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In Conversation with Adam Curtis, Part III Will Take Place As a Live Interview at E-Flux, New York, on April 14Th

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In Conversation with Adam Curtis, Part III Will Take Place As a Live Interview at E-Flux, New York, on April 14Th Since the early 1990s Adam Curtis has made a number of serial documentaries and films for the BBC using a playful mix of journalistic reportage and a wide range of avant-garde filmmaking techniques. The films are linked through their interest in using and reassembling the fragments of the past – recorded on film and video―to try 01/13 and make sense of the chaotic events of the present. I first met Adam Curtis at the Manchester International Festival thanks to Alex Poots, and while Curtis himself is not an artist, many artists over the last decade have become increasingly interested in how his films break down the divide between art and modern political reportage, opening up a dialogue between the Hans Ulrich Obrist two. ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThis multi-part interview with Adam Curtis began in London last December, and is the most In Conversation recent in a series of conversations published by e-flux journal that have included Raoul Vaneigem, with Adam Julian Assange, Toni Negri, and others, and I am pleased to present the second part in this issue of Curtis, Part II the journal in conjunction with a solo exhibition I have curated of Curtis’s films from 1989 to the present day. The exhibition is designed by Liam Gillick, and will be on view at e-flux in New York from February 11–April 14, 2012. In Conversation with Adam Curtis, Part III will take place as a live interview at e-flux, New York, on April 14th. – Hans Ulrich Obrist ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ→ Continued from “In Conversation with Adam Curtis, Part I.” ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊHUO: I wanted to ask you about collage, and t the way you use archival film footage as a s i r b storytelling technique, but also as a way of O h revisiting the recent past. You’ve mentioned c i r l before how important this extraordinary BBC U I I s archive has been for providing material for your t n r a a films, but how did you arrive at using the archive H P Ê , s 2 i in this way? Was it something you had in mind t 1 r 0 u 2 when you began working at the BBC? C h c m ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAC: Well, not really. One moment when I r a a d realized that I could use it was when I made a m A h — t film in 1989 called Inside Story: The Road to i 3 w 3 Terror, which was really my first experimental n # o l i film, and the moment when I found a voice. The t a a n r s r film was about the Iranian Revolution and the u e o j v French Revolution. When you’re a journalist, you n x o u l C f often do things out of desperation, because - n e I you’ve got a deadline and you’ve just got to do it. With that film, I was in a really tight spot – I’d been asked to make a film about the torture in Evin prison of the Iranian Mujahideen – a bunch of not very nice leftists who had originally started the Iranian Revolution with Khomeini, and who Khomeini then simply massacred or imprisoned in the early 1980s after he assumed power. I had been commissioned to make what 08.27.12 / 18:56:52 EDT was then considered the correct – and methodology for bringing things together! “balanced” – kind of documentary about this, ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAC: Right, it was desperation! But it was which is basically you go and make a moving film actually quite serious. I was saying, look: there is about how terrible torture is, to which the a history of a revolution 200 years earlier. And audience then go “oh dear, how terrible.” And there’s a history of a revolution that happened that’s it. But the problem was that as I ten years earlier. Let’s compare and contrast. So, researched the subject it became more in academic terms, I wasn’t being silly, though I complicated. I had great sympathy with the 02/13 did do it in a completely odd way. There was one individuals who had been tortured – but not with shot where I literally grabbed the camera, the Mujahideen, I realized once I investigated because I was bored driving through Paris, going them that I actually didn’t like them very much. I into the very underpass where Princess Diana thought they were a bunch of narrow-minded would later die, and just started filming out of dictatorial leftists who did a lot of terrible things the car. The shot goes down and enters the themselves... And yet, I was stuck with this film. darkness of the tunnel. And I took this shot, late And I thought, you can’t make fifty minutes of one night, and cut it to Beethoven’s Fidelio, the people in silhouette talking about torture. People prisoners coming out of the darkness, and then do make films like that, but, without trivializing went to a silent movie about the French what they’ve been through, I wasn’t interested in Revolution, and I made it very romantic. When I that approach. So I said, well, it’s 1989, and I’m in sent it in, everyone hated the film, just loathed it, Paris interviewing a lot of these people who have and they weren’t going to put it out. They thought fled there. And I suddenly realized, of course, I had gone mad, because the traditional liberal that there were two revolutions that went down approach is to go and make what they called parallel, but also contrasting, roads to terror. then a “moving documentary about torture.” I Let’s make a film about that. And so I spent a had done that, but it was only five minutes of the week cutting the two together, completely fifty-minute film, right? But before I could find experimentally. The people I was making it for out whether they were going to make me recut it, just thought I’d gone absolutely mad. Alan Yentob, who was the Controller of BBC2 at ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊHUO: So that’s the beginning of your that point, saw it and he went, oh, I love it, let’s A poster of the Iranian Muslim leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the window of Iran Air in Paris, France. Photo: Keystone, Getty Images. 08.27.12 / 18:56:52 EDT Film stills from Adam Curtis's documentary series Pandora's Box. 08.27.12 / 18:56:52 EDT put it out. And he did. ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAC: The Living Dead was three films about ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊHUO: So he was the first to understand memory in the construction of history. By this what you were trying to do. point, I knew that the past was open for ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAC: It was great. That’s where it started. reconstruction. So, I wanted to go back and say, And from then on, Alan Yentob just backed me. well, how was this recent failure constructed, He was really, really good to me. Then I went and and why? And unfortunately, the first film I made a six-part series called Pandora’s Box. decided to make was about how our memory of ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊHUO: And Pandora’s Box ties in with what 04/13 World War II was constructed, which was arguing you said about rationalism before. that the fact that it was a good war in our ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAC: Yes, well, I think that the generation memories doesn’t mean we’re good people. This ahead of you always tends to set you puzzles – invited a number of attacks on me, with the Daily and the thing that always puzzled me about the Mail calling me a Nazi. Allison Pearson called me post–World War II generation is: Why did they go a Nazi on television. I went from being this sort from being optimistic about science and of, like, super groovy film director to being the rationality, and things like planning, to a dark, most evil person in the world. It was an extremely almost apocalyptic pessimism in the 1970s? It’s good lesson for me. It wasn’t fun, but it taught an incredibly quick switch, and the example I just me a lot. gave you about the correct liberal way of doing a ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊHUO: It’s interesting that the artist Liam film about torture is a good one. You go out and Gillick has also worked a lot on this question of elegantly film people, sometimes in silhouette, rationality and McNamara. In urbanism, we also recounting terrible, horrible experiences – saw the failure of the idea of social planning, combined with haunting, Arvo Prt–style music which is related, wouldn’t you say? over bleak landscapes. And that’s it. I’m not ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAC: Yes. I mean, that generation of being cynical or flippant about the peoples’ technocrats – from architects to economists to experiences – but I just think that the editorial people at the RAND corporation – genuinely approach was to wrap those experiences in a believed they could plan things, didn’t they? That rigid melancholy that traps everyone – audience, was the project that I was dealing with in filmmakers, and the tortured – in a feeling of Pandora’s Box, where you have large parts of the helplessness. And it’s called moving. So I twentieth century that are about this idea of decided to do a series that went back and looked rationality. Of course, rationality and scientific at the rise and fall of that optimism about rationality are absolutely brilliant, and we science and rationality and planning to try and wouldn’t have the world we have today without understand more why it failed.
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