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00:02Utopias come, and utopias go.
00:06In this series, we've explored these visions of a good place,
00:11as blueprints for future societies,
00:15and as new ways of living.
00:18Grand designs and experimental communities
00:22that have often failed.
00:25But is there another path to utopia?
00:29Smaller, more human in scale,
00:33a spark of creativity, a moment of perfection,
00:37a sense of transcendence?
00:40Can we find utopia within?
00:43Is utopia, after all, just a state of mind?
00:49In this episode, I turn the camera on
00:53perhaps the most intriguing aspect
00:55of our relationship with utopia.
00:58How we relate to the idea as individuals.
01:04This is not about the utopia of the future,
01:08but about the utopia of now.
01:11I think it's really beautiful and very powerful.
01:14You could call it the aha mode,
01:17that moment when you go, wow.
01:19The ways we've created to immerse ourselves
01:22in a better moment.
01:24If I'm reading a crowd, I can build like an entire emotion.
01:30To push the boundaries of art and expression,
01:34to find authenticity.
01:37People being more expressive, more loving,
01:41more argumentative, more of whatever.
01:43It's about how the belief in better
01:46pushes us to be all that we can be.
02:05If we want to find utopia,
02:08perhaps we first need to understand
02:11what happens when ground utopian visions fail.
02:24With the velvet revolutions of 1989,
02:28followed by the rapid collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991,
02:33it seemed to many Western minds
02:36that Eastern Europe had suddenly awoken
02:39from the utopian dream or nightmare of socialism.
02:46But I think that the toppled statues
02:49gathered here in a park in southern Lithuania
02:52reveal a fascinatingly complex story
02:57about our relationships with utopia.
03:02These are symbols of what was once envisaged
03:06as a paradise of equality and a power of collective effort.
03:12But it was a utopia that crumbled.
03:15The economy stagnated,
03:19party power was often arbitrary and corrupt,
03:21and many people felt that they were not given sufficient freedom.
03:28And yet, as the old system was swept away,
03:32was something lost?
03:44Diamantas Narkevicius is a Lithuanian artist.
03:50Originally trained under the Soviet regime,
03:54he gained growing international attention
03:56when he captured the strange emptiness
03:59left behind when Soviet landmarks were suddenly removed.
04:06I was aware that the city would look different
04:10when the objects will be gone,
04:13and I wanted really to document the last moment.
04:21In his 2016 work, Doubled Youth,
04:25Diamantas recorded the removal of 1950s socialist realist statues
04:31from a bridge in central Vilnius.
04:35This is lack of cultural sensitivity
04:40to understand that when the political regime is gone,
04:46the art objects produced during that regime
04:49does not automatically represent that regime.
04:55It becomes cultural objects.
04:58You seem to be suggesting
05:00that we still need to respect cultural outputs.
05:04Through culture, we understand history richer and more complex.
05:15Diamantas takes me to the bridge
05:18to see what's become of the now post-utopian space.
05:24When the sculptures were taken down,
05:28the four plinths were standing empty
05:31and they were looking really provocative
05:35because they were suggesting
05:36that there was something there, obviously,
05:39and it's something supposed to be there.
05:43And I think for a while there was even an attempt
05:47to use them for a car advertisement.
05:51It didn't work
05:53because I think people started to protest
05:55because it looked very vulgar.
05:57And then arrived these pots with the flowers.
06:01I think there will be debates coming
06:03what to do with these empty plinths in the future.
06:08So it strikes me that there's a kind of hunger now
06:12for a more socially aware kind of art
06:16to appear back on the bridge.
06:18Do you see it that way?
06:20Well, partly, yes,
06:22it's because I think you should understand
06:25that the society was pretty poor
06:27during the post-socialist period
06:31and they were really eager to get, you know, better off, you know,
06:36like get cars and clothing and houses and so on.
06:40But I think now, 25 years later, they've got that.
06:45And then people think, what is next?
06:50What is the vision?
06:52Because nobody was thinking about kind of future.
06:56They were thinking about past.
06:58So we're kind of missing utopian vision.
07:02I think so.
07:09Plinths, with flower pots on top of them.
07:15They appear to be metaphors for our society nowadays.
07:20Perhaps a little short on grand shared aspirations.
