Fifty years after man first landed on the Moon, Laurie Anderson is flying us all there at MIF19 with To the Moon. Developed with fellow artist Hsin-Chien Huang and presented in the Royal Exchange Theatre’s intimate Studio, To the Moon is a work in two parts: a dreamlike VR experience that takes us on our own lunar exploration, and an accompanying installation with film, images and music.
This isn’t Laurie Anderson’s first virtual trip into space. Along with top-five singles (O Superman) and Grammy Awards (for Landfall), her extraordinary, genre-defying career as an artist and musician saw her spend two years as the first ever artist-in-residence at NASA, which inspired an acclaimed performance piece called The End of the Moon.
To the Moon, though, takes us closer to the lunar surface than Anderson’s ever gone before – and the journey is just as important as the destination. ‘The moon has a very inspiring, dreamlike existence,’ she confides. ‘Secretly, all I want to do is to let people fly.’
This is a collection of taxonomy terms that allow a type of immersive or XR performance to be categorised.