The Queen of Performance in Norway

Towards the end of June 2011, Laurie Anderson took a slight right on her way home from the Middle East and headed for the North. She stopped by the tiny little town of Harstad in Norway, walked right into the Kulturhus and told some adventure stories by herself on stage, accompanied by accidental fiddling and random toying around on some keyboards in-between - just another day in the life of the Queen of Performance.

She also shared some words of wisdom regarding, among others, the reason why she does not use Facebook:

Luckily, some pro photographer happened to be around and shot a couple of pictures - like this one:

"No more friends." Laurie Anderson performing 'Transitory Life'

June 23rd 2011, Harstad, Norway
photo by hennum.foto.com

On the Return of the Cultural Ambassador

In June 2011 Laurie took 'Delusion' to Israel where she seems to be a welcome returning guest.

(FYI, here's "Laurie Anderson" written in Hebrew characters - took some time for me to find them in the texts but then it made my research process for reviews and all kinds of media coverage a lot easier:

לורי אנדרסון

- yeah, you should read this from right to left.)



For starters, let's see a review with photos and videos of a public conversation with artists Yali Sobol and Sigalit Landau (relax - the URL I included is the English translation of the original text):

If somebody asked her to design a religion,
she would make it all about snow.

Laurie Anderson in Tel-Aviv, Israel, June 2011
photo by Assaf Alboher

Here's an interview from an Israeli tv channel (probably named NANA10). The show is called 'London & Kirschenbaum', and the conversation took place on June 16, 2011. The interviewers were Yaron London and Assaf Amdursky. Laurie also gave the microphone over to Fenway Bergamot for a while during the interview, and gave a short demonstration of the sound of her filtered violin:

The concert in Mann Auditorium left its mark on the Israeli audience. Here's a vast bunch of reviews, translated into English via Google Translator:

• Bedtime Stories - text by Guy Hajaj, photos by Dudu Azulaj
• Hallucinatory Mushroom - text by Yuval Kfsoto, photos by Dana Shimoni
• A Mesmerizing Storyteller - text by Idan Hguel, photo by Meir Luger
• Bored to Death - text by Zahi Yeshurun
• More Theatrical Than Musical - text, big photos and a video
• Less Tight and Perfect Than Others, But Much Human - text by Elliot, photo by Orit Pearls (?)
• Not for Music Fans - a review and a photo in Haaretz

... well, maybe they missed the stage bombs or so.


Anyway, there was at least one enthusiastic audience member who didn't mind to share some videos taken in a tender night:

The very last things you say in life...

Notes from a dream diary:

Thinking of you under the dandelions:

A story on the Moon and Fenway's section:

A story from Iceland:

The finale:

The encore:

From A'dam with Luv

Laurie Anderson's Delusion was part of this year's Holland Festival in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Reviews of the show were mixed - some would have fancied more music, and some were just bored and wished for a little less Laurie Anderson clones in the audience. Some of the lucky ones took a walk with Laurie in the streets of Amsterdam:

Jeroen Visser and Laurie Anderson

Amsterdam, Netherlands, June 2011

Some of the other lucky ones had a close encounter of the third kind with Fenway Bergamot himself sitting in a shopping window of de Bijenkorf (big warehouse in Amsterdam's Dam Square):

Fenway Bergamot, wearing a Chaplin hat and a HollandFestival jacket,
chatted with Lieven Bertels (artistic coordinator of HollandFestival)

Fenway Bergamot happily announced his intention of 

being candidate for the next President of the United States

Throwing an approving glance

at his enthusiastically cheering audience outside the shopwindow.

All photos by Mnemosyne

And, finally, a video to break your heart, too: an excerpt of the Dandelion scene from Delusion in Amsterdam:

"Alguma vez amas-me verdadeiramente?"

PSA: For the sake of accuracy, I'm trying to cover all the (more-or-less) European venues which got graced by Laurie Anderson's 'Delusion' during the summer of 2011.


If you read Portuguese, here is a review of 'Delusion' in Porto from June 2011. Text by Marta Ribeiro, along with some photos by Victor Fernandes. Like this one:

"That's a really good dog. I like that dog."
'Delusion' by Laurie Anderson, June 5, 2011
Casa da Música, Porto, Portugal 

Retrospect 1.0: The Updated Posts

First of all, I decided to update some of the previous posts. I'm doing it this way since I wouldn't want to break up the one-post-one-topic consistency which, more or less, characterized the posts of Files on a String in the past. It's not handy, it's not convenient but it's for the sake of logic (and, um, proportion, whatevs). So, here is the list:

• 'Delusion' in the UK: Read - a review of 'Transitory Life' and the public conversation in Brighton (UK) added

• 'Delusion' in Germany: Read. Look. (Part Two) - one review from Dresden, two more from Kassel / Hofgeismar, plus a video with interview excerpts recorded in Kassel added

• El sistema de l'ase i la pastanaga - a photo gallery from Girona (Spain) added

• Λόρι Αντερσον - a photo gallery from Athens (Greece) added

Thank You, 16 Yeses.

I just want to say thanks... so, thanks.

Thanks to those who voted. I think I know some of you. What an honour.

And to you whom I don't: it's an even bigger pleasure for me and hereby I'm encouraging you to feel free to say hi anytime.

Your yeses did mean some kind of support / encouragement for me and that it's really worth it to start this over. Which is really not a problem since there's such a big amount of great stuff lying around, waiting to be discovered (and, um, appropriately, um, appreciated).

Soon.

xxxxoooo