07:25Communal utopian ideologies seem to have failed or faded.
07:31We're left to shape our own lives.
07:34But we're still searching for that good place.
07:38Trying to find our own utopias
07:40in our own countless ways.
07:44Perhaps the most commonly held utopian dream today
07:49is the idea that you can buy your way to happiness.
07:51You can buy your way to a better place.
07:55It's the utopia of consumption.
08:03We've long been bombarded by advertising with the simple message.
08:09Purchases make you happy.
08:12Buying things gives you freedom, choice and control
08:16in ways that the socialist utopias could never match.
08:21But is a consumerist utopia, in its own way, just another illusion?
08:27How much freedom or control do we really have
08:32when our desires are constantly stimulated but can never be sated?
08:38As new products become available, there's always something else to buy.
08:43If only I had a bigger telly, a flatter telly, a curved telly, a 3D telly, a telly with surround
08:51sound,
08:52then I would be in a good place.
08:55But of course it's a myth.
08:57The good place of consumption always lies just, just, just beyond reach.
09:04You never quite get there.
09:07This spectacle of capitalism, of consumerism that we live amongst,
09:14is cheating us into thinking we can find our way to happiness through purchasing.
09:27On the face of it, the digital revolution, the massive technological shift we're living through today,
09:36seems to promise yet more of that consumerist spectacle.
09:41More than 3 billion of us now live our daily lives hooked to screens,
09:47that are so often seeking to sell us ever more goods.
09:52Now we can access the promise of a consumerist utopia at the click of a button.
10:00But is there a more positive story to tell about the digital world?
10:07Can it empower us?
10:09Be about more than just consumption?
10:13Many digital spaces have been imagined to allow us to create,
10:18and just as importantly, control our own utopias.
10:24So this is actually the computer we created civilization on.
10:28Sid Meier, creator of civilization, is one of the great innovators of the digital revolution.
10:36You had to put eight different disks into your computer
10:40and copy them over onto your hard drive before you could play.
10:45He pioneered open-world strategy games
10:49as personal computers filled homes across the planet in the early 1990s.
10:57Civilization.
10:58I'm ready, I can do it!
11:00Building new world.
11:02All in caps.
11:05In Meier's game, you create your perfect world digitally from the comfort of your own home.
11:12Leading a people from the dawn of time to the space age.
11:16I'm very touched that you chose to call your tribe the English.
11:22You're welcome.
11:26The desire to create perfect digital worlds has proved popular.
11:31In the last 25 years, civilization and its sequels have sold over 40 million copies.
11:40And so it falls upon you to fulfill our people's true destiny.
11:46Under your leadership, we shall surely prosper.
11:55From the seeds of this small settlement shall you grow our empire.
12:01Our people await your command.
12:07I think there are some real comparisons between certain utopian urges, the desire to explore, to contest and to protect
12:18whatever utopian vision it is that one has.
12:22And the game civilization. Do you agree?
12:26I've never actually looked at it that way, but now that you mention it, I can see the parallels.
12:31In a utopia, I think we'd expect technology to progress and technology to bring us advances and a better life.
12:40I think we'd expect nations to communicate with each other and work together.
12:46I think we would expect exploration.
12:49I think we'd expect to explore our planet and after that explore the solar system and the universe around us.
12:58So, although it wasn't really designed with the idea of utopia in mind, I think many of the processes that
13:06are part of the game would be part of a utopia.
13:10To ensure the safety of our borders, we must defeat the enemy at its source.
13:20In playing civilization, there can be quite a desire to defend your ideal utopian society that you're building.
13:30There's something very human about that.
13:32I do think that players get invested in what they create because they know that it's unique.
13:38They've designed it, they've built it, they've made all the decisions that went into getting to this point.
13:43So, there's a strategy we call turtling, which is kind of just protecting what you built because you're really invested
13:50in it and you want to keep it safe from all the forces of the world that are trying to
13:55take it away from you.
14:00There is aggressive expansion, conquer the world strategy, but there are also culture victories or wonder victories.
14:09If you can build these great wonders, you can win the game.
14:12Or if you can bring on world peace, that's another way of winning the game.
14:17Truly, we have achieved a golden age of peace and cooperation.
