Post by howard on Mar 3, 2013 14:37:45 GMT -5
Adam Curtis is a Brit filmmaker who is great. I stumbled on this interview with him, which is very egghead-y and artsy.
www.e-flux.com/journal/in-conversation-with-adam-curtis-part-i/
this interview is far-ranging, touching on themes I find essential. Among them, the ebb and flow of individualism and collectivism over the course of American history; the failures of the focus upon the individual's thoughts, emotions, beliefs, to the exclusion of external and objective realities; the changing mechanisms of political/social power and the current dominance of the power structure over the behavior and thought of the masses. Two quotes that are examples:
"That fixation on the primacy of individual experience and feeling is not going to go away. But we’re beginning to realize two things: first, that this individualism is limited, and second, that when things get tough economically, socially, and politically, and you are on your own, you feel isolated, and you feel weak."
"I had worked out that that we were beginning to live in an increasingly complicated age where power worked in all sorts of ways other than how it was understood by political journalists, but I had no way of articulating that. I entered academia at the moment when the way power works in the modern world was basically becoming much wider and far more intricate. It flowed through culture and consumerism and public relations. It flowed through scientific ideas, and how those scientific ideas were then taken up and turned into technocratic dreams—and dystopias. It flowed through modern ideas drawn from psychotherapy and how to express yourself as an individual. I instinctively recognized that this had happened, but I had no idea how to deal with it, because academia hadn’t realized it yet. So in a way I turned my back on academia and went into television, went to the other extreme. I learned how to do trash."
He had an exhibition of his films in New York:
www.e-flux.com/program/adam-curtis-the-desperate-edge-of-now/
I have only seen a fraction of his work, but his film The Century of Self is fantastic and essential. It is available online, I think at youtube.
yeah, it is egg-head-y. But I love Curtis and his atypical ways of seeing and explaining our world.
www.e-flux.com/journal/in-conversation-with-adam-curtis-part-i/
this interview is far-ranging, touching on themes I find essential. Among them, the ebb and flow of individualism and collectivism over the course of American history; the failures of the focus upon the individual's thoughts, emotions, beliefs, to the exclusion of external and objective realities; the changing mechanisms of political/social power and the current dominance of the power structure over the behavior and thought of the masses. Two quotes that are examples:
"That fixation on the primacy of individual experience and feeling is not going to go away. But we’re beginning to realize two things: first, that this individualism is limited, and second, that when things get tough economically, socially, and politically, and you are on your own, you feel isolated, and you feel weak."
"I had worked out that that we were beginning to live in an increasingly complicated age where power worked in all sorts of ways other than how it was understood by political journalists, but I had no way of articulating that. I entered academia at the moment when the way power works in the modern world was basically becoming much wider and far more intricate. It flowed through culture and consumerism and public relations. It flowed through scientific ideas, and how those scientific ideas were then taken up and turned into technocratic dreams—and dystopias. It flowed through modern ideas drawn from psychotherapy and how to express yourself as an individual. I instinctively recognized that this had happened, but I had no idea how to deal with it, because academia hadn’t realized it yet. So in a way I turned my back on academia and went into television, went to the other extreme. I learned how to do trash."
He had an exhibition of his films in New York:
www.e-flux.com/program/adam-curtis-the-desperate-edge-of-now/
I have only seen a fraction of his work, but his film The Century of Self is fantastic and essential. It is available online, I think at youtube.
yeah, it is egg-head-y. But I love Curtis and his atypical ways of seeing and explaining our world.