RTÉ takes a surprisingly cutting-edge look at Ireland's creative youngunderclass, says William Hederman.
Slate magazine, Reclaim the Streets, pirate radio stations - we know what these folks do, but not who they are. There's a hidden world of young people out there busy being creative, provocative, in some cases subversive and even illegal - or just plain silly. They are talented, passionate, invariably interesting and often successful, but they're also anonymous, because they're not in the social diaries or on chat shows.
It's this invisibility, as well as creativity, innovation, quiet confidence and (largely uncelebrated) success, that unites the subjects of Sampler, a new five-part magazine series aimed at 16- to 35-year-olds, beginning this week on Network 2.
Sampler was first envisaged as an arts programme with the tried and tested format of previews/ reviews/interviews, but quickly developed into something different. Producer Luke McManus describes the evolution: "I began to think, what doesn't get on RTÉ that should?" His initial answer was the club DJ subculture, hence the show's title.
From there he and assistant producers Clare Connolly and Sinead O'Shea went further underground, seeking out young Irish people (mostly male and mostly from Dublin, it appears) who might be described as belonging to a subculture, from ostensibly illegal activities such as pirate radio, free raves and cycle courier racing, to DJs, emerging film-makers and other small-budget artists working outside the mainstream.
Eschewing celebrities and dispensing with a presenter or narrator, Sampler tries to present a unified picture of underground Dublin, from fringe publishers to anti-capitalists to skateboarders, with an emphasis on creative talent.
Citing 23-year-old Ruairi Robinson, creator of the Oscar-nominated animated short film, Fifty Percent Grey, McManus says the subjects whose work is sampled are "world-class, though not in fields traditionally associated with Ireland, such as writing novels, acting or playing soccer, but rather animation, electronic music and DJing. It's global culture and these people can stand up and be counted.
"Television is saturated in plastic pop and manufactured celebrities at the moment. Talent and passion deserve more airtime and the commercial channels are simply not interested. Mainstream popular culture tends to mean wealthy, famous but mediocre people. There's a sense of a mono-culture that doesn't react, doesn't adapt."
The subjects in Sampler, on the other hand, are "non-famous, non-wealthy people with immense talent and energy. But recognition is important to them. They need to be acknowledged." And RTÉ, McManus tentatively suggests, has not traditionally been well-positioned to recognise or investigate urban, underground culture. "I watch the cars come out of RTÉ and onto the main road and they all go left, to the suburbs. It's a suburban place."
The Sampler team can reasonably claim to understand their subjects, not least due to a shared experience of overcoming limited resources through innovation. As O'Shea says, "We often found ourselves comparing common production experiences".
The production techniques used on Sampler are unprecedented in RTÉ. The young, three-person team did all the research, interviews, filming, sound, editing and caption-writing. Although the trio say they learned the hard way, this mode of production has its benefits, not least the way it allows them to retain control over their work.
Connolly was filming at the now-infamous Reclaim the Streets event on May 6th and cites it as a good example of how they operated. "I covered the protest alone. Being able to edit the piece myself ensured the story's integrity was retained."
Probably due in part to the low-budget digital video technology, the show has a predictably underground style - a raw, anonymous, Internet quality. A bit rough around the edges, in other words, which suits the subject matter, of course, and is an inevitable part of a genre seen all-too-rarely on RTÉ.
Digital video and other new technology also allows the producers of Sampler to act as a sort of open medium, a facilitator for so-called "guerrilla TV". "Many people now have the facility to make broadcast quality foot-age," says McManus, "but they don't have the access to airtime. We want to provide that access."
To that end, Sampler will invite viewers to submit footage to be considered for use in a possible second series. In a world in which broadcasters generally don't rate their audience's creative potential any higher than the provision of funny home videos, that's encouraging.
Sampler, RTÉ 1, Wednesday, 11.05 p.m. See also page 18 of today's Magazine