14:27Civ has gone from kind of being just a game to people really thinking that it represents a version of
14:37the real world.
14:38And now they start to think, you know, well, I'd really like the world to be a peaceful place.
14:44And I want to try that strategy because it's not just a game on my computer.
14:48It's kind of a representation of what could happen in the world.
14:52And that brings a whole different type of thinking.
14:58That whole new type of thinking could be key to building tomorrow's utopias.
15:07Look around you. The monuments to the old ways of utopian thinking are everywhere.
15:14Religious salvation, empire building, the powerful have shaped our world.
15:21But now, perhaps for the first time in human history, the common man and woman has been given the chance
15:29to design and share their own utopias on a global scale.
15:40Here in a refurbished tobacco warehouse in East London, young people gather, not just to get lost in their own
15:48utopias, but to use digital tools to make a difference in the real world.
15:56I'm going to go and see the northern lights.
15:59Oh, that's exceptionally beautiful.
16:03It's really very mellow.
16:08There's a stick on the floor. I can pick it up.
16:13So I am now holding a stick into a fire to see whether it burns.
16:21That's amazing.
16:24I think the word digital has been misinterpreted in this age as something that's unreal or untouchable, something we can't
16:32experience.
16:33For us, it's something that's just in another medium.
16:37It may not be physically touchable, but the experiences that you can have with it are just as real.
16:45James Delaney is an architect and entrepreneur who uses the most influential game of the last decade to give individuals
16:54the tools to rebuild their real environment.
17:01Minecraft, originally a game aimed at children, started as a kind of digital Lego.
17:09Players place and destroy blocks in an infinite world, limited only by their imagination.
17:16When you're building, could it be the case that another member of your team is building in the same digital
17:24space at the same time?
17:27And can you see them working?
17:29You can see them working, and that doesn't sound like a big deal, but it makes the whole process responsive.
17:34So every block you place then becomes a response to what others are building around you.
17:40You're not alone. It's not designing a building from the point of view of a god or some sort of
17:46disconnected view.
17:48You're actually in the worlds that you're building, and I think that really helps you think about how the space
17:55is going to be experienced and used once you're finished.
17:57In 2013, James Delaney founded Blockworks, his company which democratizes the architectural process through Minecraft.
18:10In this UN-sponsored program, Blockworks introduced Minecraft to a poor community in Indonesia,
18:19so that they could work together in redesigning and then rebuilding their town square.
18:27So as part of the community consultation, we discussed their priorities for the space,
18:33playground for the children who didn't have a space to play, water fountains, fresh water.
18:40The elders of the village wanted to see this traditional Javanese hut.
18:45And this is all co-designed with the people who are going to end up living in the space?
18:50Yeah, absolutely. It comes from them. We, you know, I give them a brief talk on the concept of public
18:57space and different examples from around the world.
18:59But ultimately, it's up to them what they want to see there.
19:02And I think, you know, this taps into a completely new way of thinking about public design, which is bottom
19:09up.
19:10You know, the architect, as brilliant as he is, is often sort of autocratic in his design of public space.
19:18And it's his vision of what that space should be. But surely public space, which, you know, serves the community.
19:26The design of that and the experience of that needs to come from the people who are going to use
19:32it.
19:35I can't help thinking that computing power and connectivity are enabling extraordinary new ways of engaging with and shaping the
19:47world,
19:47especially among the younger generations. New forms of digitally empowered utopianism with roots back in hack culture.
20:05The idea of a bottom up digital revolution isn't new. Hacking started as a way to find work arounds and
20:15cut throughs.
20:16Because of the limitations of early computing in the 1960s, often unfairly stereotyped and bracketed with cyber criminals,
20:27real hackers are not what you might expect.
20:35Here at an international hacking event in central London, 200 of Europe's best student hackers have gathered for a 24
20:46-hour hackathon.
20:50To find digital solutions to real-world problems in one packed day.
20:59So where are you guys all from?
21:01I'm from Europe. I'm from Germany.
21:04This event seems to be about the power of collaboration when it's unimpeded by power structures.
21:11Yeah, but I studied in Edinburgh.
21:13What are you hacking? What's the theme? Are you picking up on a theme?
21:16We are doing automated search and rescue for disaster situations.
