Massive Attack vs Adam Curtis
Manchester, New York, Duisburg, 2013
United Visual Artists have a long and ongoing collaborative relationship with the band Massive Attack. Since their first project together in 2003, the studio has worked closely with Robert Del Naja developing concepts and designs for the visual aspect of the band’s live performances. Often content is politically charged, topical, thought-provoking and with a strong social conscience, sometimes multi-lingual and location-specific.
In 2013 UVA were commissioned by the Manchester International Festival to co-design Adam Curtis Vs Massive Attack, a narrative live experience staged in the Mayfield Depot, a disused Edwardian warehouse in Manchester.
Featuring film by documentarian Adam Curtis and live performance by Massive Attack, eleven screens surround the audience of 2000 to form a three-dimensional world which shocks people into realising that the world less enchanting than it may seem.
UVA choreographed the experience’s transition between film and live music, acting as architects of performance environment for the performance and designing the composition of the film’s multi-screen presentation. Together music, images and set design combine to create a provocative, pan-sensory, collective, almost hallucinatory, experience.
Adam Curtis Vs Massive Attack was subsequently performed at the Ruhrtriennale in Duisburg and The Park Avenue Armoury in NYC.
Photographs by United Visual Artists, James Medcraft and John Adrien
