Laurie Anderson – Here Comes The Ocean Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington, Friday, March 6 2020 - Part of the NZFestival

Laurie Anderson - Taken in Odlins Plaza (7 March)
Photo: Tim Gruar

In an interview the following day, guest curator and performer Laurie Anderson reflected on her lace in the Festival.  "We are not here to do shows - to present - we are here to collaborate, to be part of the festival"

I suppose this was the premise behind her 'show ‘on Friday night - a symphony (of sorts) featuring ocean-inspired songs by Lou Reed (her late husband), and a variety of poems, observations and spoken word pieces of her own, supported by improvisations from her and the touring band.

This is a really good example of a Festival event, where the audience are part of the 'experiment,.  At one pint we were invited to howl along with the dogs and sing, clap and engage. 

It all started with Reed's former guitar tech Stewart Hurwood doing his 'drone' thing with Lou's guitars arranged around a circle of amps like some kind of druid's seance.  Over that Horomona Horo and another uncredited Kaumatua welcomed us all from the balcony calling across the din.

Horonoa came in to sit and play a variety of Taonga pūoro, which all fitted perfectly in with the other music, giving everything a 'Pacific' flavour - as it should, being the largest ocean ! A double bassist, Greg Cohen, cellist Rubin Kodheli and violinist/guitarist Eyvind Kang provided much of the beautiful orchestral washes and supported Anderson's own trademark electric violin.  Multi-instrumentalist and percussionist Shahzad Ismaily provided beats and plenty of colour and variety on songs, when needed.

We had a few locals, too including Megan Collins and Budi Putra from Gamelan Wellington, and some 'special guests' - a children's orchestra of 6 -9 year olds who came out to play the 2nd Violin Part from Debussy's La Mer, conducted by Kodheli.  Anderson argues that it's the songs and smaller bit within the big pieces that are the special moments. The youngest was only 6 but was dressed in an amazing red dress that sparkled so brightly!

    

Could you say Anderson was steering her ship through this crazy voyage?  Perhaps.  It all seems very off the cuff, and she seemed to just randomly press buttons on her keyboard to conjure up vocals from Reed, a bit of James Brown (Get On The Good Foot) and a dark and alien version of her own voice – via some snazzy filters and software,  Woman-machine-morphed together. 

I recognised a few bits and pieces in her soup mix, like Lou's Reed’s Cremation (Ashes To Ashes) from '92's Magic and Loss and Here Comes The Ocean (1972) plus one or two few chamber music pieces.  It all melded into the drone sounds, images of dogs and space, random lyrics from Joni Mitchell (River) and more Lou - Dirty Blvd in particular.

While it was great to hear Anderson's delightful, measured vocal delivery (nothing seems to phase her) the work Horo put in also made the show even more special.  I don't think you can really critique a performance like this, except to ask: "Was I bored?  Was I confused?  Was I entertained?  Was I challenged?"

I was definitely entertained when Anderson demonstrated her Tai Chi moves.  I was definitely challenged when she dwelled on those deep remembrances of loss - a point she makes a lot.  You do not need to experience sadness to understand it. 

So, how can you sum up a show like tonight’s?  I wouldn’t.  Just let it happen.  Being there is what counts.  Art can be just of itself, you don't always need to over analyse it.

REVIEW: To the Moon - Laurie Anderson and Hsin-Chien Huang - Dowse Art Museum

It's just over 50 years after Apollo 11 landed on the moon yet space travel is still the final frontier.  We've built computers the size of a human hand with more computing power than the technology used tat the time.  We've developed rockets and aeronautical wonders that can reach far into the solar system.  We have space stations and Virgin Shuttle trips and all manner of satellites.  But the idea of just going - just jumping in a vehicle and taking off - isn't quite there yet.  Space remains the ‘outer’ world.

It remains to be seen if you and I will ever get there, should we even wish to go.

But, what if you could, you know, just go?  That’s the question NASA's one and only artist in residence, Laurie Anderson, put to us all during her time there.  Her work, To The Moon, is an expanded virtual reality piece created with artist Hsin-Chien Huang allows you the freedom to hover, fly, and soar across the surface of the moon, dive into craters and negotiate strange creatures made of scientific formulas. 

Welcome to the dark side of the moon.  Go there - if you dare.

The twenty five minute VR half-hour experience begins through sliding doors, decorated with a huge image of the moon.  You pass images from the VRsimulation projected on the wall, in a sort of waiting room.  A place where you can prepare whilst other patrons finish up their journeys.  You take your seat, one of four stools.  A kindly assistant puts on a VR helmet with headphones and two gun-handled controllers, which he explains, will allow you to fly around the virtual space when a ring on your virtual hands lights up.

We begin gently, in a dimly-lit space, surrounded by planets, flying atoms, meteorites and so on.  Look down and you feel like we're lifting into the ceiling.  Look around to see empty chairs, where the other patrons should be.  There's a sort of feeling of loneliness, that you're the only one here.  Isolated in the coldest, most desolate place.

The headset gives you full 360-degree view - up down, behind.  Even with feet firmly on the ground, it’s almost impossible to remain when the walls of the room disolve and the floor propels you into space.  And just as you become comfortable exploring one world, you’re thrust into another - moon craters,  mountain peaks, dinosaurs created from fractal equations.

