Tag Archives: southbank

Laurie Anderson, Southbank Meltdown Festival

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I am certainly not an authority on Laurie Anderson and experiencing the rapturous appreciation and applause in the spooky candle lit Royal Festival Hall at the end of her concert, I realised I was surrounded by fans who really know and understand a lot more about this eccentric performance artist than I do.

Performance art can be difficult to grasp and enjoy and yet with Laurie Anderson I felt swept up into her world of magical sounds and was mesmerised by her fluid and imaginative show. Performing as part of the Southbank’s Meltdown Festival in a one off performance, it felt truly special to be witnessing her presence and creativity. Anderson is an American experimental artist and a pioneer in electronic music, often creating her own devices to develop certain techniques and noises. She is most famous for her 1981 track ‘O Superman’ which reached number 2 in the UK pop charts.

Anderson’s show at Southbank, entitled Dirtday! was weird and wonderful from start to finish. Stationed predominantly centre stage behind her desk of equipment, she singlehandedly creates and manipulates a massive sound world. She plays an electric violin and speaks clinically into an often distorting microphone… at times it is scary and odd, occasionally joyful and passionate but always captivating.

She refers to numerous controversial themes, America’s healthcare, Darwin, the Catholic Church are the most memorable for me post show. Stories take on a vivid form through her music, and the moody lighting and visuals help to conjure an ethereal atmosphere.

Laurie’s late dog Lolabelle has a short slot in the show…Laurie’s beloved pet is shown in YouTube videos playing the piano while Laurie commentates on the animal’s difficult and inspiring death process.

There is no interval in Dirtday – a decision which made complete sense to me: Anderson’s audience are enveloped entirely by the world of this most important of performance artists. I felt I experienced a rare and special show in an evening that is impossible to forget.

Visit the Laurie Anderson website here.

THOROUGHLY MODERN MAN: Invisible: Art about the Unseen 1957 – 2012, Hayward Gallery

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While the capital is full of spectacle and visual riches this summer, it is a refreshing contrast to visit an exhibition concerned with art that lacks anything much to see.  It is extraordinary to witness so many approaches to, what on the surface appears to be, such a limited idea.

Although one would expect the driest of conceptual art, actually the show is full of amusing, witty ideas, which have visitors grinning and even comparing responses.

Yoko Ono is a key explorer of the ethereal and her ‘Hide and Seek’ instruction piece is equally funny and sad:

Hide until everybody goes home.

Hide until everybody forgets about you.

Hide until everybody dies.

Many pieces document past or possible future events: Chris Burden’s 1975 exhibition in which he lay hidden on a raised platform in a California gallery for twenty-two days; the paperwork from Yves Klein’s 1959 sales of zones of immaterial sensibility; Claes Oldenburg’s studies for a proposed buried monument to JFK intended to be the same size as the Statue of Liberty!

Other works deal with psychic phenomena, one suspects not always altogether sincerely: Tom Friedman’s space above a pedestal cursed by a professional witch; the pitch dark room containing the ghost of (dead) mystic artist James Lee Byars; Andy Warhol’s 1985 Invisible Sculpture – a plinth retaining the aura of celebrity from his having briefly stood on it.

Some of the most pleasing exhibits are those that have the merest trace of a creative act, although most of the work has become invisible: Bruno Jakob’s paintings done with melted snow or the artist’s breath.

I’m afraid the exhibition has now ended so, fittingly, you will not be able to see it.

http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/find/festivals-series/invisible-art-about-the-unseen-1957-2012

Written by a Thoroughly Modern Man, Chris Kenny.

PREVIEW: Southbank Centre’s Meltdown Festival

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Antony’s Meltdown

1-12 August 2012

Each year Southbank Centre’s Meltdown Festival opens up the world of one mercurial artist. In August 2012, audiences get the chance to encounter the musicians, performers and thinkers who have helped shape the life and art of Antony, lead singer with Mercury Award-winning Antony and the Johnsons and one of the world’s most idiosyncratic performers. Antony’s Meltdown is part of Southbank Centre’s Festival of the World with MasterCard, which runs from 1 June to 9 September 2012. More artists and a series of talks and lectures will be announced soon.

Meltdown is renowned for delivering unmissable events that have gone down in history, from the New York Dolls reforming for Morrissey’s Meltdown to Jeff Buckley’s last-ever UK performance at Elvis Costello’s. Antony’s Meltdown will see an incredibly rare live performance by the much-loved and hugely missed singer Elizabeth Fraser (6/7 August, Royal Festival Hall). While the Scottish singer has lent her stunning voice to projects with Massive Attack, Craig Armstrong and Peter Gabriel in recent years, these will be her first full shows since she left the Cocteau Twins in 1998. Other iconic artists performing at Antony’s Meltdown include Lou Reed, Marc Almond, Diamanda Galas and Turkish singer Selda.

It is perhaps no surprise that a significant part of Meltdown reads like a who’s who of the New York underground scene, where Antony forged his identity as a performer and an artist in the 1990s. On 2 August Meltdown sees a performance by one of New York’s most totemic musical icons Laurie Anderson, who herself was a Meltdown curator in 1997.  She performs Dirtday, a collection of songs and stories on evolution, families, history and animals set against a lush and hallucinatory sonic landscape. The festival will also feature performances by Joey Arias, Kembra Pfahler and her band the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, Joan as Policewoman.  Video artist Charles Atlas will present the UK premiere of the film Turning, which was a collaboration with Antony and the Johnsons.

Following his wonderfully anarchic Disney tribute at Jarvis’ Meltdown in 2007, Meltdown veteran and maverick producer Hal Willner returns to the stage of the Royal Festival Hall on Sunday 12 August with his usual, surprising and eclectic array of musicians, actors and other artists – established, emerging, famous and infamous – to perform songs that inspired and illuminated the Civil Rights Movement. Artists confirmed so far include Martin and Eliza Carthy, Billy Bragg and Shoreshank Redemption actor Tim Robbins.

Visit the website here for more information and to book.