21:21Essentially the idea is to fly a drone over a big area and then we automatically recognise where people are
21:28that need to be rescued.
21:29So I'm kind of trying to get that to work.
21:32This is a recipe for real social good.
21:35You're not just adding knowledge to each other, you're multiplying knowledge, right?
21:40I came here with like, well I need some with the idea and I thought like, well on my own
21:47this will take quite a bit of time to do because I have to acquire quite a bit of knowledge.
21:51But taking it to a hackathon you have the opportunity to meet people with different knowledge backgrounds.
21:58And then putting everything together and I'm really accelerating this idea.
22:02So you've got a brilliant answer for the good of humanity, for social good.
22:07Is there any interest, and be honest, in then trying to sell it?
22:13The best part about this hackathon is we put all that aside and we say, let's just fix this, let's
22:19build the product.
22:19And then we'll worry about, you know, money or jobs or prestige or merit or, you know, acknowledgement.
22:28Essentially it's fun first, business after.
22:30Exactly.
22:32The media often represent hackers as loners locked in their own obsessions.
22:38In fact, real hacking is about inventive teamwork.
22:43It's a revolutionary mode of collaborative thinking and doing.
22:48There is that thing of you're learning together, you're building together and you share it with each other.
22:55And open source communities and everything like that.
22:58And it doesn't really matter anything about who you are as a person, how you identify, anything like that.
23:05All of those things are kind of forgotten when you're on a team together building anything.
23:11And, and that's, that's really nice.
23:14And it's not something that I've seen many other places.
23:18Hackathons, it's, it's always, you're, you're all at the end of the 24 hours pretty, pretty raw.
23:26So.
23:26And then go off to your far flung corners of the world and.
23:30To sleep for a day.
23:32To sleep.
23:33To sleep.
23:33But everybody's in the same position and that makes it really nice and everybody's here to do the same thing
23:39and build something cool.
23:45Hackers are no isolated example.
23:48What they embody, the flattening of the world, the belief that the individual can make a difference and that hierarchies
23:57cannot constrain creativity and personal expression, is part of a rich seam of utopian culture.
24:06A deeper tradition that has shaped our history.
24:20Look closely and you see that the people have been revolting for centuries.
24:29In St. Mary's Parish Church in Worley, Lancashire, carved into the medieval choir seats, you find a much older kind
24:40of hacking.
24:48It's a bit of a weird puzzle.
24:51Why have we got profane imagery sitting in a parish church in Lancashire?
24:59Here we see a blacksmith replete with all his tools.
25:05Shoeing a goose.
25:08It's insane.
25:15Under other seats, we find a girl with a satyr.
25:21A warrior being beaten by a woman with a pan.
25:26The pagan and the pious are mixed up in absurd juxtaposition.
25:33To understand these images, we need to understand the significance in the medieval mindset of the carnival.
25:44Every year at Shrovetide, before the abstinence of Lent, normal rules and hierarchies were hacked during a period of utopian
25:55excess.
25:59It's a fleeting part of the year also captured by artists like Peter Bruegel the Elder, who depicts fun and
26:08frivolity breaking out prior to the dreary grind of Lent and the return to daily life.
26:15However alien today, the carnival's turning the world upside down is something that Thomas More, author of the disruptive fiction
26:26utopia, would have been very familiar with.
26:40In the run up to Easter, the world was turned upside down.
26:46Women would dress as men and men would dress as women.
26:51Social relations would become completely unruly compared to the norm.
26:56People would drink in excess.
26:59They'd be out on the street.
27:01They'd elect a king of fools.
27:05The week of carnival was really important.
27:10It was a steam valve that allowed tensions that built up during the year to relax a little.
27:19But come the end of the week, people were almost certainly longing for a return to something a little more
27:26stable.
27:30In nearby Middleton, Greater Manchester, this tradition of the citizens' utopia survives.
27:45This is the annual Pace Egg play, a revival of medieval customs.
27:53I am the bold Prince Regent.
27:57I rule in this king's stead.
28:00And so I am his only heir.
28:05For there's none upon his head.
28:08The players mock traditional authority figures.
28:12And I come to fight for old England's rights.
28:18They drop on their head, they drop on their heart.
