RTÉ - Culture File on Classic Drive

Why you need to see Truong Minh Quy's film, Viet and Nam, listen to Connie Converse's album, How Sad, How Lonely and read Tove Jansson's Finn Family Moomins. Colm Tóibín, Meghan O'Gieblyn and Luke Clancy have their reasons.

Are you coming for an echtra, or ancient Irish outing to the otherworld, with artist Louis Haugh? Paddy Woodworth is waiting within, the greatest ever photobook of Costa Rican caterpillars in his hands; and Welsh triple harpist Cerys Hafana recounts a harp journey away from everything that is high, washy or angelic.

Canadian composer, Thierry Tidrow who features in this year's New Music Dublin festival on the strange history of Claude Vivier, the art of capturing online speech in music, and his attraction to making opera for children.

Legendary jazz vocalist Norma Winstone on learning to understand the voice as an instrument, the genius of bandmate, Kenny Wheeler, and how Drake became her most famous fan. Also, Paddy Woodwth awards Scott Weidensaul's Living on the Wind some cherished space on the Naturalist's Bookshelf.

Composer, improvisor and evangelist for the power of children's music, Ríona Sally Hartman leads a tour of her musical world.

The Comfort Zone's Colm Tóibín suggests spending (quite a few) minutes with The Met's latest production of Tristran und Isolde (screening in select Irish cinemas this weekend); artist Rónán Ó Raghallaigh offers Carlo Ginsberg's The Cheese and The Worms; and Luke Clancy counters the two series of Lucia Keskin's sitcom, Things You Should have Done.

Orit Gat takes in the new Tate Modern show from former YBA, now officially OBA, Tracey Emin; Rachel Andrews is at Cork's Make2026, with Prof Helen A. Fielding to learn which AI to love; and Patrick O'Laoghaire's Island postcard comes from a road near Clifden.

If you enjoyed Orit Gat's essay on Tracey Emin's sort-of-retrospective at Tate Modern (which you can hear in the current edition of Culture File), here is some further conversation between Orit Gat and Luke Clancy, around Emin, Autofiction, Bad Museums, Rose Wiley and Nobel Prize Winners.

Events on Valentia Island around 360 million years ago set in motion an exhibition from artist Bryony Dunne, currently at the Irish Architectural Archive in Dublin.

Sound artist and composer Tarek Atoui, musician and recordist Natalia Beylis, and Oxn drummer, Eleanor Myler probe the act of making a sound, and the art of receiving one. Recorded at IMMA, Kilmainham. Photo: Louise Williams

Rion Hanora O'Donovan on the place of 'bad' graffiti in her clothes designs; Dermot Rogers puts some sunlight on the legacy of jazz guitarist, Louis Stewart; Paddy Woodworth slips Esther Woolfson on to the Naturalist's Bookshelf; and Patrick O'Laoghaire starts a new series musical Island postcards.

After a troubled Northern Irish childhood, Vivien Hewitt found a new life in Italy, and in opera. The director and designer takes a seat in the afternoon quiet of Trieste's Theatre Verdi to talk about a life in the dreamworld of opera. (Photo credit: Vivien Hewitt)

After a troubled Northern Irish childhood, Vivien Hewitt found a new life in Italy, and in opera. The director and designer takes a seat in the afternoon quiet of Trieste's Theatre Verdi to talk about a life in the dreamworld of opera.

The Culture File panel explores the place of quiet and loud in the contemporary attention economy, with poet, Paula Meehan and musicians and composers, Siobhán Cleary, John Godfrey, and Christine Tobin. Recorded live at New Music Dublin 2025. (From 260425)

The Culture File panel explores the place of quiet and loud in the contemporary attention economy, with poet, Paula Meehan and musicians and composers, Siobhán Cleary, John Godfrey, and Christine Tobin. Recorded live at New Music Dublin 2025. (From 260425)

How birds and their metaphors move through the work and the lives of novelist, John Banville, art critic, Orit Gat, novelist, Sara Baume, journalist and author Paddy Woodworth. Under consideration are: The Pigeon; The Swift; The Wheatear; and The Crane. But which scribe fancies which wìngéd muse? (First broadcast Dec 24)

An ancient Irish farming tradition that sees the wisdom of leaving some farm land free from the imperatives of production --  ‘The Hare's Corner' -- is celebrated in poetry, story, discussion and music. Paddy Woodworth leads a panel featuring Jane Clarke, Catherine Cleary, Jane Carkill and Colm Mac Con Iomaire.

An ancient Irish farming tradition that sees the wisdom of leaving some farm land free from the imperatives of production --  ‘The Hare's Corner' -- is celebrated in poetry, story, discussion and music. Paddy Woodworth leads a panel featuring Jane Clarke, Catherine Cleary, Jane Carkill and Colm Mac Con Iomaire.

Outlandish Theatre's latest, Freedom works with the myth of Antigone to focus on the act of speaking about Gaza, about the world in which it exists, and about the limits of art and speech. After the show's Dublin debut, the creative team gathered to explore further for the Culture File Debate.

Outlandish Theatre Company's performance event Freedom uses the myth of Antigone to explore the act of speaking about Gaza, about the limits of art and speech. Recorded live at Samuel Beckett Theatre, TCD, Dublin in November 2025.

