Olivia Laing on Art, Solitude, and The Lonely City at 10 (Part One)

Summary

Intelligence Squared – Olivia Laing on Art, Solitude, and The Lonely City at 10
Originally aired: July 16, 2026
Host: Charlie Porter | Guest: Olivia Laing

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Episode Overview

Marking the 10th anniversary of Olivia Laing’s seminal book, The Lonely City, this episode is a reflective, searching live conversation between Laing and writer/critic Charlie Porter. Broadcasting from Union Chapel, London, the discussion revisits The Lonely City's exploration of loneliness, solitude, intimacy, and art—probing why being alone is such a deeply-felt, stigmatized experience and what artists can teach us about living with isolation. Laing shares the book’s origins, key artistic subjects, its continuing impact (especially post-pandemic), and evolving thinking around connection in the digital age.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Genesis of The Lonely City

• Personal Origin Story ([04:21]):
  • Olivia Laing describes moving to New York after a breakup, and unexpectedly falling “down a well into this experience of loneliness that really was unprecedented in my life that far.” She reflects on mid-30s alienation and the taboo around confessing loneliness.
  • “I was very aware that my life had gone in a different direction to the people around me at the time. And it was acutely painful. But at the same time... I realized that the experience I was having was a taboo experience.” (Olivia Laing, 04:40)
• Not a Memoir—A Map ([05:50]):
  • Laing wanted not a memoir but “a map of the territory,” exploring loneliness from “multiple different directions” through a cast of historical and artistic figures.

The Concept of Loneliness as a "City"

• A Populated Place ([06:32]):
  • Laing’s famous line: “Loneliness, I began to realize, was a populated place, a city in itself.”
  • “When you’re experiencing [loneliness] yourself, it feels like you are abject and alien... but as I was thinking about it more logically, I was aware that it’s an experience that thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people experience. And that sense that it’s like a secret populated place, that’s what I wanted to document.” (Olivia Laing, 06:58)

Book Structure and Tone

• Understanding Not Curing ([09:40]):
  • The focus isn’t on “curing” loneliness but “understanding” it—traveling into an emotional and intellectual landscape.
  • “I wanted people to feel that they were going to be met in their own painful experience, but that we weren’t going to just sort of flounder there, that we were really going to travel... it really is a book of thinking.” (Olivia Laing, 09:59)
• No Victimhood, No Blame ([10:44]):
  • Laing resists the idea of loneliness as a personal failing. The pandemic, they suggest, revealed its randomness and pervasiveness, breaking taboos and shifting the narrative.

Why Art, and Why Visual Art?

• From Writers to Visual Artists ([12:26]):
  • After two books on writers, Laing felt “I don’t want to use words to examine words anymore.” New York and its artists inspired a visually-driven approach.
  • “When we think of urban loneliness, we think of it as... you’re behind glass.” (Olivia Laing, 12:55)
• Loneliness Beyond Words ([14:13]):
  • Laing recounts struggling with even simple communication (“the coffee shop anecdote”), and how visual art provided an alternate, intimate language when verbal interaction faltered.

Writing About Art for the First Time

• Excitement and Risk ([15:36]):
  • “It was completely new. It was completely exciting... I felt like I’m writing the way I want to be writing.” (Olivia Laing)
  • Laing describes the move to visual arts as both a personal breakthrough and a “reckless”, risky innovation in their writing.

Andy Warhol: Technology, Intimacy, and Mediation

• Warhol as a Figure of Loneliness ([16:44]):
  • Laing reframes Warhol not as a cold or superficial icon but as someone with deep social anxiety. His use of technology (Polaroid, tape recorder, super 8s) is seen as both a magnet and a protective barrier:
  • “He has these devices that mean people are attracted to him... and at the same time, he’s keeping them at a really safe distance.” (Olivia Laing, 18:20)
• Technology’s Changing Role ([24:40]):
  • Though Laing describes social media optimistically in the book (Craigslist, early Twitter), they now acknowledge its role in weaponizing loneliness, particularly in political contexts.

Political Exploitation of Loneliness

• Exploitation by Far Right and Digital Platforms ([25:55]):
  • “The loneliness of young men is predated upon deliberately for commercial and political gain... drawing people into communities bound by hatred is to expand loneliness out.” (Olivia Laing)
  • Reflection on technology’s effect, particularly since Brexit.