I was warned that the experience could illicit some strong emotional, physiological responses, vertigo or nausea.  While at times I was both exhilarated and a little alarmed, I was never really terrified, as others have reported.

My 11 year old daughter came along for the ride.  Her experience was more of wonder and she found some of the 'scenery' quite perplexing.  There is one scene for example, where a barage of strange box-like asteroids fly at you.  You try to brush them away but your hands have morphed into oddly spider like tenticles.  She was a bit concerned that her whole body had transmorphed into a huge moon-spider.  That was until she looked to her right and saw the luna shadow of herself riding a donkey, like Don Qixote towards a huge crater.  I laughed out loud at this moment, perhaps a little too loudly.

This is one of many dream-like scenes.  i don't want to completely spoil the experience but it would be sufficient to say that it is a magical, disorientating, bizare and sometimes perplexing experience.  But also one of wonder.  Anderson finishes the work with a statement, delivered in her trademark vocal style - that we have mastered many things but not the stars.  The images that appear and then dissolve are all in our imagination, because that's all we have - for now.

For followers of Laurie Anderson, this work is totally expected.  It's almost too tame.  Maybe not 'avant garde' enough.  But like all her music/art projects, she strikes a happy medium between excess and access.  I think she does it perfectly here. 

The $10 ticket price was perfect.  Not too expensive to make it an elitist experience, which often happens at Arts Festivals.  Locating the work at the Dowse Art Museum in the Hutt makes it all the more accessible to families and even the elderly - widening the potential audience.  Punching well above its weight, the Dowse has been quietly peddling wide-appeal accessible art to the residents of this cultural wasteland for many years.  And they are doing a brilliant job of it.  The lack of suitable spaces in the city was a blessing in disguise for the Hutt.  Here's hoping the trend remains for future events, too.

Festivals offer us the oppotunity to stretch ourselves, as an audience, as art lovers and as novices.  Even the artistically agnostic can occasionally step into a gallery, if there's the right incentive.  It remains to be seen if Anderson's immersive art work will really achieve this but if anything can, this will be it.

I'm also looking forward to Anderson's other collaborative works at the Festival - Here Comes The Ocean, Drones, and Concert For Dogs.  All different.  All interactive, all challenging and immersive.  And, I hope, just as exhillerating.

Review by The CoffeeBar Kid

Brett McKenzie, Laurie Anderson and Neko Case will be at the Festival!

Late last week, at two special events held in the banquet hall at Parliament in Wellington, Creative Director Marnie Karmelita presented the programme for New Zealand Festival Of The Arts 2020. The programme has an extra special angle to it this time with three guest curators putting together mini programmes.

Director and Choreographer Lemi Ponifasio has put together a range of music and dance shows such as Chosen and Beloved, a vast and spectacular reworking of Goreki’s Symphony No.3 Symphony of Sorrowful Songs and Jerusalem written by Ponifasio and inspired by the great Middle Eastern Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said Esber). The second guest curator will be well known to music fans and art fans alike.

Laurie Anderson made her mark in the mid-80’s with avant garde pop such as Language Is A Virus and the boundary smashing O Superman. She’s worked with Kronos Quartet, Philip Glass and Lou Reed. One of her works at the festival, Here Comes The Ocean, is a concert that interprets Reed’s music and Anderson’s words using an ensemble of musicians.

Reed will also be ‘present’ in the exhibition Drones, which features his guitars hooked up to a sonically awesome feedback loop. Anderson has a personal connection to Aotearoa, as her niece was tragically killed in a traffic accident. Her returning will be marked by a special improvisation and incantatory work called The Calling, dedicated to Thea Anderson. Even more exciting is a new free free flying VR experience, which takes participants on a lunar expedition. To The Moon will definitely by one to smash the walls of conventional art down. Finally, another performance is her Concert For Dogs. A free event where our canine friends are all invited along (followed by a film she’s made about her own beloved mutt, Lolabelle).

The third curator is also well known. Brett McKenzie doesn’t really need an introduction. Comedian, Actor, composer and all round nice Wellingtonian he adds a bit of grounding to the festival. He’s worked with artists Kemi Neko and & Co to produce a series of miniature huts to discover around the Kapiti Coast. These are an expansion of an earlier project that made tiny tramping huts based on real DOC buildings and hid them around the city for eager explorers to discover. McKenzie himself has scored a bit of a coup composing the music for the National Theatre’s (UK) upcoming work The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil by George Sanders. This is a work in progress and festival goers will be able to get in on the prototype of the work even before UK audiences see it. Also in McKenzie’s programme is Netherlands based comedy virtuoso Släpstick, who were a major hit at the recent Edinburgh Festival. And there are also a pile of late night gigs where musicians get to try out new material.

The programme includes Estère, Nadia Reid, Jazz musicians John McLaughlin and L.Shankar, Aldous Harding, Weyes Blood and Purple Pilgrims. Poet and musician Kate Tempest will make her mark, too.

Finally, the most exciting news we leave until last. The New Pornographers will be here – including Neko Case – performing their new album In the Morse Code of Brake Lights. There’s plenty more, of course, from opera to dance to programmes for the deaf to schools programme and public art exhibitions.

Check it all out at : https://www.festival.nz/