Laurie Anderson’s “Heart Of A Dog” Screening In The Hamptons

“Laurie Anderson is one of the great storytellers of our time,” shared Andrea Grover, the Century Arts Foundation Curator of Special Projects at the Parrish Art Museum. “As a multidisciplinary artist working in music, performance, drawings, paintings, and film, Anderson has a special gift for interweaving narratives that span from the universal to the deeply personal.”

On Friday, January 8th at 6 p.m., the Parrish is celebrating the multidisciplinary artist during a viewing of Anderson’s Heart of a Dog. The feature film is a personal essay that revolves around the filmmaker’s bond with her beloved rat terrier, Lolabelle, who passed away in 2011, but also covers a range of themes, from our voyage to the afterlife to love to art.

Throughout Heart of a Dog, the talented Anderson weaves together childhood memories, video diaries, philosophical musings on data collection, surveillance culture and the Buddhist conception of the afterlife, as she explores how humans compile the fragments that compose our lives. The story is told through an observant, inquisitive account with original violin compositions, hand-drawn animation, 8mm home movies, and artwork pulled from both past and present exhibitions, combining to create a memorizing, “collage-like visual language.” Anderson also pays homage to the artists, writers, musicians and thinkers that influence her with heartfelt tributes.

Her touching narration is accompanied by Anderson’s musical works, including “The Lake” and “Flow” from Homeland, “Beautiful Pea Green Boat” from Bright Red, “Rhumba Club” from Life on a String, and excerpts from Landfall with Kronos Quartet. The film closes out to “Turning Time Around,” which was written and performed by Anderson’s late husband, Lou Reed.

Heart of a Dog has screened at the Telluride, Venice, and Toronto Film Festivals to critical praise, and was also viewed at the New York Film Festival, this past October. Manohla Dargis of The New York Times described the film as “dreamy, drifty and altogether lovely… It joyfully embraces silliness.”

Anderson, who was a juror for the Parrish’s 2013 Artists Choose Artists exhibition and has had work exhibited at the Museum, will be in attendance at the screening.

Admission is $10.

Parrish Art Museum is located at 279 Montauk Highway in Water Mill. For more information, call 631-283-2118 or visit parrishart.org.