned out and decided I will read it eventually. I think at this point I was reaching my limit of how much I can engage with this stuff. For example Søren Mau who was responding to the book was talking about freedom being an ahistorical thing. And there was a back-and-forth about the conjunctural or sequential character of freedom struggles. It is obviously important but it seemed like a question they each have made-up minds about, and which is better worked out through book-length arguments than in a conversation on a panel. It's hard to be swayed by a a chat at that level of abstraction. Moreover there were a lot of points being made and without very detailed notes it was hard to keep track of who was saying what. Next time I'll definitely be more serious about note-taking, because I feel I could have gotten more out of a session like this!
Discussion of Bernes' book
I don't really want to talk about my own panel. It was nice! My co-panelists were kind and I felt I read it okay even though I went overtime. But it was awkward because there were so few questions, despite the room being pretty full. Alas!
My co-panelist Malte had come with some friends and so after the panel we went around the corner to get a celebration beer at a pub. It was airy and cheerful. Someone had food from Roti King which a friend in Berlin had recommended before and it was indeed delicious. Having heaters outdoors is brilliant and probably terribly unsustainable but it makes for an unrivaled coziness, and now I wish they had them everywhere.
I had missed the plenaries on previous days so I decided to go to the one today. I was not very impressed. The papers felt improvised and fluffy and cynical, non-argumentative and more vibes-based, if that makes sense. I was totally zoned out and left before the Q&A.
I had places to be! I'd made plans to help my friend C move out of his studio. I was feeling conflicted about that because the conference social was happening that evening as well and a bunch of people had told me they would go, so I had fomo again. But seeing C was so refreshing. I'd forgotten just how close friends we were or are even though we are in kinda different worlds we can talk and talk and talk endlessly. He brought me to meet his studio-mate who makes these incredible pencil drawings, they are organizing a gallery together for displaying his stuff. C told me everything about his crazy lifestyle and the crazy people in his assorted scenes, I helped move boxes out and came to see his flat, and we got shawarma together.
I took the bus home but it for some reason took me to Piccadilly Circus rather than Russell Square. So I walked around, got on the tube again, looked at all the big majestic buildings and at the people on the streets. I sat in the hostel common room for a while scrolling and went to sleep.
Day four
On the last day I fled the conference. I had to check out of my room before 10, and so I came with all my stuff to the courtyard. I had made up my mind to not go to any panels on sunday anymore - I was simply too saturated - but I still wanted to sit around and look around. K was there for a bit too so we went to get a snack at a park coffee shop and said our goodbyes. I looked at the books at the book stands and got some too and chatted with the booksellers.
I then went to wait for my bus and was waiting a very long time, and seeing the people around me wait as well. Some of them got impatient and left. I was specifically nervous because I had lost my headphones but I ended up finding them later.
I was heading to Peckham. I'd promised I would go to BOOKS to pick up some orders, and since R and A live nearby we met up again there! At this point I was done feeling fomo and done with the cocktail of conference emotions. I'm so glad this worked out.
On the bus there there was a Japanese couple taking selfies and being adorable. I was sitting (of course) on the second floor, way at the front, looking at everything. The IMAX in the city centre had huge ads for the next Godzilla. I got off before my stop accidentally, but then walked past a lovely houseware stuff and I got a plastic market bag since I needed a place to put all the books I was going to get. The little boy in the shop asked me in Spanish what my favorite brainrot was and I said tung tung sahur. I walked around the adjacent fancy neighborhood with my market bag and came finally to BOOKS!
Walking to BOOKS
I should have taken photos but trust me it is completely amazing. I ended up getting about forty books. R had brought a duffel bag for me which was a lifesaver because there was no way my flimsy market bag would have survived. I ended up leaving it with Pete the owner and he gave me a little pocket fan for tourists in return.
Noticeboard at SET
We then headed to SET, a social and cultural space. There was a writing workshop going on in the main room and people were doing stretches and rolling around on yoga mats. R and A got tea and coffee and I got chocolate. It was - believe it or not - adorable.
We finally walked down to Rye Lane (which I knew only from the movie, but feels entirely like home) and into a bookshop that had just opened that week: the Small Press Futures Bookshop. Reader, this place is insane. Banger after banger after banger. I have not felt in a very long time the agitation and flutter I felt standing there browsing. I got Charlie Fox's new book Drool and wish I had gotten Two Women by Jacqueline Rose that came out last week. This place is absolutely crazy. It's a pop-up, only there for a little bit, and it is the combined effort of a bunch of indie presses and it is incredible. I feel I say the same things over and over but I have no words.
Small Press Futures Bookshop
And this is where the trip came to an end, pretty much. R and A took me to the bus stop and said goodbye. I rode the bus to King's Cross and took the fancy Elizabeth line to Heathrow. There was beef on the bus, someone pushed a woman off the bus for being mean. Or something like that. I was lugging all the books around, looking around, and at the airport I got another meal deal and boarded my flight home.
Waiting on Rye Lane