Tickets via www.eyefilm.nl

As part of the weekly EYE on Art programme, curated by Anna Abrahams, at the EYE Film Institute in Amsterdam, If I Can’t Dance’s director Frédérique Bergholtz has been invited to introduce the screening of Laurie Anderson’s film, Heart of a Dog (2015).

Heart of a Dog is Anderson’s account of the death of her rat terrier Lolabelle, and is told through a stream of consciousness that tumbles through memories of her childhood, her mother, and political and philosophical theories. The film focuses on the ‘bardo’, the period after death in which, according to Buddhist teaching, the identity of a human being or an animal dissolves and consciousness prepares for the transition to another life form. For Anderson, the film was a way of guiding the spirit of Lolabelle and of achieving an artistic experiment. The result is a lucid analysis of love, longing and the art of storytelling, which is dedicated to Anderson’s deceased husband, Lou Reed. 

In Heart of a Dog, Anderson brings to bear her talents as a musician, visual artist and performer, weaving the impressive tale through the use of animation, 8mm home videos, and texts and compositions of her own. To contextualize Anderson’s practice, Heart of a Dog will also be shown alongside two rarely screened performances by her from the seventies: At the Shrink's / a Fake Hologram (1977) filmed at De Appel arts centre, in which Anderson talks about her sessions with a psychiatrist; and a fragment from Songs for Lines/Songs for Waves (1977), in which she can be seen playing the violin and singing, with the music being created by a ‘slow-scan’ machine that can transform vision into sound.