The Queen of Performance in Norway

Towards the end of June 2011, Laurie Anderson took a slight right on her way home from the Middle East and headed for the North. She stopped by the tiny little town of Harstad in Norway, walked right into the Kulturhus and told some adventure stories by herself on stage, accompanied by accidental fiddling and random toying around on some keyboards in-between - just another day in the life of the Queen of Performance.

She also shared some words of wisdom regarding, among others, the reason why she does not use Facebook:

Luckily, some pro photographer happened to be around and shot a couple of pictures - like this one:

"No more friends." Laurie Anderson performing 'Transitory Life'

June 23rd 2011, Harstad, Norway
photo by hennum.foto.com

On the Return of the Cultural Ambassador

In June 2011 Laurie took 'Delusion' to Israel where she seems to be a welcome returning guest.

(FYI, here's "Laurie Anderson" written in Hebrew characters - took some time for me to find them in the texts but then it made my research process for reviews and all kinds of media coverage a lot easier:

לורי אנדרסון

- yeah, you should read this from right to left.)



For starters, let's see a review with photos and videos of a public conversation with artists Yali Sobol and Sigalit Landau (relax - the URL I included is the English translation of the original text):

If somebody asked her to design a religion,
she would make it all about snow.

Laurie Anderson in Tel-Aviv, Israel, June 2011
photo by Assaf Alboher

Here's an interview from an Israeli tv channel (probably named NANA10). The show is called 'London & Kirschenbaum', and the conversation took place on June 16, 2011. The interviewers were Yaron London and Assaf Amdursky. Laurie also gave the microphone over to Fenway Bergamot for a while during the interview, and gave a short demonstration of the sound of her filtered violin:

The concert in Mann Auditorium left its mark on the Israeli audience. Here's a vast bunch of reviews, translated into English via Google Translator:

• Bedtime Stories - text by Guy Hajaj, photos by Dudu Azulaj
• Hallucinatory Mushroom - text by Yuval Kfsoto, photos by Dana Shimoni
• A Mesmerizing Storyteller - text by Idan Hguel, photo by Meir Luger
• Bored to Death - text by Zahi Yeshurun
• More Theatrical Than Musical - text, big photos and a video
• Less Tight and Perfect Than Others, But Much Human - text by Elliot, photo by Orit Pearls (?)
• Not for Music Fans - a review and a photo in Haaretz

... well, maybe they missed the stage bombs or so.


Anyway, there was at least one enthusiastic audience member who didn't mind to share some videos taken in a tender night:

The very last things you say in life...

Notes from a dream diary:

Thinking of you under the dandelions:

A story on the Moon and Fenway's section:

A story from Iceland:

The finale:

The encore:

From A'dam with Luv

Laurie Anderson's Delusion was part of this year's Holland Festival in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Reviews of the show were mixed - some would have fancied more music, and some were just bored and wished for a little less Laurie Anderson clones in the audience. Some of the lucky ones took a walk with Laurie in the streets of Amsterdam:

Jeroen Visser and Laurie Anderson

Amsterdam, Netherlands, June 2011

Some of the other lucky ones had a close encounter of the third kind with Fenway Bergamot himself sitting in a shopping window of de Bijenkorf (big warehouse in Amsterdam's Dam Square):

Fenway Bergamot, wearing a Chaplin hat and a HollandFestival jacket,
chatted with Lieven Bertels (artistic coordinator of HollandFestival)

Fenway Bergamot happily announced his intention of 

being candidate for the next President of the United States

Throwing an approving glance

at his enthusiastically cheering audience outside the shopwindow.

All photos by Mnemosyne

And, finally, a video to break your heart, too: an excerpt of the Dandelion scene from Delusion in Amsterdam:

More Talk Radio from Spain

Today's edition of Fluido rosa ( = "pink fluid"), Radio 3 Espagna's magazine about music and contemporary art features a different cut of the interview aired couple of days earlier on Radio 3, only this time with no Spanish overdubbing (and with additional parts not heard in the previous programme).

For starters Laurie performed two viola solos, then talked about 'Delusion' and about the making of 'Nothing in My Pockets', her audio diary created for French radio in 2003 (there's also an excerpt of it in the programme). Towards the end of the interview she also touched upon something that sounds, hm, quite electrifying to Mnemosyne's (and probably to some of this blog's readers') ears, namely:

"I think probably I'll put my archive on the web at some point. I'm just trying to figure out now how to do that - both the visual and the audio stuff."

(Laurie Anderson, June 2011)

Laurie's part is between 42:00 and 1:05:00 into the programme:

Ilusión o engaño?

