LIVE from the NYPL

If you’re reading this anytime within the next few hours, get off the computer and head to Bryant Park for Trevor Paglen’s “The Last Pictures” co-presented by us and Creative Time! What better way to spend an evening than to see the images that will exist in space for millions of years? Plus, Werner Herzog and Tracy K. Smith will be there. And don’t forget it’s FREE. Hope to see you there!

As we’ve mentioned, we’re co-presenting with Creative Time a preview of Trevor Paglen’s The Last Pictures next week, and I don’t think we can emphasize enough how astronomically exciting this event is…

This fall, Creative Time will launch The Last Pictures, an archival disc created by artist Trevor Paglen, into outer space, where it will orbit the earth for billions of years affixed to the exterior of the communications satellite EchoStar XVI. To create the artifact, Paglen micro-etched one hundred photographs selected to represent modern human history onto a silicon disc encased in a gold-plated shell. The images contained in the artifact constitute what the artist describes as “cave paintings from the 21st-century,” as they will become one of the longest-lasting material remnants of contemporary civilization. Following its launch from Kazakhstan in late 2012, the artifact will remain in the Earth’s geosynchronous orbit in virtual perpetuity.

On September 19 at 7:00pm in Bryant Park, there will be a preview of the project’s 100 images, as well as a reading from Tracy K. Smith’s Pulizter-Prize winning book of poetry Life On Mars: Poems and a conversation between Paglen and filmmaker Werner Herzog about cultural artifacts, space exploration, and the legacy of human civilization, moderated by LIVE director Paul Holdengräber. Plus, there will be telescopes for some up-close stargazing! This event is FREE so you won’t want to miss it!

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Listen to Werner Herzog reading Go the F**k to Sleep.

Exactly a year ago, writer of Go the F**k to Sleep, Adam Mansbach came to LIVE along with illustrator Ricardo Cortes to discuss their book. Our director, Paul Holdengräber, asked Werner Herzog to record the above reading, and we played it along with the book at the event. Listen to the whole event here (bonus: Judah Friedlander comes to the stage at the end of the event to read the book again).

Was the 20th Century a Mistake? February 16, 2007

Werner Herzog: I miss something completely out of the twentieth century, which is—
Paul Holdengräber: Culture.
Werner Herzog: Which went wrong in the culture, yes, and that is, yes, we see embarrassments  like whale huggers. I mean, you can’t get worse than that, or tree huggers, even, such a strange bizarre behavior. And people are hugging whales, and they are concerned about the panda bear, and they are concerned about the wellbeing of salad leaves, but they have overlooked, they have completely overlooked that while we are sitting here and spending two hours, probably the last speaker of one language that is still spoken may die in these two hours. There are six thousand languages still left, still left, but by 2050, by 2050, only fifteen percent of these languages will survive.
Paul Holdengräber: So we are paying attention to the wrong things.
Werner Herzog: No, to pay attention to ecological questions is not the wrong thing, but to overlook, to overlook the immense value of human culture.

Haunting clip for Werner Herzog’s upcoming documentary series, On Death Row.

“I am not an advocate of the death penalty. I do not even have an argument; I only have a story, the history of the barbarism of Nazi Germany. The argument that innocent men and women have been executed is, in my opinion, only a secondary one. A State should not be allowed—under any circumstance—to execute anyone for any reason. End of story.”—Werner Herzog

Herzog will be at LIVE on February 29 for a conversation titled “Death Row & Other Journeys”. Learn more here…

Werner Herzog premiering Into the Abyss. Watch this, and the documentary itself, and then come see him LIVE on February 29! Find out more here.

A very Werner Herzog clip from the documentary Burden of Dreams, which documented the trials Herzog faced when trying to make his 1982 fiction feature, Fitzcarraldo.

Herzog will be at LIVE next season! Keep your eye out for on-sale dates!