Building an Ark

In this talk presentation, renowned artist and musician Laurie Anderson reveals the process behind her newest music-theater work, ARK, while at EMPAC for a final production residency in preparation for its world premiere in Manchester in November 2024.

An opera starring a host of mythical and contemporary figures, Anderson’s subjects—apocalyptic climate events, technology and information overload, American history—are warped into a story that plays with the flow of time and poses questions about the survival of the human spirit. How does humanity need to change in order to be saved?

Laurie Anderson was at EMPAC for her first residency in 2009. She was Distinguished Artist-in-Residence for three years from 2012 through 2014. In all, Anderson has developed 10 projects during residencies at EMPAC, including this season's ARK.

One of America’s most renowned performance artists, Laurie Anderson’s genre-crossing work encompasses performance, film, music, installation, writing, photography, and sculpture. She is widely known for her multimedia presentations and musical recordings and has numerous major works to her credit, including United States I-V (1983), Empty Places (1990), Stories from the Nerve Bible (1993), Songs and Stories for Moby Dick (1999), and Life on a String (2001), among others. She has taken part in countless collaborations with an array of artists, from Jonathan Demme and Brian Eno to Bill T. Jones and Peter Gabriel.