ADVERT

Tickets £31 // Concession £25 // Under 30 £5
Advance booking required

Content warning: this performance contains video projection of tattooing taking place live on stage, including blood and skin damage

This performance will be followed by a post-concert discussion with Laura Bowler

Decoder Ensemble:
Leopold Hurt e-zither
Inigo Miranda keys
Sonja Lena Schmid cello
Carola Schaal clarinets
Jonathan Shapiro drums / percussion

Laura Bowler voice
Matt Fairclough sound / electronics
Julia Rehme tattoo artist

Laura Bowler (UK, 1986)
ADVERT (2023) 50’ World Premiere

ADVERT is an exploration of the ‘self’ amid an increasingly tribalist society. The piece examines a tension between the need to advertise a particular selfness to our desired tribe and the longing for authenticity of the self, free of social expectation. Utilising autobiography plus original text by Sam Redway alongside texts by several writers including Edwina Barvosa, Amy Chua and Donna Harraway, this work confronts the audience with a vulnerability that literally draws blood.

This new multimedia music theatre work is premiered by composer, performer and mezzo-soprano Laura Bowler alongside Julia Rehme, a Leipzig-based artist and tattooist whose works are characterised by abstract expressionistic imagery moving across different visual genres. They are joined by Decoder Ensemble, a group of electronic and acoustic instrumentalists specialising in contemporary music with a knack for fusing multimedia elements, staging and physical performance in their intense collaborations with avant-garde artists.

Produced by hcmf// supported by Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation and Goethe-Institut London

Co-commissioned by New Music Dublin, November Music, Musica Estranha, Music on Main, Ultima, Time of Music and hcmf//

ADVERT is part of the Sounds Now project co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union