LAURIE ANDERSON AT THE TOWN HALL
The Town Hall Presents
LAURIE ANDERSON: ALL THE THINGS I LOST IN THE FLOOD
A Reading and Performance with Music, Visuals and Electronics
At The Town Hall, Thursday, February 15, 2018 at 8pm
Special Event in Conjunction with the Debut of her New Book, All the Things I Lost in the Flood,
A Series of Essays on Stories and Language
"The world is made of stories, and as stories escalate and get shorter
and shorter until they're ten word tweets and as our sense of reality
continues to shred, we see that this is not a political situation, it's
an existential one.
And we suddenly see: we're drowning in our own stories."
Laurie Anderson
Laurie Anderson's new book All the Things I Lost in the Flood
is a series of essays about stories and language. In celebration of the
publication of the book (released by Rizzoli) the artist will present a
special performance at the Town Hall in New York City on Thursday,
February 15. The performance All the Things I Lost in the Flood
includes visual images - many of them previously unpublished - as well
as intimate performances with commentary of some of her iconic work
with voice, electronics, codes, narrative styles and digital language.
The evening also includes accounts of many of Anderson's projects,
operas, installations and inventions as well as an inside look at the
artist's methods, strategies, failures and Plan B's. A book about
performance comes to life again as a performance.
Says Anderson: "This book is about language in live performances, the
difference between spoken and written
words; the influence of the audience; the use of first-, second-, and
third person voices; metaphor; politics-as-stories; codes; the
difference between language in stories, dreams and songs;
misunderstandings and new meanings."
"This book is also about books. In many of my films, stories and songs,
there is a book in the middle. Sometimes it's right there in the title
like Songs and Stories for Moby Dick
and sometimes it hides in the center or shapes the overall style or
structure. Crime and Punishment
, Moby Dick, The Tibetan Book of the Dead
and the Bible are among the books that show up in my work."
An icon of performance art and the indie-music world, Anderson has written
the first book on her full career to date. She is one of the most revered
artists working today, as prolific as she is inventive. She is a musician,
performance artist, composer, fiction writer, and filmmaker (her most
recent foray, Heart of a Dog, was lauded as an "experimental
marvel" by the Los Angeles Times). Anderson moves seamlessly
between the music world and the fine-art world while maintaining her
stronghold in both. A true polymath, her interest in new media made her an
early pioneer of harnessing technology for artistic purposes long before
the technology boom of the last ten years. Regardless of the medium,
however, it is exploration of language (and how it seeps into the image)
and storytelling that is her métier.
The performance at the Town Hall on February 15th will weave
together all the elements of Anderson's life and work at the intersection
of art and technology. As John Leland recently noted in the New York Times, "After 40 years, still, no one tells stories like
Laurie Anderson."
Anderson's prior appearance at The Town Hall in February of last year, an
improvisational debut with bassist Christian McBride and cellist Rubin
Khodeli, was named one of the Top Ten Jazz Concerts of 2017 by The New York Times.
Copies of All the Things I Lost in the Flood will be available for
purchase at the show.
The Town Hall Presents
LAURIE ANDERSON: All the Things I Lost in the Flood
Thursday, February 15, 2018 at 8pm (doors 7:30pm)
http://thetownhall.org/event/laurie-anderson
TICKETS: $47/57
THE TOWN HALL
123 West 43rd Street (between 6th Avenue and
Broadway)
New York, NY 10036
TICKETS at The Town Hall Box Office 212-997-6661
or Ticketmaster 1-800-653-8000 http://www.ticketmaster.com/
Website: www.thetownhall.org
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