No Words Needed

'Duets on Ice' in Rio de Janeiro, March 2011: a video by Marcello Dantas and Raphael Lupo:

More Ice from Rio

Laurie Anderson's skates in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, March 2011
photo by Cristina Granato

FYI: for more photos of the latest performance of 'Duets on Ice', click to the photo above.

Duets on Ice, Rio de Janeiro Version - UPDATED

Laurie Anderson treated the audience to another Duet on Ice as part of the vernissage of I in U / Eu em Tu, her retrospective exhibition in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (let's hope there'll pop up a more extensive recording of the event on YouTube soon):

UPDATE #1: a longer video - from the second performance on March 29:

UPDATE #2: an HD video - the best one so far (presumably recorded on March 28):

UPDATE #3: another HD video; this one is from the second performance:

Duets on Ice in London, 2011 a. k. a. Auditive Solace for the Remote and Deprived (Plus Photos, Yay)

... a. k. a. that's what friends are for!

Files on a String now proudly presents timeiswide's recording of 'Duets on Ice' in London, performed at the Barbican Art Gallery a few days ago: prepare your ears for 2 x 12 minutes of groovy freeform improvisation onto musical bases that may be familiar from 'Delusion' (plus, I dare say, 'Homeland'). Yes, there are two recordings since the first session of 'Duets on Ice' (8 PM) was sold out so the organizers announced yet another performance at 9 PM. Considering Laurie's genuine inclination towards random playfulness, it comes as no surprise that the sessions are quite different from each other.

"[...] also, Laurie almost fell off the very tiny stage .... during the second session, the ice on her right skate broke off, and Laurie lost her balance .... [then] got her balance back. Laughed, smiled and immediately continued with now only one ice block, received an extra applause from a relieved audience ... "


"[...] and what felt as a long long time when Laurie lost her balance due to an ice-break on her right foot skate turns out to be a split second on the rec!
See, what you sense and experience as many seconds turns out to be different, on a recording!"

(excerpt from Timeiswide's review of the sessions)

• Laurie Anderson's 'Duets on Ice' in London (2011-03-03), Session One at 8PM (audio length: 13 mins 2 secs, file size: 17.9 MB)

• Laurie Anderson's 'Duets on Ice' in London (2011-03-03), Session Two at 9PM (audio length: 12 mins 5 secs, file size: 16.6 MB)

Laurie Anderson playing 'Duets on Ice'

at the Barbican Centre in London, England

photo by Rune Hellestad

(FYI: more photos of the event at Contactmusic: here and here. Also in Barbican's Facebook photo gallery!)

Visual Solace for the Remote and Deprived

A photo gallery and a video tour of the joint exhibition of the early works of Laurie Anderson, choreographer Trisha Brown and the late artist Gordon Matta-Clark at the Barbican Art Gallery in London:

The exhibition is called Pioneers of the Downtown Scene, New York 1970s. It opens today and it runs until May 22nd, 2011.

FYI: Tonight Laurie Anderson will re-perform one of her early trademark acts, Duets on Ice at the gallery.

Sigh.

That's It!

By clicking to the picture below, watch a reportage of I in U, Laurie Anderson's retrospective exhibition, and her latest version of 'Duets on Ice' in São Paulo, Brazil...

...and get lost in the beauty of visuals and sounds. Video by Raphael Lupo and Adolfo Borges.

I in U in the 'Metropolis'

"[...] To tell a story: this is really my art form, not technology."

(Laurie Anderson)

Brazilian cultural tv show 'Metropolis' featuring I in U / Eu em Tu:

Since the the Portuguese overdub was mixed to the left side and Laurie's voice on the right side in the stereo sound, I luckily managed to "extract" her voice and made a collage of the interview excerpts that had been made it o the show. They are sometimes disjointed, sometimes without end of sentences but, at least, listenable. She talks about how she feels being called a performance artist; making the paintings for the exhibition; Duets on Ice, Lou Reed's help in the making process of 'Homeland', Bob Dylan and politics:

• Laurie Anderson interview excerpts in 'Metropolis', 2010 (audio length: 1 min 29 secs, file size: 1.3 MB)

Physical but Intangible

Fragments of 'Duets on Ice' by Laurie Anderson - the 2010 version:

Then and Now #5: the Blocks of Ice

1975: 'Duets on Ice' in Genova, Italy. Laurie Anderson and two Italian men on different levels of sociability.

Photo by Bob Bielecki

2005: Laurie Anderson opens her exhibition 'The Record of Time' at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, Ireland.

Photo source: Profimedia

"I love duets so I made a violin that plays by itself, so that I could play duets with it live. This combination of live and pre-recorded has been basic to my work for ever. This violin was played in five different places around New York. It was an endless cassette loop. Like many minimal pieces, it would start and yards and yards of material would go by and then it would stop, it didn't have a narrative structure typical to music, that's why it was minimalism."

"I used for this timing mechanism, for this endless piece of music a pair of ice-skates which I wore with their blades frozen into blocks of ice. I played this piece - endless loop - until the ice melted and I lost my balance and the concert was over. So, there I was, on this hot summer street of New York, wearing these ice-skates that were sort of gradually wobbling and then my ankles would splay out and the concert would be over and people were like "what's that?". But, for me, it had the social aspect of an audience which I really did enjoy as an artist because my question is always: who are you talking to? Who's your audience? Who are you making this for? History? Other artists? Critics? Your friends? General public? Box office? Who?"

(Laurie Anderson, on her Self-Playing Violin,

part of the MoMA's collection in New York)

If you go to the MoMA collection's website, you can listen to Laurie Anderson describe her Self-Playing Violin (1974) and 'Duets on Ice'.