Episode 6 The Culture Show


Episode 6

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Hello, welcome to The Culture Show. We're here at the Olympic Park,

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where all the action is about to kick off. So, on your marks...

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Tonight, we're talking Blur, Batman, puppets and prostheses.

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Coming up: As the Dark Knight rises,

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I meet brilliant Batman director Christopher Nolan,

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Blur talk to Miranda Sawyer,

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Mat Fraser contemplates being superhuman

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and Michael Smith ponders the peculiar world of puppets.

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First up, Blur were THE Britpop band until the last party ended

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and they wandered off to write operas

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and make cheese and such like.

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Well, now these friends reunited are scoring the sound of summer 2012.

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They've just released two new songs and are about to play the biggest gig of their career

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as part of the closing ceremony for the Olympics. Here's Miranda Sawyer.

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Hello. We're Blur. I'm Damon, I'm the singer.

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I am Graham. I play guitar.

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I've got a big, big, big bass guitar and I'm called Alex.

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I'm called Dave and I play the drums.

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# There's no other way

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# There's no other way... #

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Blur first started making music in the era of vinyl and tapes.

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They came of age during a time of CDs and now, just last month,

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they became the first ever band to preview two new tracks via Twitter.

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After splits, reconciliations and everything else,

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2012 is shaping up to be another landmark year for the band.

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But is this a new beginning or just the beginning of the end?

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# There were blue skies in my city today... #

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Under The Westway is Blur's personal response to London 2012

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and is a stark contrast to Muse's official Olympic song.

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# It's a race

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# And I'm going to win

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# Yes, I'm going to win

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Or this anthemic composition from Elbow.

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STRING ARRANGEMENT

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You're part of the Cultural Olympiad.

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There are other music elements to the Olympics.

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Muse have written a song and Elbow have written a theme.

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I think what's fantastic, is that sort of cultural, you know,

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critical mass that's been realised, where everyone's doing something.

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You can capture a moment with a song, but I think

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if it's written specifically for it, that's very difficult.

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That is why with Under The Westway I didn't write...

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I wrote something that, you know, that has a life outside.

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Muse won't be playing that song in a few years' time, will they? Not necessarily.

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-Not necessarily, no.

-But I mean, we'll still be playing Under The Westway.

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# ..still picking up shortwave

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# Somewhere they're out in space

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# It depends how you're wired

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# When the night's on fire

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# Under the Westway... #

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The Westway is the kind of kick-off point for the single

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but it is mentioned in a couple of your other songs as well.

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I have always loved it, and living underneath it,

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in the sense of having to go past it every day, it is a part of my life.

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I love it when I get on it, you know, and you just fly over,

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and then you're in a totally different part of London.

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It's a metaphor for home, really, and something that is constant.

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# ..am I lost out at sea

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# Till the tide wash me

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# Up off the Westway? #

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You all do different things and then you come together,

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-to work together, to perform.

-Yeah.

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Does that make it more freeing, the fact you only do that occasionally?

3:41:563:41:59

-Yeah.

-So it is more fun to record in that way.

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It's part of who we are, not entirely who we are.

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Over the years there have been quite a few walkabouts

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and we collect like little bees. We come in with our bags of pollen

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and we have all got new things, I suppose, to bring to it.

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Their other new track, The Puritan, with its scuzzy guitars and jabbing synths,

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will delight the hardcore Blur fan.

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# Are we institutionalised

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# By the demands of today?

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# In our regalia, are we OK? #

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Next week, the band will release their definitive box set.

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Called 21, to mark the number of years since they started,

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it features not only all seven studio albums

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but five-and-a-half hours of unreleased material and early recordings.

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It's credit to Graham, really, because he's been much more adept at keeping hold of stuff.

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Did you have a big box of tapes to go through?

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Yes, loads that have sat in a box for years and years from rehearsals.

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I used to tape them, to take them home so I could know the song.

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You collected them into this beautiful present for Blur fans,

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it's a big present.

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But there is a sense when you get given a big present like that,

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it is like the end of something.

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Is that how you feel or not?

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I don't think any of us...

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I mean, we just take it, you know, as it comes, really.

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There was such a lot. Maybe it was time for a recap and maybe it was...

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I just wanted to get those cassettes put onto a CD.

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-That was the real motivation?!

-So I could listen to them, so it was a bit easier.

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This summer the band will take centre stage at Hyde Park,

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for a concert celebrating the end of the Olympics,

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headlining a bill that includes seminal British pop acts The Specials and New Order.

