Full Press Release available here (pdf). STAY ALIVE is a Field Day production to mark its 40th anniversary (1980-2020). It is Field Day’s debut film. Commissioned by Stephen Rea, the piece is written by Clare Dwyer Hogg, directed by Juliet Riddell, and produced by Sam O’Mahony through 2nd Part Productions. The film is 8 minutes […]
Continue readingThe Field Day Podcast is going on a hiatus from November 2020. It takes quite a bit of time and energy to produce the kind of content we want to share, and time and energy are in short supply these days, in the face of other commitments. Additionally, as the podcast approaches its 3rd anniversary, […]
Continue readingThe Field Day Podcast is going on a hiatus from November 2020. For our future plans, click here. Stay in touch at [email protected]. Our most recent episode: In the Covid lockdown of spring 2020, flour and buttermilk instantly sold out in Irish shops. In Paris, it was small onions that disappeared. In London – toilet […]
Continue readingThe political doesn’t always correspond in Ireland to the culinary. Dorothy Cashman reads the long-forgotten recipe books of Irish country houses, and inserts them into the history of the country and the world. In her analysis of one recipe book from Kilkenny, she gives us a fascinating portrait of a network of women and food […]
Continue reading2020 marks the 40th anniversary of the technical standard for the compact disc. Eamonn Bell explains how this format is an important hinge in the establishment of digital music for the general consumer. As a portable medium, it belongs to the era of vinyl and magnetic tape, yet as the first widespread digital music format, […]
Continue readingAll our podcast episodes in one place. 30: The Compact Disc at 40 – a media history, with Eamonn Bell Listen 29: Absence and Presence in Hollywood: On Polly Platt, with Aaron Hunter Listen 28: The Atmosphere of Crowds, with Illan Rua Wall Listen 27: Post-work and Busynesslessness, with Stephen Dunne Listen 26: Cooperative Movements […]
Continue readingPolly Platt is not a household name, and that is the problem we tackle in this episode. She was a lynchpin in the making of an astonishing list of some of the best American films for more than two decades. So how come so few people know about her? When her name is remembered, it […]
Continue readingCrowds create atmospheres. Police try to control those atmospheres. From the interaction between them, says Illan Rua Wall, emerges power. And that power can take the form of political upheaval and unrest, or the consolidation of pre-existing sovereignty. A lecturer in law at the University of Warwick, Illan Rua Wall pursues questions of police and […]
Continue readingWhen it comes to work, the coronavirus has changed everything, and changed nothing. We are more idle, and we are busier than ever. Some employers bring therapets (therapeutic pets), such as alpacas, into the office. It helps people get out of their heads, as Stephen Dunne explains in this episode. So, what’s wrong with our […]
Continue readingThe history of rural life is a history of technology. In this interview, we explore the machinery, systems of distribution and technological innovations that transformed many Irish rural communities when they adopted the cooperative model in the late 19th century. Historian Patrick Doyle of the University of Manchester opens his account of the Irish cooperatives […]
Continue readingI don’t trust newspapers. Half the time they lie. – Alex Jones, Infowars In this conversation, we talk about trust, truth and trolls. Are conspiracy theories a new phenomenon? Do we believe authorities less than we used to? What is a Russian troll farm? Eileen Culloty is an expert in conspiracy theories, and she has […]
Continue readingDoes a city have a sound? It’s the question that set writer Karl Whitney on a unique musical pilgrimage around the cities of Britain. The result is his book, just out: Hit Factories: A Journey Through the Industrial Cities of British Pop. When Karl was back in his native Dublin recently, we talked about the […]
Continue readingHannah Arendt coined the phrase ‘the right to have rights’ in her 1958 book The Human Condition. In this lecture, literary critic Seamus Deane links Arendt’s phrase with the Irish immigration system, in particular the ‘Direct Provision’ centres. Since the first half of the the twentieth century, the condition of being stateless, of being a […]
Continue readingHow has the Irish Sea become the most polluted sea in the world? The answer lies in the north west of England, where the Sellafield site has poured millions of tonnes of nuclear waste into the sea since the 1950s. Like the history of nuclear power plants around the world, its history is one of […]
Continue readingWe are seeing Ireland north and south being sold to corporate powers Bernadette Devlin McAliskey is Ireland’s finest political orator, and a key figure in recent political history. In this lecture she takes as her theme a line from playwright Sean O’Casey, ‘A Terrible State o’ Chassis’, where chassis means ‘crisis’. While still a student […]
Continue readingOne of many prophets who forecast the disasters of modernism, but one of the few who did it from the left. Georg Lukács was one of the leading European literary critics of the 20th century. His life story was entangled with the political storms that swept across his native Hungary – communist revolution, reaction, fascism, […]
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