Valerie Solanas: Gender, Marginalization, and Isolation

• Duality: Warhol and Solanas ([27:25]):
  • Laing explores the parallel, then divergent trajectories of Warhol and Solanas—illustrating how gender and social factors, not just personal ones, contribute to radical isolation.

David Wojnarowicz: Art, Voice, and the Archive

• Central Figure for the Anniversary Edition ([30:17]):
  • Laing’s introduction to Wojnarowicz’s work (courtesy of Matt Wolf) was transformative. She was struck by the artist’s ability to “speak very urgently with total intimacy and lack of shame about the most difficult experiences in his life.” (Olivia Laing, 30:39)
• The Power of Artistic Transmission ([33:39]):
  • Laing describes how encounters in the archive—listening to tape diaries, handling Warhol’s corsets, etc.—could be “practice grounds for intimacy,” even with the dead. She shares a quote from Wojnarowicz:
    • “I want [my works] to go out, away from me, almost as if they’re broadcasting on their own frequency. And I want them to find somebody who hears that frequency, and I want them to meet that person.” (paraphrased) ([35:10])
  • This, Laing says, speaks to how art can alleviate the pain of loneliness.

Henry Darger: Poverty, Outsidership, and Art Beyond Markets

• Outsider Art and Vulnerability ([38:54]):
  • Darger, often mythologized as a “caricature of loneliness,” is reframed as someone whose art is about vulnerability, exclusion, and poverty—not just psychological strangeness. His story is politicized: “He was a person who wanted to make art and didn’t have the resources to make art.” (Olivia Laing, 40:38)
  • Discussion of the posthumous commercialization of outsider art.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the universality of loneliness:
  “Loneliness, I began to realize, was a populated place, a city in itself.” (Olivia Laing, quoted by Charlie Porter, 06:32)

• On why not to write a memoir:
  “A memoir would continue that myth: it’s just me out here on my own. And what I wanted to show instead was the many citizens of the lonely city.” (Olivia Laing, 06:58)

• On technology as both bridge and barrier:
  “He has these devices that mean people are attracted to him... and at the same time, he’s keeping them at a really safe distance.” (Olivia Laing, on Andy Warhol, 18:20)

• On discovering Wojnarowicz’s importance:
  “He can speak through the page directly to so many different aspects. The personal, the childhood experience, and then the sense of... becoming part of a stigmatized group and the horrors of that.” (Olivia Laing, 31:15)

• On making ‘friends with dead people’ in the archive:
  “This guy said, ‘Oh, it seems like you cured your loneliness by making friends with dead people.’ And I was like, yeah, sure did. Worked really well. Which it did, because I think... it was like a practice ground for intimacy.” (Olivia Laing, 33:39)

• On the artistic mission (Wojnarowicz):
  “I want [my works] to go out, away from me, almost as if they’re broadcasting on their own frequency. And I want them to find somebody who hears that frequency, and I want them to meet that person.” (Paraphrased by Laing, 35:10)

• On outsider artist Henry Darger:
  “He was a person who wanted to make art and didn’t have the resources to make art. And I think, again, that sort of very politicized story was absolutely key to the narrative I wanted to tell.” (Olivia Laing, 40:38)

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Important Timestamps

• [03:51] Laing on the instinct to write about loneliness and the taboo of it
• [06:32] “Loneliness... was a populated place, a city in itself.”
• [09:40] The goal: understanding rather than curing loneliness
• [12:26] Pivot from writing about writers to visual artists; why art?
• [14:13] Language fails in loneliness; art as a lifeline
• [16:44-18:20] Reinterpreting Andy Warhol; technology as a barrier and draw
• [24:40-25:55] Social media, contemporary loneliness, and political exploitation
• [27:25] Warhol and Valerie Solanas: Gendered destinies of loneliness
• [30:17-31:15] Discovering Wojnarowicz; the role of the archive
• [33:39-35:10] “Curing loneliness by making friends with dead people”; art as transmission of intimacy
• [38:54-40:38] Henry Darger: outsider art, poverty, myth, and vulnerability

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Thematic Summary

Ten years on, The Lonely City remains uncannily relevant: as both a map for navigating solitude and an act of communal recognition. Laing and Porter’s conversation—nuanced, generous, and personal—shows how experiences of loneliness are not shameful exceptions but fundamental facets of modern life. Visual art, archives, and the lives of artists like Warhol, Wojnarowicz, Solanas, and Darger are revealed as beacons, not just portraits of isolation but guides to understanding, beauty, and possibility even (or especially) in solitude.