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The last time Blur played the park was in 2009.

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Alex has said that 2009, in Hyde Park...

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-Alex has said a lot of things, remember.

-Yes, I do know that.

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He said the 2009 gigs at Hyde Park were the best you've ever played,

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so are you looking forward to topping that?

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Topping? It's not really about topping. It's a different decade.

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It's a different world.

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# Come on, come on, come on

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# Love's the greatest thing

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# That we have

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# I'm waiting for that feeling... #

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I hope they are equally resonant now

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and maybe something else will emerge that is unexpected.

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But I'm not trying to recreate that, we're trying to do something new,

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a new thing.

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The nice thing is we've all got lives, you know?

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So we treasure these moments that we spend together...

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GRAHAM LAUGHS

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Shall we weep?

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OK, can we all weep at the end?

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Blur perform live on Radio 2 and 6 Music on July 31st

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and that Hyde Park gig is on August 12th.

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Next, in this Olympic and Paralympic year,

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we've got wall-to-wall men and women striving to achieve their very best.

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A new exhibition at the Wellcome Collection

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examines our obsession with self-enhancement,

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from post-syphilitic silver noses to cyborgs.

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Mat Fraser questions our desire to be superhuman.

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Over the last 15 years I have done a fair amount of live artwork,

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and one of the most celebrated I did was a striptease,

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that obviously involved me taking my clothes off,

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but it involves me taking off...these.

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The concept was I'm stripping out of my perceived normality, to...

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..celebrate my beautiful freakishness,

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and apparently it was considered quite confrontational in its day.

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I've just been commissioned to make another performance piece.

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My brief, is to respond to reputations of disability,

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at various museum exhibitions,

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the first of which is the Wellcome Collection.

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Entitled Superhuman, the exhibition explores the extraordinary way

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people have tried to improve, adapt and augment their bodies

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for practical and artistic purposes.

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So this is Matthew Barney's work with Aimee Mullins,

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who is the famous double amputee ex-Paralympian and model.

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Those are amazing. I wonder if she can stand on them.

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There is a picture of her here with cheetah legs on. That's great.

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Knowing that she's a double amputee and those are prosthetics

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that have gone beyond function and into artistic and poetic design,

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I like that a lot.

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I don't think prosthetics have ever been considered as artistic objects

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or things you can make into art.

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It's always been about function.

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Wow. That's beautiful.

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Ah-ha. My people.

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This is so weird for me,

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because I actually know these people as adults now.

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Thalidomide was a morning sickness pill, marketed as a general sedative, a painkiller,

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but most profoundly it was marketed as the cure for morning sickness,

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and my mother took it three times in one week and this was the result.

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It was a massive, big pharmaceutical disaster

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and there was a mass panic, and a need to make it OK.

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It is a little bit weird for me, seeing these prostheses as exhibits

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but I think it's the best use for them.

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I didn't have to wear any. I remember I went into a room one day

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and they said, "Do you want to try one of these arms on?"

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I thought, "Why would I want do that?"

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I put them on - I was seven or eight -

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they felt uncomfortable and I didn't like them.

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"Mummy, I don't want to wear them." "That's fine, you don't have to." And that was the end of it.

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'It's hard for me to explain what it was like to use artificial arms and legs.

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'It was like in some dreams, where you know you're there

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'but you can't touch anything. I could touch it but it wasn't me,

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'it was like somebody else was touching it and I was merely an observer.'

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Wow.

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'Being on legs, it was like being in suspended animation.'

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'Poor old Terry. But, you know, that's what they thought.'

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Yeah. Lucky me that I didn't have to do that.

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For me, this is human adaptation, this is adapting and surviving.

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You've got no arms but you need a cup of tea, so you use your feet.

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"Syphilis could cause the destruction of the nose,

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"giving rise to the formation of no-nose clubs in the 18th century.

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"This painted silver nose was worn by a woman who'd lost her own to the disease."

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How weird!

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It's the Olympic thing,

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the technological enhancement of the sports person.

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The classic cheetah leg that Oscar Pistorius, famously, has taken to such enhancement

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that he's Olympian as well as Paralympian.

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Oh, and it says here, "The efficiency and speed of these legs

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"has led to claims they create an advantage over able-bodied runners."

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Will there ever become a point where the runner who's desperate to win at any cost

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will have their legs amputated so they can wear these and win the race?

