Laurie Anderson, Amadou & Mariam, and David Byrne will be among the artists performing in a riverboat lodged atop the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London this year. The performances are part of the Sounds from a Room series, which will take place in A Room for London, a one-bedroom installation designed by David Kohn Architects in collaboration with Fiona Banner and situated on the roof of the Hall. Sounds from a Room includes live music webcasts, such as Anderson's, scheduled for Sunday, March 25, and Amadou & Mariam's, due later this year, and a new soundwork for podcast from Byrne. Other performers in the series include singer/songwriter Andrew Bird, composer Heiner Goebbels, cellist Natalie Clein, and Imogen Heap.

A Room for London, a collaboration between Artangel and Living Architecture, in association with Southbank Centre, will also host artists of other disciplines invited to use the room as their studio to reflect on its place in the world in 2012 through writings, readings, performances, and more.

Taking inspiration from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Roi des Belges, the riverboat he captained whilst in the Congo in 1890, guests of A Room for London will embark on different journeys of rediscovery throughout the year, including a performance, for the first time, of Orson Welles’ Heart of Darkness screenplay, which was written in 1939 and was to be Welles’ first film but was never made. The entire screenplay will be performed live to camera by a single actor aboard A Room for London, as a live webcast and projection into the Southbank Centre below, on Saturday, March 31.

The unique space will also host A London Address, a series of monthly writings and recordings, featuring authors Michael Ondaatje, Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Jeanette Winterson, Sven Lindqvist, and Caryl Phillips. All will produce writings to be podcast on A Room for London’s website.

A Room for London also features Ideas for London, a competition in association with the Evening Standard, to uncover Londoners’ ideas to make their city a better place. The first winners were announced in December and include an idea for a scheme to address London’s 40,000 long-term vacant houses and a proposal to develop "at home" gap years in the capital. Ideas can be submitted at any time until September 5, 2012. One winner will be announced each month during 2012. They will be invited to stay overnight in A Room for London to develop their
idea with a number of influential guests.

For more information on all the projects of A Room for London, go to aroomforlondon.co.uk. For a look inside the space, check out the video at bbc.co.uk.

The Artangel program is supported by the London 2012 Festival and Arts Council England. It is part of the London 2012 Festival, a UK-wide festival featuring leading artists from around the world as the culmination of the Cultural Olympiad. Also participating in London 2012 Festival events are Kronos Quartet, which will perform Terry Riley's Sun Rings at Zaha Hadid's Riverside Museum Glasgow on July 15, and Rokia Traoré, who will perform Desdemona, her collaboration with Peter Sellars and Toni Morrison, at the Barbican in London July 19 and 20. For more on the London 2012 Festival, go to festival.london2012.com.

To peruse the Nonesuch catalogs of Laurie Anderson, Amadou & Mariam, David Byrne, Kronos Quartet, and Rokia Traoré, head to the Nonesuch Store, where most CD orders include high-quality, 320 kbps MP3s of the album at checkout. For more on upcoming live shows, go to nonesuch.com/on-tour.