Laurie Anderson To Guest Curate New Zealand Festival 2020

Trailblazing NYC performance artist and musician Laurie Anderson has been announced as a guest curator for the biennial New Zealand Festival Of The Arts, returning to Wellington early next year, with the two other guest curators being Brett McKenzie (Flight Of The Conchords) and Lemi Ponifasio. Best known to music fans for her chart-topping 1981 single 'O Superman', the innovative multimedia artist opened up about her plans in a Q&A for the festival (revealing the full programme on 7th November) – teasing an oceanic-themed tribute to her sadly now deceased husband Lou Reed titled Here Comes the Ocean, as well as an installation work named Lou Reed Drones.

"Both Lou [Reed] and I wrote a lot about the ocean. Not just the physical ocean but also metaphorical ocean and the things it represents. I wanted to make something that featured the drone feedback from Lou’s guitars, which provide the big wave musicians are all surfing on. It will be both improv work and songs we both wrote and will feature my string quartet who are just extraordinary, and we’re collaborating with musicians from New Zealand as well so it will be an amazing evening.

[Lou Reed Drones] will be an installation of Lou’s guitars leaning against amplifiers to create these amazing feedback loops. Lou was working with these from the 70s all the way through the rest of his life. They’re a very intense and very volatile sound and a deeply beautiful one.

When Lou died, we created an installation of them just to hear his instruments and what happened was people came to the installation and they would sink to the floor and become weirdly defenseless. Other people brought instruments and it became a weird jam session. We didn’t plan that; it was created by other people and it was intensely interesting that it became that."

New Zealand Festival 2020
Friday 21st February to Sunday 15th March 2020 - Wellington
Full programme announced on Thursday 7th November