Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts is thrilled to present The Famous Lauren Barri Holstein’s Notorious. Ahead of the show, we spoke to the artist about the creative processes leading to the creation of this transgressive performance. Lauren highlights the major influences for producing Notorious and how it relates to current popular culture figures such as Nicki Minaj.
Tell us a bit about the new show:
Notorious is an interdisciplinary performance that explores the relationship between pop culture and representations of the female ‘monster’. It is a visceral, bodily piece, which will evoke layered and dissonant emotions in you – you will hate it (and me) and maybe even love it (and me), but you will certainly feel some stuff. And it will also be hilarious, witchy, unhinged, and ridiculously excessive.
Which thinkers influence your performance of Notorious? Are you inspired by any current activists?
Angela Carter (especially The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr. Hoffman, but also, everything she’s ever written) because she’s a fantastical, magical, feminist genius novelist. Her fiction teaches me about the nuance of feeling, the necessarily overlapping quality of being both an active and a passive subject, and how to create new worlds.
Ana Mendieta because the texture of her work is somehow both bold and restrained. Because her work on ghostliness and disappearance makes her own presence that much more tangible and political.
Nicki Minaj because she is two different people, potentially on purpose – one that’s a black Barbie, and another that is pretending to be a black Barbie in order to sell records, but who is really a talented rapper. Whether we are meant to see both people in her, or their relationship, I’m not sure, but I’m intrigued.
Female agency and empowerment is critical in your work - and often criticised for it - what advice would you give young/new performers who want to create messy and not fetishisable performances on the female body?
Fuck the haters. They’re just threatened by your agency and your refusal to please them.
Why did you decide to perform with us at the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts? How was your time in residence this summer here?
Laura McDermott, Creative Director of the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, has been a supporter of my work and co-commissioned Notorious with Fierce Festival. This relationship and the fantastic auditorium at ACCA were reasons to create this work for this stage. The residency in the summer was a key part of the process of making Notorious and allowed the creative team and myself to experiment and visualise what this work would be.
Notorious is an ACCA co-commission.