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For anyone who has ever felt alone—even (or especially) in the city—this episode is a thoughtful, moving guide to the art of being with yourself and, through art, reaching out for connection.

Transcript

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[Mia Sorrenti]

Jobs welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm senior producer Mia Sorrenti. What does it mean to be lonely in a world that has never been more connected? Today's episode is part one of our recent live event with writer and critic Olivia Lange. Lange joined us at Union Chapel to discuss loneliness, intimacy and the search for connection. Marking the 10th anniversary of the Lonely City, Lange reflects on the enduring questions at the heart of their landmark work how we experience solitude, why we seek connection, and what artists can teach us about living with isolation. Let's join our host, Charlie Porter, now live at Union Chapel.

[Charlie Porter]

Hello everyone. My name is Charlie Porter. This is Olivia Lang.

[Olivia Laing]

Hi.

[Charlie Porter]

So thank you all for being here for this Intelligence Squared event. The music you just heard was David's Dream by Midland, who is here tonight, and it features a recording, an audio diary by David Wojnarowicz, who we'll be talking about later. So, in 2016, Olivia Lainge's third book, the Lonely City, was published. It immediately struck a chord, and it cut through finding an eager audience. This work of personal reflection and critical rigor did something totally new, allowing readers to acknowledge and interrogate their own experience of loneliness and of being alone. It has become and continues to be a global bestseller, passed from reader to reader, an act of community, which is one of the book's lessons. Olivia has done so much since, including their eighth work, the Silver book, the novel, which is just out in paperback. And there is so much more to come. But tonight is a rare chance to talk with Olivia about the Lonely city on this 10th anniversary. Just to start, Olivia, how are you feeling about talking about the Lonely City tonight?

[Olivia Laing]

I, maybe 15 years ago, had an instinct that loneliness was something that we shared, and I feel very vindicated right now. It just feels amazing to see a room full of people who have felt those feelings and found that as a point to connect. So I guess I'm very excited for us to be talking.

[Charlie Porter]

Yeah. Great, great. So can we start by. Can you take us to how the book came to be?

[Olivia Laing]

Yeah. So I was living in New York. I was going to move to New York in a relationship. The relationship fell apart, and I moved to New York anyway. And it was very exciting. It was very creatively stimulating. I was finishing off the trip to Echo Spring, which is the previous book. And at the same time, I sort of. I fell down a well into this experience of loneliness that really was unprecedented in my life that far. I was in my mid-30s. I was very aware that my life had gone in a different direction to the people around me at the time. And it was acutely painful. But at the same time, I think quite quickly, I realized that the experience I was having was a taboo experience. It was a thing that people didn't talk about. It was a thing that you didn't want to confess to other people. And that sense that I'd sort of wandered into unexplored ground, unacknowledged ground, started to become very exciting to me. And I think really quite quickly, I started thinking, I need to write about this. And also really quite quickly, I was aware I didn't want to write a memoir. I didn't want to write just about my experience. What I wanted to do was make a map of the territory. And to do that, I needed to come at it from multiple different directions, which is where I started to think of the cast of characters.

[Charlie Porter]

Yeah, I. Okay, so I'll say now I read the book in proof. I have my proof here still with the markers from when I took it to that week's therapy with things I wanted to talk about. We hadn't met then, and I remember reading it. I remember on page eight, there are some times when you read a book, and I have to just go like,

[Olivia Laing]

it's on page eight.

[Charlie Porter]

So page eight, there's this line. Loneliness, I began to realize was a populated place, a city in itself. I was just like, oh, my God. Because it was so immediately recognizable. Can you talk about.

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Can you talk about that?

[Olivia Laing]

Absolutely. I guess that's what I was saying about the sort of instinct that it was. A loneliness, when you're experiencing it yourself, feels like you are abject and alien, that you're sort of floating somewhere in an outer space region where there's nobody else. It feels very barren. It feels very unpopulated. And that's very frightening. I think loneliness is a frightening experience. But as I was thinking about it more logically, I was aware that it's an experience that thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people experience. And that sense that it's like a secret populated place, that's what I wanted to document. And I think that's why it couldn't be a memoir, because a memoir would continue that myth. It's just me out here on my own. And what I wanted to show instead was the many citizens of the lonely city.

