Culture File

Curator, Beulah Ezeug 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. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Culture File Presents: The Comfort Zone. XXXL Edition. Beatledemic Christine Feldman-Barrett joins Luke Clancy and Colm Toibin to watch the latest in a long line of Beatlementaries, and talk about Taylor Swift, fandom and the secrets of sex appeal (they're secret). See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Worshiping giant sturgeons at the Iron Gates in Barbara Knežević'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. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Culture File Presents: The Comfort Zone. Academic and editor, Rosie Lavan wants us to think again about John Boorman's rosey 1987 Blitz biopic, Hope and Glory. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Musical director of African Gospel Choir Dublin, Adeniyi Allen-Taylor on the ingredients of his music - and his Ọba Ńlá 2025 concert, showcasing his Afro-beat Orchestra. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Culture File Presents: The Comfort Zone XXXL edition. Drummer, vocalist and member of the danktrad supergroup, OXN, Eleanor Myler leads Colm Toibin into the nice 'n' steady sound of krautrockers, Neu! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Colm Toibin and Comfort Zone visitor, composer Jennifer Walshe, share some things worth bringing into your head and your home. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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) Luke Clancy's culture come-all-ye, featuring bright spots in music, performance, film, tv and art from Ireland and the world. Broadcast Wednesda...

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. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Culture File Presents: The Comfort Zone: Composer and tech wrangler, Jennifer Walshe, leads Colm Toibin deep into the humid heart of the musical mega-genre that almost dare not speak its name: Exotica See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Academic and podcaster, Autumn Brown joins Colm Tóibín and Luke Clancy in sharing some culture choices: Calligraphy Lesson: Collected Short Stories by Mikhail Shishkin; 2023: A Trilogy by Justified Ancients of Mu Mu; and William Blake vs. the World by John Higgs See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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) See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Percussionist-singer Eleanor Myler joins Colm Tóibín and Luke Clancy in sharing some culture choices: How to End a Story: Collected Diaries by Helen Garner; Victor Hugo's Octopus; and So Little Happened for So Long by Nev Clay. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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) See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Composer-vocalist, Róis joins Colm Tóibín and Luke Clancy in sharing some culture choices: Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, John Healey's Death of an Irish Town and Apple's The Studio. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Culture File Presents: The Comfort Zone: Art writer, Orit Gat joins Luke Clancy to wave Colm Tóibín off on a journey out of his comfort zone, and into the Taylor Swift Cinematic Universe. (First broadcast 150325) See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Culture File XXXL Mix. An extended version 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 gathered to imagine what the painter might mean (not to mention, smell like) to the 21st century. See...

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 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This time on Culture File, A visit to Daingean Uí Chúis, where Michael Keegan-Dolan is creating a dance work around The Bothy Band's 1975 debut album; and to Kilkenny for a collaborative exhibition in Rothe House that brings together 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. See omnystud...

Culture File Presents: The Comfort Zone XXXL Edition.  This time, artist and curator, Kerry Guinan join Colm Tóibín and Luke Clancy to rake over the embers of art-provocateurs K-Foundation's 1994 performance of burning £1 million on a Scottish island. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.