Alive from Off Center — Season 3

Aired 13 July 1987 • 28 min

Hosted by Laurie Anderson and her male double, a computer-generated clone, this program features comic artist Bill Irwin. Trying to find a calm oasis at a tense audition, Irwin wanders into an empty rehearsal space and becomes tangled in the cords and wires of a camera and video monitor. Plunged into a modernist nightmare, he becomes trapped in the television in a kaleidoscopic, channel-hopping odyssey. While trying to escape his electronic prison, he enters the action of a soap opera, takes center stage with a Joffrey ballerina, comes face to face with Sesame Street Muppets Bert and Ernie, bumps and grinds in an MTV video, and weaves in and out of the colored test pattern.

Aired 14 August 1987 • 28 min

An avant-garde omnibus that features works by off-the-wall artists in many different disciplines.

Aired 19 September 1987 • 28 min

This energetic 1987 program features the Women of the Calabash, an all-female percussion and vocal ensemble who perform with calabashes. Reviving traditional African rhythms infused with contemporary Latin American, Caribbean, and African American sounds, the group creates a blend of melodic harmonies to express the beauty of a rich and vital cultural heritage. Skip Blumberg, an early video artist, directed this episode that includes short dance pieces by choreographers whose performances take place in unusual environments: Pooh Kaye and Elizabeth Ross Wingate’s Sticks on the Move and Dee McCandless and Gene Menger’s Aquamirabilis.