Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y | the Adam Curtis phenomena rave

Adam Curtis is a British television journalist who does not consider himself an artist, but the artistic world is becoming increasingly fascinated by how he has been able to break down boundaries between art and modern political reportage. The d-i-a-l HISTORY: Adam Curtis Rave is the first complete Czech retrospective of his work – it presents ten documentary films and series depicting the period from the onset of the nineties to the present day. The films will be projected on large screens in the industrial premises of the Nová Perla National Gallery. The festival also includes two documents made by Belgian artists and filmmaker Johan Grimonprez, whose work resonates with Curtis’ political themes and it is regarded as a revolutionary work of Curtis’ classical art. During the evening you will also see a laser-video show created by Lukáš Dřevján a.k.a. OXOO.

Curtis' films are unique in content, visual, and sound effects and the experience of watching them while being surrounded by the decline of industrial history, where Perla is located, provokes unanswered and unsettled question in a focused viewer. At the end of Bitter Lake, which is highly sceptical of our capacity to understand the contemporary world, the narrator states: “What we need is a new story. One that we can trust.”  But are these stories also about us, the inhabitants of eternal satellites? Do we actually live in the world of our stories when our views often change based on the influential sphere which we are currently under? Do we not take a role in Adam Curtis’ world where we have never understood the story of the Western world but live the dream of being part of it?

Adam Curtis has worked for the British Broadcast Corporation since 1990 and has produced dozens of award-winning documentaries and series for the BBC. His education in social science and a unique access to film archives have greatly influenced his specific style, effortlessly combining reporting with experimental film techniques, unusual soundtracks together with Curtis' unmistakable vocal commentaries. What unifies his films is the tireless effort to decrypt what or who actually is responsible for the major socio-political events of the current world, and to give some sense to the vague stories, tales and interpretations. Curtis almost obsessively collects fragments of the well-known or half-forgotten past recorded on film or videos, looks for context within the grey elite and neglected heroes, and compiles them into his own unconventional audio-visual story in contrast to the main or middle stream grey history which is created based on declarations made by governments and parliamentary investigation committees.

Curtis has created his latest documents as straightforward online presentations to avoid the limitations of traditional time formats. He is a frequent guest of talk shows and film festivals, and his popularity in the world of art has further allowed him to cooperate on multi-genre projects with Massive Attack, Punch Drunk and Damon Albarn.

Curtis' exploration of the world primarily represents the view as seen from Great Britain and by Freud and deeply influenced by Darwin, as well as dynamic, modern but caste-based society whose powers and intellectual elites have never lost the ambition to set history and indeed the history of the planet despite their historical defeats. Today, the already renowned Curtis interprets the meanings, but we shall consider whether we really understand it, or whether the elegance of a fresh interpretation based on mind-absorbing media images just excites us and we have succumbed yet to another enticing fiction about ourselves.

PROGRAMME

Friday, September 15

Screening Room 1 (Main Gallery)

6pm
Bitter Lake (136´)

9pm
Dial History  (68´)

Screening Room 2 (Concrete Garden)

7pm
The Mayfair Set (4x60´, 15 min. break between parts)

Screening Room 3 (The Rotunda)

6pm
It Felt Like a Kiss (54´, loop)

Saturday, September 16

Screening Room 1 (Main Gallery)

5.30pm
Hypernormalisation (170´)

8.00pm
Adam Curtis Rave Party s VJ Oxoo

Screening Room 2 (Concrete Garden)

2.00pm
Century of the Self (2x60´, 15 min. break between parts)

4.30pm
The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom (3x60´, 15 min. break between parts)

8.00pm
The Power of Nightmares (3x60, 15 min. break between parts)

Screening Room 3 (The Rotunda)

2.00pm
Dial History (68´, loop)

Sunday, September 17 

Screening Room 1 (Main Gallery)

5.30pm
Shadow World  (90´)

7.30pm
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (3x60´, 5 min. break between parts)

Screening Room 2 (Concrete Garden)

2.-8pm
Pandora´s Box: Six Fables from the Age of Science (6x 55´, 15 min. break between parts)

Screening Room 3 (The Rotunda)

2pm
Bitter Lake (136´, loop)

Adam Curtis And His Movies