DIFFERENT STRANDS OF SIMILAR IDEA TO SORT OUT

Entertainment is a daily constant in the western world. Music, television and film, as forms of virtual reality, have run parallel to our lived experience for decades, often intertwining with cultural/historical events. I argue that our experience of reality and subsequent memories are increasingly affected by consumption of entertainment media – the films we watch, the books we read, the music we listen to while walking down the street.

Music is particularly interesting because we listen to it as we work, exercise, walk – as a soundtrack it gives the mundane everyday a cinematic feel.

Television, film and literature feed us exciting, inspirational narratives as we spend our free time at home or in pubs.

As I try to refine the concept I keep thinking of how we remember the Vietnam war: the protest culture in the U.S.A. ultimately became a soundtrack to the conflict – and in my mind it romanticises. Rolling Stones, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Buffalo Springfield

Montage of archive footage set to music nearly always conjures nostalgia, no matter what the content is – can test this out on 2010s

idea to compose multi-media installation where images of depressing global issues set to music.

idea to compile playlist of 2010s, with Times magazine’s A Decade in Pictures set out for people to read.

It feels like the counter-culture props up the establishment in the documentary template of juxtaposition and montage. Set to the sounds of The Stone Roses, Margaret Thatcher is remembered through a nostalgic lens.

John Akomfrah

Adam Curtis