28:25Arise, arise, most noble knights arise, and no more dormant lay.
28:30I thank you very much.
28:32It's a miracle!
28:41At Easter, the play is taken through six local pubs.
28:46Oh, is there a noble doctor to be found?
28:51Becoming more and more slurred.
28:53Champion of this deep and deadly world.
28:59More anarchic.
29:01And more ridiculous.
29:04Come, look, they say it as you very well do know.
29:09It's the wrong song.
29:10It's the wrong song, yes.
29:14I am St George!
29:16Hooray!
29:16Hooray!
29:17It might all seem frivolous, but there's a deeper purpose here.
29:23Hooray!
29:24But watching the face egg today, it seems to me like anyone in authority is fair game.
29:30Oh, absolutely.
29:32Oh, yes.
29:32Things like this are an opportunity for the downtrodden, as it were, to just get a little bit back, you
29:39know.
29:39Well, it was always the case, wasn't it?
29:41It was the holiday where the people, the servants and so on became in charge.
29:48And the, you know, the lords of the manor waited on the servants and they had their special day.
29:54And it's all that.
29:56It's turning things on the tail and, you know, putting it back at the authority.
30:02He's come o'er the sea, told England to you.
30:06He's come o'er the rain, taking the whole of his crew.
30:10Well, Lancashire remains as loopy as it was when I was growing up, that's for sure.
30:17I kind of love this.
30:19The world is turned upside down at least one day a year in Middleton.
30:25The fools take over.
30:27The kings seem to fall and rise again.
30:30The doctors are mocked.
30:32And these guys who are doing this, these Pace Eggers, they all understand that they're part of a rich old
30:39tradition of mocking power, laughing at authority, just to let off a little steam before going back to the usual
30:48relations.
30:56The carnival is about coming together and sharing a moment of freedom from everyday rules, breaking through inhibitions.
31:06It's an idea that has spurred countercultures throughout history.
31:14Music has often been at the leading edge of this revolt against the mainstream.
31:20In recent times, it's through musical innovation that downtrodden minorities have found moments of escape and transcendence.
31:37In 1980s Chicago, that minority was made up of often poor black gay men.
31:48They found a creative release by subverting established disco music, extending the best parts of songs and mixing the beats
31:58with a distinctive bass line.
32:07This was house music. Music designed to get you dancing all night long.
32:16It was not just blazing hot, but it was damp.
32:21You couldn't wipe the sweat away enough.
32:24People were really dancing like their life depended on it, like there was something in it for them beyond just
32:31a good feeling.
32:33You had a moment of absolute freedom.
32:36And as a teenager, that's a big deal, you know.
32:40And you're looking for a real experience that was the most real thing that I've ever run across.
32:48Charles Matlock was right there in the earliest days of house.
32:54He explains how in clubs like the subterranean music box in downtown Chicago, there was a new utopian search for
33:03authentic experience, spawning the biggest youth revolution since the 1960s.
33:12There's largely marginalized communities that were part of the scene then.
33:17So black kids, Latin kids, large gay community.
33:20That was a gay club.
33:21So was the power plant.
33:23And so for straight kids to be going there, it really was something that you had gay friends and you
33:29knew it existed.
33:32But going to a place where you were in the minority and realizing that they're just people, and they're people
33:38that like partying the same as you, you realize that these kind of artificial lines that we make between straight
33:47and gay and black and white and what have you, they're really artificial.
33:50And they're boundaries that are made up by us.
33:53And if we don't choose to adhere to them, they really truly don't exist.
33:58So the dance floor becomes a kind of melting pot where music that is a product of a melting pot
34:06is celebrated and brings communities together.
34:10It is truly one of those things that all you have to have in common with anybody else is enjoying
34:17this music and wanting to dance to it.
34:19Were these clubs a kind of escape for the communities of young people who are colliding inside them?
34:28Absolutely. It did provide an escape and also safe spaces such that, again, straight kids going to a gay club,
34:38I'd never look over my shoulder and say,
34:41hey, you know, is anybody who doesn't like me thinking about doing something harmful to me?
34:47But members of the gay community certainly did.
34:50And so this was a place that they could have as their own and be themselves and not have to
34:55worry about anybody, just the normal oppression that's part of the world.
