‘I felt that [with] Mezzanine, the procedure had to be ripped up, the rulebook had to be changed’: Robert del Naja, right, and Grant Marshall. Photograph: Warren Du Preez & Nick Thornton/Warren Du Preez & Nick Thornton Jones.

“Gigs have become very formulaic these days,” adds [Adam] Curtis. “Not just gigs but all of culture – and that’s the challenge. The way you make people look again is by finding a different sort of image. And so the overall aim is to show how over the past 20 years, we’ve gone into a very static, repetitive world that surrounds us with the same images that keep us from really looking.”

…

“… It’s just not the same world any more in terms of concentration. Attention span’s the biggest commodity of all now. Data is the new oil. It’s inside your head. That’s where the value is and so is the tension. I mean, trying to get anyone to concentrate on anything when people get excited if the audience swipes down a page. If you actually stop and click,… that’s gold.”

(Adam Curtis, documentary film maker, and Robert Del Naja, a founding member of British music group Massive Attack, quoted by Nosheen Iqbal, “Massive Attack: ‘I have total faith in the next generation,’” The Guardian, 2-17-19)

(c) 2019 JMN.