Planning Future Ruins

Ghost Milk by Iain Sinclair and the Olympic Waste Land

Abstract

Going against the grain of Olympic celebrations, Iain Sinclair warned against the disastrous consequences of the Grand Project in Ghost Milk. Instead of the promised regeneration, he could only foresee waste, contamination and the erasure of local culture, while predicting that the brand new Olympic superstructure would soon turn into ruins. Sinclair documents the legacy of a lost place, mourning the annihilation of sheds and familiar haunts. Sinclair engages with modern art, pitting Kapoor against Gormley, to demystify the Olympic epic. He maps the failure of other significant grand projects and former Olympic parks, using psychogeographic drift and the motif of the Northwest Passage, to articulate dissent.