This weekend I headed up to the Manchester International Festival to see what can only be described as a sensory overload of inspiration and information as I watched Adam Curtis V Massive Attack at the Mayfield Depot, an abandoned train depot behind Piccadilly Station.
Described in Curtis' words as, "a collaboration between myself and the brilliant Robert del Naja of Massive Attack. The best way we can describe it is "a Gilm" - a new way of integrating a gig with a film that has a powerful overall narrative and emotional individual stories."
Curtis goes on to describe, "The show will be a bit of a total experience. You will be surrounded by all kinds of images and sounds. But it is also about ideas. It tells a story about how a new system of power has risen up in the modern world to manage and control us. A rigid and static system that has found in those images and sounds a way of enveloping us in a thin two-dimensional version of the past."
And what a total experience it was. Surrounded by 11 enormous projections, you become enveloped by the imagery being pumped into the space, watching as the quick succession of editing, intermixed with words played out a theory of power. As the images bombarded your visionary perception from every angle, even on the periphery this was only heightened sensorily as Massive Attack accompanied the visuals with sound. Sounds so intense you felt it right through you to the core, often on the edge of being unbearable in volume, pushing you harder and harder into the two-dimensional world.
Above is the trailer they released about the experience, but to be honest, the experience was something quite unbelievable and unexplainable. I can still feel the bass in my heart and the weight of the words in my minds eye, absolutely extraordinary! Thank you.
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