Aviva Studios, ManchesterContemplating a world of catastrophe and collapse, the veteran artist’s new three-hour show, though much too long and diffuse, has moments of poignancy – and joyThe world premiere of Laurie Anderson’s new three-hour multimedia extravaganza begins with a sparkling globe spinning on a big screen like a Christmas tree bauble. Its surroundings are less jolly: a mushroom cloud, a raincloud soon surrounded by thunder, and a low, disturbing drone. Weaving together music, storytelling, film, animation, a local choir and more, Ark: United States V explores, says its press bumf, “what has brought us here and how much time do we have left”. Its scheduling, just after Donald Trump’s potential election victory, one assumes, was not a coincidence. It’s also a follow-up. United States I-IV debuted at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in February 1983, where Anderson, then 35, explored life in Ronald Reagan’s America. In two parts split over consecutive nights, it was a similar mix of forms and styles, when climate change was a new-ish kid on the block and the cold war was frosty. Things are arguably chillier now. That production included her eerie, eight-minute-plus masterpiece O Superman – a surprise No 2 hit in the UK in late 1981 after the support of Radio 1 DJ Jo