Laura Bowler ADVERT (2023) 

Premiere December 2023 at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival
Next Performance: March 2026, Música Estranha Festival, São Paulo

ADVERT is an exploration of the ‘self’ amid an ever increasing tribalist society. The piece examines a tension between the need to advertise a particular selfness to our desired tribe and the longing for authenticity of the self, free of social expectation. Utilising autobiography, original text by Sam Redway alongside text by several writers including Edwina Barvosa, Amy Chua, Donna Haraway and Timothy Ingold this work confronts the audience with a vulnerability that literally draws blood.

The work incorporates multiple elements of Laura’s current and past practice as a vulnerable unveiling of the self. Within several autobiographical “adverts”, the text wavers between truth and fiction, extreme openness and fragmented memories. Alongside these autobiographical adverts stands text from a broad range of writers exploring ideas of identity and the self. The work stands as both a personal excavation and a provocation to our ideas of identity and selfhood.

Boxing, flowers, chocolate, tap dancing, tattoos and ECGs.

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.

Laura Bowler voice

Julia Rehme tattoo artist

Decoder Ensemble

Leopold Hurt e-zither

Iñigo Giner Miranda (as guest) keys

Sonja Lena Schmid cello

Carola Schaal clarinets

Alexander Schubert sound / electronics

Jonathan Shapiro drums / percussion

Matthew Fairclough live electronics and video operator

Sam Redway co-director

original text by Sam Redway