Ari Benjamin Meyers: Forecast (LX23)

American artist and composer Ari Benjamin Meyers has been commissioned to create a new performance at an off-site venue, the former seat of the European Parliament (1973–80) now part of the European Convention Center of Luxembourg. In using this symbolic building originally built for debate and decision-making, Meyers’s intimate yet intense performance considers codes of power and control. Taking the phenomenon of weather as a starting point, the work investigates predictability (or lack thereof) and the insatiable human need for prognoses, progress and domination over our planet. Reflecting on the climate crisis, as well as on the increasingly dramatic and irrational relationship between humans and nature, between humans and their future on the planet, the performance weaves together a myriad of historical facts and lays bare their often hidden connections, centring around the true story of David Buckel, an American lawyer who committed suicide by fire in New York in 2018 as a protest against the fossil fuel industry. Forecast (LX23) is scored for two electric guitars, electric bass and performer. While lasting only one hour, the concentrated performance makes great demands of the performers as they attempt in real time to navigate Meyers’s intricate and dense construction of music and text.

Meyers’s works have been presented at major institutions, biennials, and festivals around the world and explore structures and processes that redefine the performative, social and ephemeral nature of music and music making. His compositions, installations, exhibitions and performances seek to challenge the relationship between performer and audience, between performance and reality, blending and blurring the contexts and structures of music with those of the visual arts. More recently his work has focused on the public and civic spheres and has involved large scale communal rituals, even the founding of entirely new orchestras in cities as diverse as Bitterfeld, Germany (as part of Festival Osten) and Philadelphia, USA (as part of his large-scale performative public art project Rehearsing Philadelphia). 

Forecast (LX23) is based on material first developed in another form for the Volksbühne Berlin but never presented publicly due to the pandemic. This project was made possible with the support of the European Convention Center Luxembourg.

In advance of the performance, Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d'Art Moderne Grand- Duc Jean commissioned Ari Benjamin Meyers to create a poster. Entitled They made a decision, the campaign can be seen throughout Luxembourg City since June 6. The text is based on an oft repeated sentence, almost a refrain, running throughout the text of Forecast (LX23). In the original text, the sentence is: ‘He has taken a decision’. 

Curator: Joel Valabrega

Collaboration: Forecast (LX23) was conceived by Ari Benjamin Meyers and co-produced by Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean ; Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein and Arta Sperto, Geneva.

Location: Hémicycle, 1 rue du Fort Thüngen, 1499 Luxembourg

Free admission.