[Charlie Porter]

Right. And you talk about the experience of loneliness being isolating, which then compounds isolation. So if you were to write a memoir of loneliness, it would be, I'm isolated. I'm isolated. You keep retreating backwards. Right. You have to come from other angles.

[Olivia Laing]

Yeah, I think so. There's an odd thing about loneliness, which is it feels so unconfessible. You feel like if you tell people, you drive them further away. So it's like the gulf keeps growing. And I kept thinking about it in the book with this metaphor of ice. The ice just spreads and spreads. And yet I knew that that wasn't the whole story. It was like I wanted to sort of tell the shadow story, the secret story of loneliness, which is a communal story.

[Charlie Porter]

Yeah, yeah. The book. I mean, the structure of the book is so extraordinary. It's been so thrilling to go back to it, because by page eight, which is the end of the introduction, and then we're in, you've created this voice which allows the reader to feel safe in their own vulnerability. And we're gonna go to some hard places with the characters that are to come, but you create this. You create this space. And it's not hand holding. It's not like coddling. It's almost like they've kind of got to go on their own into. Through it. But the voice is so sure and, like, it's okay. And also, very importantly, as well. You say, I wanted to understand. So the word understand is there straight away. So it's not about cure or it's not about. It's understanding. Can you talk about that?

[Olivia Laing]

Yeah, that felt very, very key, that it was a journey into a state. And, you know, I've said celebration a lot. I feel like it is a kind of celebration of a place that's painful but full of fertility and richness as well.

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Yeah.

[Olivia Laing]

And I wanted it. Even the subtitle, Adventures in the Art of Being Alone was very deliberate. That I wanted people to feel that they were going to be met in their own painful experience, but that we weren't going to just sort of flounder there, that we were really going to travel, that we were really going to think about other people's experience. And, you know, it's a book of feeling, but also it really is a book of thinking. And I think that combination of being able to experience difficult feelings, but also to apply intellect to difficult feelings, to. To really be able to enter into them inevitably alleviates some of the pain of them, particularly the pain of the shame that you carry around.

[Charlie Porter]

Yeah. And it's also, there's no victimhood, so there's no sense of, like, you're lonely, but you're not. It's like the sense of understanding that everyone experiences it. So it's therefore not trying to, like, stop something, but actually be like, no, we're going to look at what it is and then therefore look at queerness or outside of position. So, like, it's actually lives lived as they are, Right?

[Olivia Laing]

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, this book came out 10 years ago, was written sort of 15, 12 years ago. And at that point, I think there was a really, really widespread feeling that loneliness was kind of the fault of the lonely person, that there was something off about them. And I think I felt that, and I think many people who experience loneliness feel that. But also people who aren't in a situation of loneliness kind of feel probably something about that person they're not trying hard enough. And I think what really changed that more than anything was the pandemic. Because then people who had very rich and strong social ties realized actually it's consequential. Something happens in your life. A divorce, a new baby, a house move, a bereavement, and you enter this place that can feel very frightening. But I think that sort of mass, communal, international realization that loneliness is essentially random was kind of helpful.

[Charlie Porter]

Yeah. The book is about visual artists. How did. How did that decision get made? How did you come to art being the subject matter.

[Olivia Laing]

Yeah, because my first two books were very much about writers. I'd been a literary journalist. I was very caught inside writing about writers. And I think I started to hate it when I wrote the Trip to Echo Spring. You know, it's a book about alcoholics. It's about people who are professional liars, and also fiction writers. And the sort of hall of Mirrors feeling of working my way through that book made me think, I don't want to use words to examine words anymore. That coincided with moving to New York, being around visual artists much more, becoming really fascinated by visual art and realizing that this is essentially a visual story. When we think of urban loneliness, we think of it in exactly the way that I describe at the beginning. It's like you're behind glass, you're looking out and you're seeing windows, and you're seeing other people moving behind those windows, but you can't reach them. It's like a perfect metaphor for loneliness, but also it is the. You know, it's axiomatic of loneliness. And I think once I realized that that was the key, I could follow that like a little footpath, and that took me to Hopper, and from there I could kind of follow different paths. But it started as a visual narrative.

