Culture File

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 Jan…

Canadian composer, Thierry Tidrow who features in this year's New Music Dublin festival on the strange history of Claude Vivier, t…

Legendary jazz vocalist Norma Winstone on learning to understand the voice as an instrument, the genius of bandmate, Kenny Wheeler…

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

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 o…

Orit Gat takes in the new Tate Modern show from former YBA, now officially OBA, Tracey Emin; Rachel Andrews is at Cork's Make2026,…

Marking your cards for some time well spent, The Comfort Zone's Colm Tóibín suggests spending (quite a few) minutes with The Met's…

Events on Valentia Island around 360 million years ago set in motion an exhibition from artist Bryony Dunne, currently at the Iris…

Sound artist and composer Tarek Atoui, musician and recordist Natalia Beylis, and Oxn drummer, Eleanor Myler probe the act of maki…

Rion Hanora O'Donovan on the place of 'bad' graffiti in her clothes designs; Dermot Rogers puts some sunlight on the legacy of jaz…

Culture File XXXL Edition | After a troubled Northern Irish childhood, Vivien Hewitt found a new life in Italy, and in opera. The …

The Culture File panel explores the place of quiet and loud in the contemporary attention economy, with poet, Paula Meehan and mus…

How birds and their metaphors move through the work and the lives of novelist, John Banville, art critic, Orit Gat, novelist, Sara…

In this XXXL edition of The Comfort Zone, The Rats: 'horrademic' Prof Darryl Jones brings a favourite 1970s gorecore novel into th…

In this XXXL edition of the debate, an ancient Irish farming tradition that sees the wisdom of leaving some farm land free from th…

Outlandish Theatre Company's performance event Freedom uses the myth of Antigone to explore the act of speaking about Gaza, about …

Outlandish Theatre's latest, Freedom works with the myth of Antigone to focus on the act of speaking about Gaza, about the world i…

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 no…

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

In this XXXL edition, Luke Clancy and panel make the case for loving some teeming critters of the invertebrate kingdom. Advocating…

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, incl…

Dennis Harvey and Lars Lovén on the music of a Celtic Utopia in their new documentary, plus Light Moves festival teams up with Pal…

Worshiping giant sturgeons at the Iron Gates in Barbara Knežević's new film; keeping the Hot Club de Paris sound alive on the bank…

Musical director of African Gospel Choir Dublin, Adeniyi Allen-Taylor on the ingredients of his music - and his Ọba Ńlá 2025 conce…

Culture File | The place of perfume in music making with DJ-Producer, Moving Still; how Dublin pub Grogan's defies the partificati…

Colm Toibin and Comfort Zone visitor, composer Jennifer Walshe, share some things worth bringing into your head and your home.

The myths and meanings of fire with: Dr Cathy Smith of Leverhulme Centre for Wildfires; ANNEX co-founder Donal Lally; Andrew Scott…

The horticultural turn in contemporary art has a long history, but the urgency with which artists address our patches of green has…

This Culture File Digital Single meets Filmmaker, Tadhg O'Sullivan who speaks about his new film starring Brenda Fricker, The Swal…

Culture File goes for full immersion into some extended realities at Immersive Island at Venice Film Festival, and at Ars Electron…

Academic and podcaster, Autumn Brown joins Colm Tóibín and Luke Clancy in sharing some culture choices: Calligraphy Lesson: Collec…

Recorded live at Beta Festival '24, writers and artists Noam Young-rak Son, Joanna Walsh and Leon Butler to help chart recent shif…

Percussionist-singer Eleanor Myler joins Colm Tóibín and Luke Clancy in sharing some culture choices: How to End a Story: Collecte…

Composer-vocalist, Róis joins Colm Tóibín and Luke Clancy in sharing some culture choices: Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, John Heale…

Culture File XXXL Mix. An extended version of our Caravaggio program in which Colm Toibin, Orit Gat and Luke Clancy go to see this…

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

This time on Culture File, A visit to Daingean Uí Chúis, where Michael Keegan-Dolan is creating a dance work around The Bothy Band…

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

Twelve Microtonal Etudes for Electronic Music Media: musician-academic-composer Richard Duckworth joins Colm Tóibín and Luke Clanc…

Sound artist and recordist Kate Carr talks to Culture File about her sonic practice and principles, and the importance of messy ur…

For the latest version of his Culchie boy, I Love You exhibition, artist Kian Benson Bailes, has added in some ceramic flutes, wit…

Cityscape-appreciating sound artist ,Kate Carr, on her urban practice; Dublin-based musician-composer-carpenter, Zoe Basha on gett…

Culture File Debate broadcasts live from Eyeries Village Hall, Rachel Andrews is your host with three panelists who will give a br…

The frontline of knitting, DIY monuments and macabre collections, and our latest suggestion for books to include on the ideal Natu…

German poet and traveller, Joachim Sartorius, author of Syracuse: Sicily’s City of Stories, talks to Luke Clancy about the histori…

