ADVERT - Laura Bowler & Decoder Ensemble

Decoder Ensemble
Leopold Hurt, e-zither
Iñigo Giner Miranda, keys

Sonja Lena Schmid, cello
Carola Schaal, clarinets
Alexander Schubert, sound / electronics
Jonathan Shapiro, drums / percussion
Laura Bowler, voice
Julia Rehme, tattoo artist

Sam Redway, co-director
original text by Sam Redway

Laura Bowler ADVERT (2023) [Irish premiere]

‘Triple threat composer-performer-provocatrice’ Laura Bowler’s ADVERT is an exploration of the ‘self’ in the context of an increasingly tribalist society. Fusing music, multimedia, staging and physical performance it wavers between truth and fiction, extreme openness and fragmented memories—confronting the tension between needing to advertise a particular selfness to our desired tribe and longing for authenticity.

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‘The sheer energy behind it is irresistible,’ wrote Andrew Clements in The Guardian after the work’s 2023 premiere—for which Bowler was joined, as she is for our late-evening NMD performance, by Leipzig-based artist and tattooist Julia Rehme and the innovative, unpredictable Decoder Ensemble. Drawing on autobiography alongside original words by Sam Redway and texts from several other writers, this deeply personal interrogation of identity and selfhood exposes a vulnerability that, literally, draws blood.

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

Credits: 
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