24 Hour Raga People at a festival in Redhook, NY; by the banks of the River Nore, Tadhg O'Sullivan journeys into art that might not get made ; and in Piccadilly, the largest ever European Survey for the veteran American, Kerry James Marshall, a painter of Black American life like no other.

Hamburg-born composer and pianist, Niklas Paschburg on the shortcomings of perfection and his footstamping solo piano outings.

Luke Clancy and panel make the case for loving some teeming critters of the invertebrate kingdom. Advocating for their favourites are: Rachel McKenna (shieldbugs); Liam Lysaght (wasps); Cassia Gaden Gilmartin (earwigs); and Nessa Darcy (woodlice). Recorded live at National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin as part of Dublin Book Festival.

Curator, Beulah Ezeugo takes a tour of some of the work she's brought into the big tent of TULCA Festival of Visual Arts 2025, including the immense quilts by artist, Jessica Zamora-Turner. Photo by Chaz Scott

Luke Clancy and panel make the case for loving some teeming critters of the invertebrate kingdom. Advocating for their favourites are: Rachel McKenna (shieldbugs); Liam Lysaght (wasps); Cassia Gaden Gilmartin (earwigs); and Nessa Darcy (woodlice). Recorded live at National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin as part of Dublin Book Festival.

Dennis Harvey and Lars Lovén on the music of a Celtic Utopia in their new documentary, plus Light Moves festival teams up with Palestinian Movement Film Festival, as well as Catherine Young Dance and the Palestinian company El Funoun, for a Palestinian dance solidarity happening.

Worshiping giant sturgeons at the Iron Gates in Barbara Kneževic's new film; keeping the Hot Club de Paris sound alive on the banks of the Tolka; and Navid Navab and Garnett Willis on their Organism platform, erected around a collection of organ pipes salvaged from a Montreal church.

Culture File | The place of perfume in music making with DJ-Producer, Moving Still; how Dublin pub Grogan's defies the partification odds; the sound of Palestine, with all-female choir, Banat Al-Quds; and Paddy Woodworth on the cosmic lives of swifts.

Musical director of African Gospel Choir Dublin, Adeniyi Allen-Taylor on the ingredients of his music - and his Oba Nlá 2025 concert, showcasing his Afro-beat Orchestra.

The myths and meanings of fire with: Dr Cathy Smith of Leverhulme Centre for Wildfires; ANNEX co-founder Donal Lally; Andrew Scott, Professor of Modern and Ancient Fire Systems, and artist and performer, Rónán Ó Raghallaigh. (First broadcast 291022)

The horticultural turn in contemporary art has a long history, but the urgency with which artists address our patches of green has never been greater. Laura Ní Fhlaibhín, Sara Muthi, Helen Flanagan and Elida Maiques join Luke Clancy to discuss artists and gardens. Recorded live at Mermaid Arts Centre in Bray, County Wicklow.

This Culture File Digital Single meets artists and curators who've been thinking about gardens, and growing, as well as getting involved in dirt-under-the-nails projects such as Bray's community-based Mermaid Garden Project taking part in Composting Colonialism: Towards the Radical Garden exhibition at the Mermaid Arts Centre.

This Culture File Digital Single meets Filmmaker, Tadhg O'Sullivan who speaks about his new film starring Brenda Fricker, The Swallow, a watery, elegiac meditation on memory and loss, and memory loss.

The artists are digging about in the colonial history of the garden at an exhibition at Bray's Mermaid, at Ars Electronica, there's a calming tech that harness the power of human humming, Paddy Woodworth is proposing a new volume for The Naturalist's Bookshelf, and performance poet, Rob McGlade.,

Culture File goes for full immersion into some extended realities at Immersive Island at Venice Film Festival, and at Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria, meeting the creators of experimental experiences designed to dip users into new worlds, including the Irish team behind Irish dance gameworld, Foolish Flame.

Recorded live at Beta Festival '24, writers and artists Noam Young-rak Son, Joanna Walsh and Leon Butler to help chart recent shifts at the intersection of art, design and AI. (First broadcast 140125)

Recorded live at Beta Festival '24, artists Basil Al-Rawi and Conan McIvor, researcher Dr Autumn Brown, and historian Ciaran Wallace explore how we preserve and reimagine our cultural archives in a world of digital tools. (First broadcast 110125)

An extended mix of our Caravaggio program in which Colm Toibin, Orit Gat, and Luke Clancy go to see this year's blockbuster once-in-a-lifetime gathering of the painter's work at the Barberini - as well as the many Caravaggios that are permanent Roman residents, and then gather to imagine what the painter might mean to the 21st century.

Raina Lampkins-Fielder, the Paris-based curator behind IMMA's current Kith & Kin: The Quilts of Gee's Bend, on a few of her favourite things

A visit to Daingean Uí Chúis, where Michael Keegan-Dolan is creating a dance work around The Bothy Band's 1975 debut album; To Kilkenny for a collaborative exhibition in Rothe House with a botanical artist, a paper maker, a composer, and much local weedlife. Plus, our debut Twitch livestream with Renault4-based art project, Tour De Force.

The spiritual calling that is running a rave; the sylvan sci fi of Cecilia Danell; unfinished art; and Paddy Woodworth's The Naturalist's Bookshelf.

Cityscape-appreciating sound artist ,Kate Carr, on her urban practice; Dublin-based musician-composer-carpenter, Zoe Basha on getting into and out of music; and how to play mini-golf in your "fursona" with Berlin's favorite pianist-fox, CoVahr.