35:00So that was definitely an escape for them from this. But for all of us, it was an escape from
35:08just this normal world that isn't worried about what might you want.
35:14But it's a temporary release, right? It's a temporary vision of a wonderful reality.
35:21It is. It is. But better to have some time in this other dimension than no time.
35:31It is.
35:37House offered a temporary utopia that could be revisited again and again, and that successfully mutated across borders.
35:47Transnational, it needs no explanation or language.
35:55When it made its way across the Atlantic, it had a huge influence on British youth culture
36:01and on me.
36:11One, two, one, two.
36:13I don't really know any of them shouting poems to young people I've seen nowadays.
36:22This is one of my heroes of house, a guy called Gerald.
36:28His house hit, Voodoo Ray, which he composed in a bedroom studio and first played at Manchester's Hacienda Club in
36:361988,
36:38defined a new era of dance music.
36:44It was an escape.
36:45It was somewhere I could go to and people like me, you go in through them doors, everything would just
36:57change.
37:01Absolutely, we did my gracious life.
37:07Your music and house music took me to a better place on the dance floor.
37:14Yeah, yeah, yeah.
37:15And everybody around me on the dance floor was temporarily in a better place.
37:19How do you feel when you see your dance floor erupt and you see them come together and share this
37:26experience?
37:27There's that part of a track and, like, everyone's kind of getting it at the same time what it is.
37:35Then, yeah, that is, that's a utopia.
37:39Yo, make some noise!
37:44You're looking in people's eyes and they're, like, you know, they're having it, like, the same as you and you're,
37:50like, wow.
37:51You can't really buy it.
37:53It's just, like, this tipping point.
37:55It's, like, this balance that, like, everything, like, kicks in at the same time.
38:00If I'm reading the crowd and feeling what's going on, then it's, like, you know, I can build, like, an
38:07entire emotion just from the sounds that I've got available.
38:20Watching you on stage, you're in a mental space.
38:24It's almost like a personal utopia.
38:27I do it on the bus, like, sometimes the person next to me wants to move, you know what I
38:32mean?
38:32Because I just, like, I just go off probably, like, if I hit that sweet spot, eyes roll back and
38:39everything, I'm sure.
38:40I need to seek help.
38:43A guy called Gerald!
38:49The UK club scene embraced house music and added its own chemical enhancement.
38:58With ecstasy prolonging the moment of euphoria, Acid House was born.
39:22With drugs and music combining to create a form of individual and collective transcendence,
39:28there were echoes of the 1960s counterculture.
39:33Back then, the pop-fueled youth rebellion morphed into a new search for the self
39:39through Eastern mysticism and ever more exotic drugs.
39:53But not all cultures have needed drugs to achieve an out-of-body experience.
40:12This is kawali, the devotional music of Sufi Muslims, which has its roots in medieval era Pakistan and India.
40:23What kawali singers do is they embody the idea of taking themselves and audiences on a spiritual journey.
40:35The central concept in kawali is this idea called kalandari, which comes from the word kalandar.
40:46Kalandars are dervishes.
40:59And the etymology of kalandar is those without limits or boundaries.
41:06And in medieval texts, kalandars can read people's minds, travel backwards in time and obliterate time and space.
41:18And what kawali does is makes this its central concept.
41:24So the music itself can take you into a similar kind of state.
41:30Yeah, so the idea is that kawali is like trance.
41:38During a kawali concert, one singer recites poetry and religious phrases using hand gestures.
41:49While a second singer improvises responses.
41:53While a second singer improvises responses.
42:00The music builds in intensity as the chorus sings a hypnotic refrain.
42:18By entrancing listeners, through being overwhelmed by the music, the ego is dissolved, leaving a void.
42:30And once the void is created, it leaves space to be absorbed by divine dimensions.
42:46Kawali music is a cosmic quest in search of the beloved.
42:52And more often than not, the beloved is God.
43:06Now, to leave the material world and to enter the spiritual world requires you to go through a spiritual station
43:18called Bazar.
43:19Bazar, which means no place or inter-space.
43:25So, Sufis had a concept and a word for no place 200 years before Thomas More came up with the
43:34word utopia, meaning literally no place.