Booker Prize winner Samantha Harvey, nature writer Helen Macdonald, novelist Sin Blaché and investigative journalist Andrei Soldat…

The Row Bag: Author and academic, Rachel O'Dwyer brings her favourite luxury "dupe" into the Comfort Zone, where the conversation …

Caravaggio is celebrated this summer in Rome with a once-in-a-lifetime meetup of paintings normally living in museums around the w…

Artist, Marianne Keating on her archival voyage into the lives of Irish migrants to the UK; Tadgh O'Sullivan's further encounters …

Conductor, teacher and former King Singer, Gabriel Crouch, on the mysteries of the late composer Jóhann Jóhannsson "not classical"…

Recorded live at New Music Dublin 2025 at the NCH in Dublin, the panel explores how creative practices engage with the quiet space…

Ghost bands and circus values, with LA artist, Marnie Weber; Tadgh O'Sullivan on art that never was; and an in-the-end surprisingl…

Percussionist, James Larter reboots of the Four Season; the allure of ancient craft in New York; and Paddy Woodworth suggests a ne…

Classical music and hiphop meet with a bang in Belfast composer, Anselm McDonnell's latest project; the textile stories of Gee's B…

At this year's New Music Dublin, American Irish clarinetist, Berginald Rash presents Bombast! his program of chamber music from co…

Pianist and composer, Ethan Iverson, formerly of The Bad Plus, on working solo, standards v hits, and the music of Igor Stravinsky…

An extended version of our conversation with Sonic Youth co-founder and explorer at the furthermost limits of the sonic spectrum, …

Artist-farmer Lisa Fingleton's new exhibition takes its title from a sci-fi fruit: The Square Tomato; "corn smut" at The Third Kin…

The Culture File Debate on breath, from the need for breathable air to states of mind and body rooted in breath. Featuring IMMA's …

A "double emergence" of two broods of periodical cicadas near Springfield, Illinois for the first time in more than 200 years insp…

In this special All-Rembrandt-All-The-Time edition, we're in Amsterdam to join in the Netherland's celebrations of the 350th Anniv…

Walking a few momentous blocks of Dublin on the scent of a constellation of chancers, charities, literal bigwigs, choristers and 1…

The Irish Institute of Music and Song in Balbriggan's "Pathway to the Well" offer children in North County Dublin experiences of I…

Fairy tales, they're not just for kids you know, suggests Tadhg O'Sullivan in his latest Cloud of Unknowing.

A taste of our forthcoming Culture File Debate: Wìngéd Muses, for which we asked some of our favourite writers—Orit Gat, Sara Baum…

How do artists capture the limitless beauty and complexity of the natural world? Paddy Woodworth chairs a panel of image-makers, f…

Artist and perception wrangler, Renata Pekowska, on a few of her favourite things, which include a book about religious relics and…

As a taster for this week's Culture File Debate: Seeing Natures, Paddy Woodworth asks his panel of nature image-makers - Jane Cark…

Conversations, impressions and quick sketches from this year's Galway Cartoon Festival, in cartoonist Caoimhe Lavelle's festival n…

VR visionary, Curtis Hickman, on how even good old-fashioned legerdemain can teach a creator about working with the "hyper-reality…

Paddy Woodworth's latest selection for his ideal shelf of nature books is The Signature Of All Things by 'Eat, Pray, Love' author,…

Conductor and researcher, Peter Whelan on what we're still learning about Handel in Dublin; Orit Gat attempts to see Monet in Lond…

Neuroscientist and cyberdelic evangelist, Till Holzapfel, on some of his favourite things, including Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Ma…

Among the ingredients for Rada Iva Sibila sound installations are the Zagreb artist's spoken words, captured as she experiences th…

Is it possible to see once-breathtaking images from Monet or Van Gogh at all now? Orit Gat gives it a go at two current London sho…

What did George Frideric Handel hear at the Messiah's first performance in Dublin in 1743? Irish Baroque Orchestra's Peter Whelan …

Rewalking a memorable path through "Handel's Dublin" in the company of the late historian, Jonathan Bardon. (4/4)

On the trail of the probably German writer behind The Treasure of the Sierra Madre with Tadhg O'Sulllivan, the art of playing the …

Composer, John McLachlan shares some of his favourite things, which include all six volumes of Karl Ove Knausgård's My Struggle, a…

A couch-surfing homeless immigrant who doesn’t know his luck encounters a blind woman who doesn't know he's there, in director TJ …

Culture File makes a studio visit to the "Art Cabin" at Brother Russell House in Limerick City.

At IMMA, an audio guide provides a platform for kids' takes on contemporary art; uilleann piper, Cillian Vallely teams up with Fid…

Some of the good things as rated by composer, Timothy Brock, including Vincenzo Lamagna's re-score for Akram Khan's Giselle, and a…

Kids offer the insights for a new audio guide at IMMA's "Take a Breath" exhibition.