[Charlie Porter]

Also, you write about loneliness preventing language, both from, as you said, that you can't feel like you can't talk to anyone about it, but also actually in the state of loneliness, also you lose language or you actually can't speak so much. So actually, the visual art becomes a way to go beyond language, right?

[Olivia Laing]

Yeah, absolutely. And maybe that's why it felt like such a lifeline. The story in the lonely city that I felt most embarrassed about putting in, but that many people have said, oh, that's an experience I share, is every morning going to the same coffee shop in New York called Ninth Street Espresso and trying to order my coffee. And maybe my voice was too quiet, or maybe it was my accent, or maybe I was using the wrong terminology. But I could never quite make that interaction work. And it was humiliating and kind of ridiculous, but I was too sad to find it funny. In retrospect, it was funny, but so many people. People have come up to me and said that I've had that moment where I just can't make myself heard. And it's incredibly destabilizing and frightening to feel like you can no longer manage minor social interactions. These aren't like, heartfelt, intense conversations. It's just a small machinery of day to day. Life. So, yeah, I think I was feeling very wary of language. And then images was like this beautiful path that opened up. That was a way to communicate something.

[Charlie Porter]

And it was the first time you were writing about art in a full way. So actually it was new use of language as well for you. It was a new.

[Olivia Laing]

It was completely new. It was completely exciting. And I think for the first time, I felt like I'm writing the way I want to be writing. I found the way through and, you know, I'm. It's still my mode. I'm still writing about visual arts. So I think I just clicked into gear on my third book in a way that I hadn't quite with the first two. And also it felt reckless. It felt like I was doing something more risky, that I'd learned how to do something. Maybe I was doing it quite carefully, and then I was doing something that was like, it's not my territory, but I'm coming and doing it anyway. And I think that felt quite exciting.

[Interviewer or Moderator]

Yeah.

[Charlie Porter]

And one of the figures that's super important in the book is Andy Warhol. And I still to this day, use what you wrote as an example of what you can do with criticism, with writing, because there's the presumption that everything has been written about Andy Warhol. There's nothing to say about Andy Warhol. And you present Andy Warhol in this entirely new way. And the way that I feel feels more authentic than any way I've ever read about Andy Warhol, which is about loneliness.

[Olivia Laing]

Yeah.

[Charlie Porter]

Can you talk about how you realized Warhol?

[Olivia Laing]

It's funny, this weekend, gone, I was putting together the music that we were playing as you all came in, and one of the tracks was Lou Reed's Songs for Dreller, which is an album about Andy Warhol. And I don't think I'd heard that when I was writing about it, but it has that same sort of tenderness about. About him as a person, sort of perennially misunderstood. So the point at which I don't think Andy Warhol was probably even in the first proposal, but as I was putting the book together, I knew I was interested in language and language failures. I think I wrote the whole chapter about Paris, Texas, and it was terrible, which is really sad, because I love Paris, Texas, but it didn't work, so I sort of needed to come back and do it again. And I watched this video of Andy on a chat show. I think it was the Ed Sullivan show, and Ed Sullivan's there, and Andy and Edie Sedgwick are sitting next to each other. And Ed Sullivan's, you know, in that sort of chat show host way, very confident, asking questions. And Andy's just leaning to Edie's ear and whispering in her ear. And he's flushing and he's squirming and. And I suddenly saw this other side to this person who I'd always thought was super slick, super superficial and really quite boring. Tapped out boring. And it was like this new way into really the whole world of Warhol. Every piece of work that I came to after seeing that really opened up in a new way because of this relationship with loneliness, social anxiety and desire to connect, but terror of intimacy. And the thing that became so fascinating was how he used technology in a way that I think is really like how we use it. So he has the Polaroid camera, he has the tape recorder, he has these. He has the super eights for the screen test. He has these devices that mean people are attracted to him, they want to be around him, they're drawn in. And at the same time, he's keeping them at a really safe distance. He's taking a photo with a big flash. He's recording their words rather than having to have a conversation. And that sense of technology is something to mediate the frightening gap between people. This is exactly what we were all starting, starting to do at that point, 15, 14 years ago.

