Lurie’s Life Lines
32 Second Avenue, New York
Samuel Priest Rose Building, 334 Amsterdam Ave at 76th St, New York
Boris Lurie (1924–2008), visual artist, concentration camp survivor, NO!art founder, New Yorker from Riga. And author: his volume GESCHRIEBIGTES, GEDICHTIGTES blends unembellished narrative, poetry and wicked lightness, unlike most other work that deals with survival in and after the Holocaust. “I acquired the foundations of my artistic education in concentration camps like Buchenwald,“ writes Lurie. He collages images of piles of corpses with pin-ups, attacks fascism, racism and the sexism of consumer society. Without any lachrymosity.
Lurie’s Life Lines, made on the occasion of Lurie’s 100th anniversary, combines Lurie’s poetry and prose, voice art, live electronics, cello, brass and percussion. Texts and music grow together scenically, graphically and visually. Lurie speaks, in his New York home full of traces of his trauma. Friends and connoisseurs of his work speak. And Lurie’s disturbing images. Lurie’s Life Lines pays tribute to a great non-conformist who didn’t want to create superficial meaning, but rather outcry and confrontation.
“The absorbingly fascinating Music-Theatre performance Lurie’s Lyrics by Julia Wahrenand Rudolf Herz is not an evening that wants to explain something; it is an evening whose associative power obsesses and haunts you. The music is the sonic correlation to Lurie’s collages. Chirping single notes, large instrumental chants, and immediately one has the impression again that the music could break out into hard rock, played by trombone and cello, rhythmically accompanied by two stone blocks. To this Julia Wahren sings and speaks, sometimes in a kind of Brechtian ductus, sometimes with a poetic vocal sound, in stark contrast to what this is all about …”
(From the review in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, November 2022, about the precursor of the film, a performance at the Muenchner Kammerspiele)
Lurie’s Life Lines has been supported by the Boris Lurie Art Foundation, NYC, Alligator Art & Science. e.V. Cologne, and the Muenchner Kammerspiele.
Screenings
Sunday, November 24, 3pm
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Avenue, New York, NY 10003
Moderation Q&A with J. Wahren and R. Herz: Prof. Reiner Leist, Hunter College
Tickets: anthologyfilmarchives.org
Tuesday, November 26, 7pm
Marlene Meyerson JCC
The Samuel Priest Rose Building, 334 Amsterdam Ave at 76th Street, New York, NY 10023
Moderation Q&A with J. Wahren and R. Herz: Isaac Zablocki, Marlene Meyerson JCC
Tickets: mmjccm.org