Laurie Anderson, the multimedia artist, performer, musician and writer who was married to Lou Reed, will have a series of new work blazed across the Piccadilly Lights this month.
Notebook is a collection of 135 personal chalk-drawings by Anderson which have been photographed and edited using stop-motion and condensed down into 25 animated pages.
Each of these 25 animated will be broadcast across the lights, from April 6 to April 30 to coincide with the next full moon, with a different page presented each evening at 8.23pm.
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The project is in response to the Cultural Institute of Radical Contemporary Arts (CIRCA)’s 20:23 manifesto: Hope: The Art of Reading What Is Not Yet Written and draws upon CIRCA’s monthly programmes too.
Speaking about the project, Anderson said: “While I can’t define hope in a few words, people using their own imagination in the freest way possible makes me feel hopeful.”
When curator Vittoria de Franchis asked Anderson the meaning behind the drawings, Anderson said: “I prefer not to turn them into language or explicate. The world is already overexplained. Think of them outside of context. Thought balloons. Appearing out of nowhere.”
The works are deliberately screened in line with April’s full moon as a poetic nod to the disconnect between the city and celestial skies.
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Franchis continued: “Raising our gaze to look at the sky has become an archaeological gesture, something we romantically associate with menhirs and ancient discoveries. Cities don’t have a sky; the lights are too bright, and pollution veils the firmament. We sometimes have the sensation that nothing is beyond skyscrapers, dangerously becoming condensed cores of our destinies.’
Notebook will also be broadcast across Berlin, Milan Seoul and Tokyo.
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