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[Charlie Porter]

One of the amazing things about the book, reading it again now, is how well it stands up so often. Books written five, ten years ago, then suddenly technology changes and it's like, oh, doesn't work. But the language you use about machines, both in terms of Warhol and then your own use of them, it reads like you're writing it today. Take it. Maybe change the word Facebook for thingy buddy. It doesn't matter, like. And so you're writing the book just at this moment when the machine becomes mediated in loneliness or actually, no, you're saying that it was there already with Warhol or he was a harbinger of it.

[Olivia Laing]

I think he, in that very Warhol way, I think he foresaw something about how people would invest in technology, require technology. I think his sort of acute vulnerability and sensitivity meant that he was like an early adopter of technology in these ways. And it's funny because in the book I'm still kind of positive about social media. There's positivity about Twitter. I loved Craigslist, which tragically no longer

[Charlie Porter]

exists

[Olivia Laing]

because they felt sort of, you know, a place of contact, a place of connection. And especially if you were struggling with verbal language, they were a place where you could practice interactions. And I think what the book didn't totally foresee, although the Josh Harris stuff really does see it, is how weaponized technology would become, how dangerous technology would become in terms of its use by both social media barons and the far right. So that was something that I really didn't foresee. It's still quite innocent.

[Charlie Porter]

And they're wielding lonely. They're wielding loneliness as a tool to keep people on it and like that.

[Olivia Laing]

And that people's. I think people's loneliness has really been exploited, especially by the far right, especially by things like the manosphere, that the loneliness of young men is predated upon deliberately for commercial and political gain, and that the net effect into the world of that, of drawing people into communities bound by hatred is to expand loneliness out that anyone that they are then making pariahs, vulnerable pariahs, their loneliness sort of expands. So it's had this sort of horrific loneliness escalating effect that I think was quite hard to gauge. It's funny, actually. It's 10 years today since the Brexit vote. And that whole sense of how technology was used around that, that's where it really started to change, I think.

[Charlie Porter]

Right. Yeah. In the Warhol chapter, you then do something very powerful, which is you then open up space for Valerie Solanis,

[Interviewer or Moderator]

who

[Charlie Porter]

was a radical thinker and who then became known for shooting Andy Warhol. Can you talk about how you came to create the space for Valor or how it felt? Because they're very equal in the space they're given.

[Olivia Laing]

I had this sense with lots of the chapters, but especially this one, that there's like a lead character and then a sort of shadow character. And with Warhol and Valerie Solanas, it's like they're very similar. They're from immigrant backgrounds, they're super bright, they're very visionary, and they struggle with connection. One of those people becomes one of the most successful artists in the world. Probably at the time, the most successful artist in the world, the most famous, instantly recognizable. And the other one, prison, abject, mental illness, homelessness, and dies in a motel and isn't found for days. And I felt like that was a narrative that was very much about gender, that there wasn't a road by which Valerie Solanis could become Andy Warhol. There wasn't a possibility for her to live that life. And I wanted to have people in the book who were super sociable and successful, but also struggled with loneliness. But I also wanted to have people in the book who were absolute outliers and to make it very clear that that wasn't just about their personalities. It isn't just even about mental illness. It's also political, that there are many political reasons why she was so marginalized, so. So rejected, and why she lived such a sort of brutally isolated life.

[Charlie Porter]

And they come together at one point almost like. And then split apart and then.

[Olivia Laing]

And they're collaborating. Before she shot Warhol, they were people who, you know, spent time together, worked on projects together. He got spooked by her and, you know, she clearly was a person who was unwell, but at the same time, her paranoia took over. She became more and more suspicious of Warhol till she ended up shooting him. But then the shooting itself plunges Warhol into a new experience of loneliness. He said he felt like. He felt like he had died. He did die. His heart stopped and he felt like he never was Quite sure that he'd come back. So after that, all his experiences were sort of mediated by this real terror of otherness and the kind of wild, crazy sociability of the first iteration of the factory starts to become much more boundaried, much more commercial, much more sort of corporate, because he was too frightened of the kind of people whose, you know, whose energies he'd found so stimulating and exciting. At first,

[Charlie Porter]

I forgot to mention that There's a new 10th anniversary edition with a new cover, which is a work by the artist David Wojnarowicz. Can you talk about how you came to discover the work of Wojnarowicz?