43:40Kawali is utopian, not just in the state it tries to induce, but in its communal endeavour.
43:48Just like house, this is music as individual and shared experience.
43:55This was not religion with a capital R.
43:59The Sufis were really about connecting with the common man, with the guy working in the fields, the guy living
44:07in the villages.
44:08To give the ordinary person some kind of spiritual nourishment, some kind of way of understanding their place in the
44:18universe.
44:35But what if we don't have to escape fire drugs or spiritualism at all?
44:40What if the way to get to the good place of utopia is to appreciate more fully ordinary everyday reality?
44:51The wonder of the moment.
45:00This is clapping music, written and here performed by the American composer Steve Reich.
45:08Reich was inspired by traditional drumming patterns.
45:14One performer in each pair is providing the rhythm, while the other is clapping the same pattern, but phasing in
45:21and out of tempo.
45:23The result is one of the classics of pure minimalism.
45:43To imagine what people will feel when you write a piece of music is impossible.
45:48Where you sit in the room, who you are, what you have for dinner, all these things will enter into
45:53how you, even the same piece played, the same piece played at another time and place.
46:00Music lives when it's played.
46:05Steve Reich has pushed musical boundaries by encouraging audiences to focus on less.
46:13He simplifies music to its purest form, using repetition and also real world sounds as instruments.
46:28There's this constant set of astonishing innovations.
46:34You're taking found sounds.
46:36You're looping.
46:38You're affecting proto-sampling.
46:40You're using tape loops.
46:42Right.
46:42Well, the word sample didn't exist when they did it.
46:45It was called tape loops and tape this and tape that.
46:47Now, most people say tape, they think of scotch tape.
46:51Yeah.
46:53Audio tape is something that they may or may not have heard of and certainly rarely seen.
47:06City Life, Reich's 1995 composition, uses found sound that he himself recorded in New York.
47:19With it, he asks us to cut through the chaos of the city noise and find music and poetry in
47:27the everyday.
47:31The integration of the sounds is basically the idea of marrying, if you will, the found sound in the street,
47:41the slam of the car door becomes the bass drum.
47:44And the air brake becomes a crash.
47:49The Porsche horn becomes an oboe and so on and so forth.
47:56And I think that kind of thinking is what's in City Life, where you take something that's not a musical
48:04sound and you think, what's the musical, you know, correlative of that?
48:13Reich's work is meditative, like House and Kawali, but also technically demanding of musicians and audiences alike.
48:23I get a sense with Reich of the Restless Explorer, a utopian testing of what's musically possible.
48:31Is your musical drive somehow utopian?
48:37I think every artist who's the least bit serious is slightly self-critical and therefore there's more in my trash
48:48basket than there is in the finished piece.
48:50So that is certainly trying to make sure that you do your best.
48:56I think that striving to do the very best job that you can do is a very good and fairly
49:05common human trait.
49:07I mean, I certainly hope that the sound man, you know, is trying to, and the cameraman are trying to
49:14do the best that they can.
49:22Whether it's Steve Reich's music of the everyday world or the lure of Kawali's higher spiritual playing, this pursuit of
49:32utopia is all about more fully experiencing a fleeting moment.
49:38It's about the utopia of the now.
49:45How do we get the best out of each moment and as a result, out of ourselves?
49:52For the Japanese, one way to connect with the pure moment is to represent it and express it through haiku.
50:02The ancient art of extremely precise and brief poetry.
50:106am, the cat's tongue in my ear.
50:21Yeah.
50:24Maximum impact with minimum words, perfection using the fewest syllables.
50:30That's the utopian goal of these members of the British Haiku Society meeting in Fleet Street, London.
