05/07/2025
Last year when we interviewed BBC journalist Adam Curtis for our Levity Issue he was deep in editing his new five part documentary SHIFTY (now on BBC/YouTube). It tells the story of how the end of the dissolution of the British Empire, money, hyperindividualism, and deregulation gave rise to an extreme, uncontrolled politics of money and power in the UK over the last decades of the 20th century. A result of these power shifts, art and fashion, and subsequently artists and designers, became pawns and sacrificial lambs in a voracious grab for land and market share. The luxury and art worlds were rapidly democratized to sell real estate, beauty products and hand bags. The designers and artists were living in someone else’s dream. It’s a fascinating portal that mirrors a phenomenon that happened in major liberal cities across the globe.