[Olivia Laing]

My friend Matt Wolf, who is here because he's flown in from New York, is the person who introduced me to David Wojnarowicz. And he was like, you can't write this book without having David Wojnarowicz. And I was like, david who? And part of the appeal, well, the appeal is vast.

[Interviewer or Moderator]

But

[Olivia Laing]

what I was aware of very rapidly was that there was an absolutely massive archive of Wojnarowicz work. So I think I started with the Rambo pictures. And this is this. This is one of the Rambo pictures. And they immediately again, had that visual narrative, like an Edward Hopper of this person who is in an urban space, and yet they're alien. They're not like anyone around them, they're an observer, but they're also observed. They're very separate. So I knew basically from that point that I was interested. And then Wojnarowicz's voice got hold of me. You all heard his incredibly atmospheric, deep speaking voice. And I mean that, but also his voice on the page, his capacity for speaking very urgently with total intimacy and lack of shame about the most difficult experiences in his life. He came from an abusive family, he was homeless as a teenager. He was a rent boy. He became an artist, found a community, always struggled with closeness and relationships, despite being very beloved. And then AIDS came and his community, his loved ones, began to sicken, began to die. And then he was diagnosed. And the bit of tape that we heard from Harry's music was deep in his HIV positive period when he used to just record tape journals. He'd wake up in the middle of the night or he'd be driving and he'd record. And I think as soon as I heard that voice, I was like, well, this is the central person of the book because this is somebody who can speak through the page directly to so many different aspects. The personal, the childhood experience, and then the sense of. Of becoming part of a stigmatized Group and the horrors of that, the terrors of that.

[Charlie Porter]

Something very clever happens when you introduce Wojnarowicz, and it's to do with the archive, because you go to Fayol's library. And it struck me today, thinking this through, that the book is called the Lonely City. But then the subtitle, Adventures in the Art of Being Alone. Alone can actually be a generative good thing. And writing a book is a very alone state of being necessarily alone, and necessarily alone, not necessarily lonely. And something happens in you in the first hundred or so pages. You're talking about the coffee incident or moving. Moving places or how you're feeling. And then suddenly this new energy comes of, like, I'm going to go to the archive.

[Olivia Laing]

Yeah.

[Charlie Porter]

I'm going to watch things. Can you talk about that sense of aloneness?

[1-800-Contacts Advertiser]

Yeah.

[Olivia Laing]

Because that really is where it started to change for me, was these very deep encounters that happened in the archive. And after the book came out, I did a radio program, and sometimes people interviewing you are very interested, and sometimes they're kind of not very interested. And this guy said, oh, it seems like you cured your loneliness by making friends with dead people. And I was like, yeah, sure did. Worked really well. Which it did, because I think what was happening in those archival encounters was it was like a practice ground for intimacy. I was reading Wojnarowicz's diaries, you know, stack after stack of diaries. I was listening to the audio tapes. I was in the Warhol Archive handling the corsets that he wore after Valerie Solana shot him. He had to wear surgical corsets around his waist. I was looking at the wigs that, again, he had a lot of shame about. They were very protective for him. And these things were a real physical encounter with the vulnerability of others. They were often staggeringly beautiful. And I think that's what you mean about this sort of shift in tone is it suddenly becomes this escape, especially with the Wojnarowicz archive, this intense encounter with beauty, but also rawness, difficulty, complexity, ambiguity. It was. I wasn't alone anymore. I was engaged in co thinking, I was engaged in co feeling. And I again felt really pleased and relieved when I was reading a conversation between Nan Goldin and Wojnarowicz in Interview magazine. One of those long, unedited. Or maybe it was bom, one or the other. It was one of those long, unedited conversations. And Nan Goldin said to David, what do you want a work of art to do in the world? Why are you doing this? Why are you making things? And he said, I want Them to go out, away from me, almost as if they're broadcasting on their own frequency. And I want them to find somebody who hears that frequency, and I want them to meet that person. And I thought that was a. The most beautiful description of what a work of art can do, but also was what I was experiencing as this is alleviating my feeling of isolation. Isolation. It's not completely ending my loneliness, but it's alleviating my feeling of being alone in my loneliness.

