On the 22nd of May this year Paper Visual Art Journal organised a free event that was hosted at the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, to discuss some elements of the recent work by British filmmaker Adam Curtis, particularly his 2016 essay-film Hypernormalisation. We invited Alice Butler of the Irish Film Institute; Francis Halsall of the National College of Art and Design, Dublin; and independent filmmaker Tadhg O’Sullivan (The Great Wall) to contribute to this discussion. The major focus of the talk was the content and form of Curtis’s argumentation in this film and how this form of argumentation has evolved from earlier works.

Here are some photographs, an edited audio file of the conversation, and two links to two sections of footage that are referred to during the conversation.

You will need to move from this file to the video clips as they are mentioned in the discussion.

Reference/passage 1 – here for 5 minutes.
Reference/passage 2 – here.

Many thanks to Karl Burke, so too the Douglas Hyde Gallery, particularly Rachel McIntyre, for their help with this project.
Thank you also to Alice Butler, Francis Halsall and Tadhg O’Sullivan.
This event was kindly supported by the Arts Council.