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This is a lovely little exhibit, this is the famous i-LIMB,

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which is the most advanced prosthetic hand in the world.

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When we were little, as thalidomide kids, we used to think about the...

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MAKES ROBOTIC BUZZING

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..kind of working, and that's the actual thing.

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Finally, invented.

3:50:273:50:30

Yeah, 2011. So last year.

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Would I use an i-LIMB? I don't know.

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They'd have to be better than they are even now, but I could be tempted in the future.

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One of these people isn't real. One of these people is a robot.

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It is impossible to tell which one.

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Amazing.

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That's one of the nice things about this exhibition -

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the historical stuff has come true in some cases.

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That makes you think when you look at, "That wouldn't be possible,"

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well, maybe in 25 years' time it will be possible.

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Where we have repeatedly seen the most amazing predictions for human advancement

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has been in the world of science fiction, and especially with comic book characters.

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Many comic book heroes seem to anticipate trans-humanism,

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the application of technology to humans to enhance their ability.

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Becoming more than human -

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Superhuman, the title of the exhibition.

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I really like the X-Men because they're mutants.

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They're shunned for their weird freakish abilities

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but using their enhanced realities can help society and the human race.

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They're heroes, shunned for being different.

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I like to romanticise them perhaps.

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Quite how I'm going to save the world with my hands, I'm not quite sure,

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but one day, you never know.

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I've made lots of performance pieces

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around the nature of being a freak.

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But maybe for this new commission, I'll concentrate more on the idea

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of adaptation and even enhancement, especially by disabled people.

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I'll need to contemplate more what I've seen today,

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but this has been a great starting point.

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It's made me think I'd like to research individuals, alive or historical,

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who've transcended their human condition to become,

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well, for want of a better word, superhuman.

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Superhuman is at the Wellcome Collection in London

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until October 16th.

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For my money, Christopher Nolan is one of the most exciting

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and innovative film-makers working today.

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The Dark Knight Rises is the final instalment of his Batman trilogy.

3:52:523:52:56

I met up with him

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to talk caped crusaders and intelligent blockbusters.

3:52:573:53:00

The following interview

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was recorded prior to the tragic events in Colorado last Friday.

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Christopher Nolan's brooding vision of Batman

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as an embodiment of Bruce Wayne's fractured psyche

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has set the Hollywood gold standard for comic-book adaptations.

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Nolan takes the discipline and ethics

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of art-house independent movie-making

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and applies them to major Hollywood blockbusters.

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He's living proof that you don't have to appeal to the lowest

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common denominator to be profitable.

3:53:543:53:55

Welcome to the Culture Show.

3:53:553:53:58

It seems to me that the most significant thing that you've done with your films

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is to demonstrate that whether you're working with a small budget

3:54:013:54:04

or a large budget,

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you treat the audience intelligently.

3:54:063:54:08

Do you treat all those movies from Memento to Dark Knight Rises

3:54:083:54:14

essentially as part of the same process?

3:54:143:54:17

Very much so.

3:54:173:54:18

For me, the only sincerity in film-making is to make a film

3:54:183:54:25

that you would want to go and see yourself, and not treat the audience as anything separate from you.

3:54:253:54:31

Our expectations when we go to see a film are different

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in different genres and at different budget levels.

3:54:343:54:36

That doesn't mean that we're dumber when we go and see a bigger film.

3:54:363:54:41

But we do have different expectations. It's a different register of language, in a sense.

3:54:413:54:45

You see only one end to your journey.

3:54:503:54:52

Sometimes, a man rises from the darkness.

3:54:523:54:57

In the Dark Knight Rises, Christian Bale is back as Bruce Wayne,

3:54:573:55:02

forced to bring Batman out of retirement

3:55:023:55:04

when Gotham comes under threat.

3:55:043:55:07

Tom Hardy plays his nemesis, Bane, whose avowed mission

3:55:073:55:10

is to raze the city to the ground to cleanse it of sin.

3:55:103:55:13

I was very aware of the size of Dark Knight Rises

3:55:133:55:15

and, as we got to the end of the film, I heaved a sigh of relief

3:55:153:55:20

and the sigh of relief was, he's done it.

3:55:203:55:22

He's got through this massive trilogy and he hasn't let us down.

3:55:223:55:26

Does any part of you now feel like, OK, now I'd like to go and make

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a 1 million movie in which there isn't any possibility

3:55:293:55:33

of letting anyone down because there's no pressure?

