Led by Iain Sinclair, and edited by Trevor Datson, this is the first publication from Potential Books, a new small press associated with the Centre for Potential Literatures (LitPo) at the School of Literature and Languages, University of Surrey

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Featuring work by:

Brian Catling * Alison Cooper * Trevor Datson * Genevieve Fox * Genevieve Grant * Annie Guo * Ana Hallam * Joe Hutson * achel Lichtenstein * Stephen Mooney * Sam Murphy * Astra Papachristadoulou * Judith Popova * Iain Sinclair

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‘We would conduct our own version of the Mass Observation exercise launched in the late ‘30s of the last century. A bunch of well-intentioned snoops, social scientists, anthropologists, surrealist poets, artist-photographers, and Hampstead communists, were sent north to the industrial heartlands, to... observe. En masse. To eavesdrop in pubs. To scribble down dialogue overheard on buses and in cafés. To register this English otherness. A doomsday survey from which to contrive legislation for a better society […]

Rumours of what had been found out there trickled back to me. The reports were partial, disjointed, troubling or serene, reflecting with precision the unquiet world of the Grid. Many observers chose not to file, their blank scripts nonetheless taking equal place among the bulletins that were daily forming themselves into a mosaic in my scriptorium. Others reported back in mystic ways, according to the nature of their data.’

- Iain Sinclair, Controller.