[Charlie Porter]

Right. And what Warren Roverich is doing is often, for the earliest, at least, considered unseen by art industry. So it's him feeding into his work and it's expanding out into all these different forms, all these different disciplines.

[Olivia Laing]

Yeah.

[Charlie Porter]

Pushing into how it is to be a queer, lonely, angry, angry, ignored. So many different words you can say. But so it's also watching someone use art to try and explore themselves. I don't know about if it's understand themselves, but reveal themselves or to say it.

[Olivia Laing]

Yeah. And also there are finished paintings. There are finished works. But a huge amount of Wojnarowicz's work is unfinished. Not in. He couldn't finish it, but that it's always in flux. He'd recycle things. He reuse a film, he'd reuse music. He'd have images that burrowed away at him that he kept coming back to. He'd use them in new ways. So you get this sense that it's, you know, it's very uncynical work. It's not created in a cynical way. It's created out of somebody trying to make a dream language because they have something totally urgent to say. They have to say it. And I think that sense of art. And maybe if I'd known more about the art world or what art writing was, I wouldn't have responded so intensely to that. I would have thought, oh, this isn't how it's supposed to be. But the rawness of it and the. I don't mean rawness. I mean, like, he was doing something with it. He wasn't making work to sell. He was doing something. He was trying to. Trying to build a new language, to say something unsayable. And that feeling, it's almost like you get electric shocks from it.

[Charlie Porter]

Right. And this sense of, like, art that is being made to do it, to make it also is then in Henry Darger, Right?

[Olivia Laing]

Yeah.

[Charlie Porter]

Can you talk about him?

[Olivia Laing]

Yeah. And he was so important that in some ways he was like the caricature of loneliness. The janitor whose work was never seen in his lifetime. You know, that's the sort of hokey version of it. And I'd read so much about Dagga. Unlike Wojnarowicz, I'd known about Henry Darger for maybe 20 years. I'd thought about him a lot. And there were all these myths that were like, you know, he was even in his biographies. He was mentally ill. He had all these sort of florid mental illnesses. Maybe he was a serial killer. He's this person who's very suspicious. And why is he making this art, which is about vulnerable young girls and violent, powerful men? I don't know if you've checked the news lately, but that's actually the world we actually live in. And he was recording that. He was recording those states of vulnerability and violence. But the thing that I found most moving about him, and still I think is one of the most moving incidents in the book is. Is I went to the Dager Room, which is a recreation of his little room in Chicago in Intuit, which is the Museum of Outsider Art. And I was kind of poking around, looking at stuff. There was no one there. There was no attendant. You're really on your own in this room. And there was stuff that you could definitely brand as creepy. You know, pictures of girls with their eyes blacked out. And then I started looking at the. Like, the tools. And he found stuff in the street. He didn't really have any money. He'd occasionally buy paints which he'd hand labeled with these sort of funny little labels, but he'd find little stubs of pencils, and then he'd get syringes that he found. It was completely apparent that he was doing that, so they'd last longer. And it suddenly became a narrative about poverty and exclusion. It wasn't a narrative about somebody being crazy, like, almost. I don't know, like a baddie. And Scooby Doo is how he's presented. He was a person who wanted to make art and didn't have the resources to make art. And I think, again, that sort of very politicized story was absolutely key to the narrative I wanted to tell.

[Charlie Porter]

And their story. I mean, his story, where the art is never seen until after he dies, and then only then is it kind of rescued. Almost. It's gonna say, and it's rescued.

[Olivia Laing]

But also, suddenly it's moved into a commercial sphere. That wasn't really his intention for it. I don't know whether he would have been pleased or not, and I don't really want to speculate about that. But, like, Wojnarowicz, he was making art for specific personal reasons that had nothing to do with an art market.

[Charlie Porter]

Right? Yeah.

[Mia Sorrenti]

Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by me, Mia Sorrenti and it was edited by Mark Roberts. For ad free episodes and full length recordings, you can become a [e-mail] membership and if you'd like to join us at future live events, you can find our full program and buy tickets [e-mail] attend. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thanks for joining us.

[Olivia Laing]

Close your eyes, exhale, feel your body

[1-800-Contacts Advertiser]

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[Olivia Laing]

Sorry.

[1-800-Contacts Advertiser]

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[Charlie Porter]

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[Interviewer or Moderator]

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