50:38apple blossom the clenched fist of her infant opening the image of the child's hand opening
50:49but also like apple blossom opening i think it's really beautiful and very powerful
50:56haiku is a very short poem and its purpose is to capture a moment if you see something beautiful
51:05and you describe that in some way that lets the person who's reading it know
51:12what you're feeling about it that's that's a beautiful haiku first coffee the barista's
51:20overnight mascara yeah it's a very sharp observation and you know there's a there's an untold story
51:27behind it yeah we we all just imagine they're a haiku that you just think oh of course
51:38or oh i know that feeling you could call it the aha moment that moment when you go wow
51:46bear in your bathroom another girl uses my rose petal mouthwash
51:55achieving the aha moment comes with limitations the sky is bluer always on the other side
52:06up chucking homeless the only problem with it of course is it's not a haiku moment
52:14you've set yourself quite tight parameters do you find that limiting or do you find it actually
52:23liberating it makes you think very hard and i think that's that's the joy of it really
52:32so it's it's limiting but it's limiting in a very thoughtful kind of way it's a bit like meditation
52:40you're focusing on one thing and key side the fisherman casting out shadows
52:50that's great
52:53it seems to me that this is really very very much about living in a moment and being aware
53:02of the fact that we are living in a moment one of the problems people have i think is that
53:08they have this running commentary on their life and so when they're when they're out and about
53:15what what they're doing is actually thinking all the time of you know uh what the credit card limit is
53:24what time is the train you know is that girl going to be there or whatever or whatever now the
53:31haiku
53:31writer has to step back from that switch off the running commentary of your life and i think that's
53:37why it's so popular with them buddists because the whole stuff about moments and being in the now
53:44it's being in that state of being aware do you feel that after you've finished writing
53:51you go back into the real world and
53:58better enriched improved i think so yes because um you're seeing things they're new
54:08um every time you write a good haiku it's it's a a small epiphany you've seen the world for what
54:18it is
54:18uh martin lucas who was a uh an outstanding haiku writer who died recently he talked about haiku
54:27being the news you know all the stuff up that that that's happening on television that isn't the real
54:35news the real news is haiku if you read haiku you get the truth it's time for me to pursue
54:45epiphany
54:46you need to bear in mind i've never tried to write a haiku before this morning i have i've come
54:53up
54:53with my own haiku about utopia
54:59no place better place imagine contest repeat the itch unscratched
55:10it's not well it needs to be about a moment really and it's not is it no no and it's
55:18got
55:19commas in it we don't do commas in haiku it's very occasionally but not all those yeah but you're
55:26supposed to be listening to me read it you're reading on my shoulder okay i might not be a haiku
55:35master but i'm still struck by the haiku writer's desire to record perfectly the moment's perfection
55:44sometimes it's quite tragic what you're writing it's something quite sad and moving sometimes it's
55:50hilarious sometimes it's beautiful and succinct but it's always looking for something better
55:59i think you're utopians that kind of glimpse of a fleeting moment or something
56:05in transition actually reflects our relationship to utopia and that it's never something that can be
56:12experienced completely it's always glimpsed getting that glimpse of a better place that might just
56:23help us to be better people it seems to me that we try to unpack the significance of an observed
56:31moment
56:31in many ways not just through poetry but through other art forms we love to be transported by storytelling
56:41and no more so than through drama at multiplexes and in the theaters or at home with our various screens
56:51i think we seek out the truth of other people's experiences in ways akin to reading a haiku
56:59here we live vicariously through actors experiences moving out of ourselves and connecting emotionally
57:09people go to the theater people watch movies to see life in all its facets sometimes life as it is
57:16but
57:16also sometimes life as it could be people being more connected more expressive more loving more
57:24argumentative more of whatever to have that additional intensity that additional lifefulness and i think
57:30improvisation can really be a way that if actors embrace it you can have a performance that just gives so
57:37much more to an audience because it's so much more alive so much more rich so much more felt a
57:42makes
57:42a shape b joins stay there for a moment and then a says thank you chris hyman is an award
57:51-winning
57:51director and an improvisation teacher at rada you're not trying to create i would say you're just
57:59noticing your own response to what you're doing here in south london he's running a workshop
58:07using improvisation to help actors lose their self-consciousness so as to bring greater authenticity
58:15to their performances one of the reasons why people act you get more permission to be angry or sad or
58:23whatever it is yeah and impulse is also what we're looking for right as an actor between your impulse
58:28and your expression there is nothing improvisation like this is inspired by the utopian performance ideas
58:38of jersey kratowski and the poor theater school which revolutionized acting in the 20th century overturning
58:48old-fashioned acclimatory styles kratowski argued for a transparent actor a kind of minimalism in acting
58:58acting that is interested in their liking.
58:58Their dear being .
59:00human being .