3:55:333:55:37

You know, it's funny, there is massive pressure on a smaller film as well.

3:55:373:55:42

Pretty much every film I've ever worked on at every scale has had

3:55:423:55:47

massive stakes to it, one way or another.

3:55:473:55:50

I think, for me, I don't think very well in terms of scale.

3:55:503:55:53

It's all about, is there a story, a set of characters that interest me?

3:55:533:55:57

I think the process has been really

3:55:573:56:00

the same process on every film I've done.

3:56:003:56:03

I mean, Batman Begins...

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Wally and I, from a photographic point of view -

3:56:053:56:08

Wally Pfister, my DP -

3:56:083:56:10

he had to be extremely precise.

3:56:103:56:13

It was the first time we'd done a large scale film

3:56:133:56:15

and it needed have a certain look to present Batman, the way he looked, in a particular way.

3:56:153:56:20

And I enjoyed it, but after seven months of it, of saying to Gary Oldman,

3:56:203:56:25

"No, you can't look that way, you've got to stay that way,"

3:56:253:56:28

we really wanted to loosen things up.

3:56:283:56:30

On The Prestige, we threw marks out of the window,

3:56:303:56:32

we did everything with a hand-held camera.

3:56:323:56:34

When we came back for the Dark Knight, we just brought that methodology with us.

3:56:343:56:39

I found on larger-scale films

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that you can be as spontaneous as you want be, really.

3:56:413:56:44

If you can find a way to construct,

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or put together a structure that you can work within in a flexible way

3:56:473:56:51

and actors respond really well to that and do their best work that way as well.

3:56:513:56:54

Christopher Nolan broke onto the scene with the head scrambling thriller Memento,

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picking up an Oscar nomination for its screenplay.

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He continued to challenge audiences with his intricate tale

3:57:043:57:08

of rival magicians in The Prestige.

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And then, with the complex brain-teaser Inception,

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which won four Oscars and was nominated for a further four, including best picture.

3:57:153:57:19

Memory is a key thread throughout your films.

3:57:213:57:23

Do you think there is something about the medium of cinema

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that particularly lends itself to dealing with stories

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which deal with memory, which deal with dream states,

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with going inside the psyche?

3:57:333:57:35

I think, the way in which your mind has to be active

3:57:373:57:43

in putting together shots of the sequence

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dictates there's a very strong relationship between memory and films.

3:57:473:57:53

We played around with that most obviously in Memento

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and it was an interesting thing to spend time really thinking about,

3:57:563:57:59

but the relationship between the way your eyes see,

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the way your memory processes things,

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and then the linear strip of film running through the projector,

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showing you one shot after another, and your mind is having to construct

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a three-dimensional reality, an idea of what room the characters are in,

3:58:153:58:19

putting that together, it's a pretty fascinating puzzle.

3:58:193:58:22

-My mother warned me about getting into cars with strange men.

-This isn't a car.

3:58:243:58:28

I sometimes get frustrated with studio executives and critics

3:58:283:58:31

who watch films and make notes as they go because that's not how movies work.

3:58:313:58:37

The audience gets to the end and then you take about five minutes

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to decide, "What was all that?"

3:58:413:58:43

And your brain looks at everything in a different way and then you decide.

3:58:433:58:46

That's why endings are so important,

3:58:463:58:48

and that's why you really have to get to the end of a movie

3:58:483:58:50

before you know what it is.

3:58:503:58:53

Next up tonight, it's 350 years

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since Punch first whacked Judy over the head,

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but in our age of CGI and Photoshop,

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it seems mannequins and marionettes are going stronger than ever.

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This year they're popping up all over the Cultural Olympiad.

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Here's Michael Smith on why puppets are back in a big way.

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There's something about puppets that gives me the creeps.

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But there's also something enchanting about them.

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Your brain tells you they're inanimate wooden objects.

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But a deeper gut feeling tells you there's a spooky,

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mysterious spark of life animating them.

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Something elemental seems to be going on with these little critters.

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Recently, puppets have been making a bit of a comeback.

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In June, an eight metre-high puppet

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of the mythical Greek giant Prometheus

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strutted his stuff in front of the Queen's house in Greenwich.

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Not to be outdone, at the end of this month,

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an even larger puppet of Lady Godiva

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will trot off from her native Coventry down the A5 to the Olympics,

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powered by 100 cyclists.

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But unlike the legendary naked lady, this Godiva

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will have feet as big as sofas and a golden dress by Zandra Rhodes.

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That's the basic problem with these politically correct puppets.

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They might be ginormous,

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but they're pygmies in the most crucial respect.

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The basic spark of life's

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been airbrushed out of them by the good taste committee.

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Because the real power of all the best puppets

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lies in the fact they don't just break the physical laws we're bound by,

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but the moral laws as well.

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Puppets are transgressive, puppets are carnivalesque,

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puppets get to do all the naughty stuff that we can't.

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Who's a naughty boy then?!

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Oh! That's the way to do it! Get out of it.

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Just look at Britain's most famous puppets.

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# Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside! #

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How come characters as dodgy as Punch and Judy

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have ended up entertaining children for 350 years?

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Hackney photographer Tom Hunter has been documenting professional

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Punch and Judy performers across the country.

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-The puppeteers are called professors, aren't they?

-That's right.

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Why do you want to photograph the professors?

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They're just incredible characters.

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I think it comes from this amazing tradition

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of the travelling showman, really.

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They're totally self-contained, they make their own sets,

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they make their own theatres.

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Lots of them make their own puppets.

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Can you put your finger on what exactly the appeal is of Punch?

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Yeah, I think it's the anarchy, the anarchy and chaos

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that is created by Mr Punch in this little world.

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The slapstick, the humour,

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the villainous attitude to it all.

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It's a bit like Carry On with Sid James and Barbara Windsor as well.

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The wildness, the complete abandoness of it.

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You just get lost in it. All your emotions are there.

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You're screaming, you're cheering, you're booing.

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When I used to go to the punk concerts when I was 14, 15.

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you just let yourself go completely mad, jumping and spitting.

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You can do that. You don't spit any more, thank God,

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but the kids go wild, they're jumping up and down.

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They get into a frenzy and let themselves go, which is great.

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It's really nice. Let it out.

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And then come home and be well behaved and eat their tea properly.

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Puppets embody one of the most primitive

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imaginative instincts of the human race.

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They come from the same place as myths and fairy stories

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and I think they appeal to a much more primal sense of magic

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than most of us imagine when we're watching them.

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A contemporary puppet performance

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that taps into these dark and primordial origins is Crow -

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a theatre adaptation of Ted Hughes's' poems.

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The production features several crow incarnations,

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from a giant bird with a 12 foot wingspan to a life-size crow.

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Behind the adaptation is the Handspring Puppet Company.

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They've been pushing the boundaries of modern puppetry for 30 years

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and made the puppets for the 2007 hit play War Horse.

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I went along to meet their artistic director Mervyn Millar.

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There seems to have been a bit of a renaissance in puppetry recently. Why do think that is?

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I think, to a large extent, coming from shows that people have

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made recently, have changed the way people perceive puppets.

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I don't know another show before War Horse

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where there's a puppet as a central character in a big show like that.

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I think that's opened a lot of people's eyes to what

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the puppet can do emotionally in terms of connecting with people.

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What can puppets do that actors can't?

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Well, I think they demand that you imagine something very essential.

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They invite you to relate to what it is to be alive,

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because you're looking at this thing and you know it's not alive.

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You know that you want it to be alive and every now and then you

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believe it's alive. You don't believe it's alive all the time.

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Sometimes you zoom out and go,

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"What an intricate piece of artistry that is."

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How would you go about turning a crow into a puppet?

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You start with anatomical study and you start by drawing and looking

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and observing and watching videos and watching real animals.

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One of our designers has made something that's far more complex

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than anything I've ever seen in a puppet before for this head.

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It really does everything almost that a real bird's head can do.

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Puppets give shape to a deep and shadowy part of the brain.

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A repressed and often unacceptable part of us

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that needs to surface somehow, breathing its strange life

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into puppets by a collective act of imagining.

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Conjured up as if by magic.

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You can see Prometheus Awakes in Stockton on August 2nd

4:05:224:05:25

and Lady Godiva begins her journey from Coventry to London at the end of this month.

4:05:254:05:30

We're on a short break while the Olympics take over, but The Culture Show is back on August 15th

4:05:304:05:35

with all the best of the fest in Edinburgh. Finally tonight,

4:05:354:05:39

Rio Occupation London sees 30 artists taking over the capital's streets,

4:05:394:05:44

stages and squares for 30 days as part of London 2012.

4:05:444:05:48

Here's a flavour of the Brazilian invasion. Goodnight.

4:05:484:05:52

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