"It's in-between."

(Laurie Anderson's answer to the question in the title, which is "illusion or deception?"

in English translation and refers to the meaning of 'Delusion')

Listen to this morning's interview with Laurie Anderson on Radio 3 Espagna (it's partly mostly :( overdubbed in Spanish):

Eine Kulturikone in Krems

A short reportage about / interview with Laurie Anderson in Krems an der Donau, Austria (attention: it's overdubbed in German):

Studiogast bei radioeins

Yesterday Laurie Anderson was the guest of radio eins' studio in Potsdam / Berlin, Germany:

• German-English interview with Laurie Anderson, radio eins (audio length: 15 mins 23 secs)

"Here We Go", She Said (and She Meant It Literally)

"From a program recorded on September 14, 1981, Charles Amirkhanian gets a demonstration of the Eventide Clockworks Harmonizer from Laurie Anderson. The Harmonizer is the piece of equipment that Anderson has used, with such great effect, to lower the pitch of her voice in real time, during her concerts", says the description of Ode To Gravity's September 14, 1981 issue at archive.org.

Before that, the program also features Fenway Bergamot's first ever public appearance at the Nova Convention in 1978 (at that time he was just "a pompous blowhard" (quote from L. A.)). The recording, titled 'Song from America on the Move', a two-part performance piece by Laurie Anderson and Julia Heyward, can be found on the LP 'The Dial-A-Poem Poets: The Nova Convention'; Laurie's part was later titled as 'The Language of the Future' (in 'United States Live I-IV.').

• 00:45 - 07:02 The Language of the Future 

• 07:03 - 09:23 interview

Meanwhile, on the GRIT...

"I would love "explorer" but on my passport it just says "artist". [...] I try to just be a good journalist, really, and look at what's going on. [...] I'm a storyteller. I'm not tapdancing around, I don't do that. Maybe I'm fooling myself. Hm..."

(Laurie Anderson's attempts of self-description to Laura Flanders, 2011)

Nostalgia, techno humiliation, art and politics, alter-egos as ways of escape, Laurie Anderson's saddest musical experience and many-many more in Laura Flanders' recent interview on GRIT tv:

P. S.: Hm. Looks like the original Talking Stick is still in the hands of Homeland Security.

The Charlie Rose Interview, 2003

"She does everything. She writes. She paints. She does photography. She sculpts. There's nothing she can't do. She is the absolute perfect person to go up there because she could come back to you and could put it in any kind of media you wanted."

(Lou Reed on Laurie Anderson's artistry-in-residence at NASA)

In May 2003 Laurie Anderson and Lolabelle joined Lou Reed at Charlie Rose's interview table (apparently to everybody's satisfaction). Their conversation rambled from 'NYC Man' (Lou Reed's then-recently released retrospective song collection), through Andy Warhol, to the aspects of the relationship between Lou and Laurie.

(FYI: This video had been hosted by Google and was 'rescued' to YouTube since Google has recently gave up video hosting.)

Current State of Mind of an Universalkünstlerin*

"Today I'm working on a short little poem that I've been thinking about, I have a drawing to finish, and I have a little projection work. This is the kind of hell my life is: doesn't one piece relate to the other one that much. I mean maybe that's great but sometimes it feels little disconnecting. On the other hand, that's just the way things are."


"Do I think art can change the world? I don't have any idea. Politicians can change politics - so can artists? I don't know. I'm a little bit pessimistic at the moment, to tell you the truth."


"[...] "The triumph of capitalism, here it is. Okay. One thing to do: get famous, get rich. That's the game. Good luck and see you later." - That's really harsh, and it's in every field in many ways. Artists are the same thing: we are encouraged to compete rather than to cooperate. And that's not a kind of world I dream of living in."


"I'm a journalist at heart. I like to try to see how things really work-- not make it up, not fantasize. That's a very hard thing to tell a story that is true. It's easy to find a good punchline. But everybody knows that most punchlines smell a little bad... they're clever, okay, but if you really try to tell a story: our lives are so messy. They don't have good punchlines, they don't have ways that they end very neatly. I think a lot of people, myself included, would like to find a way to see the world really clearly, not to somebody's punchline or somebody's story but really how do other people do it."

(Four examples of Laurie Anderson's current state of mind, mid April 2011)

Laurie Anderson @ Canal Street, April 2011

Photo by Christian Lehner

Austrian radio FM4 has recently aired Christian Lehner's interview with Laurie Anderson on the occasion of Laurie's upcoming live appearance at the Donaufestival in Krems-an-der-Donau, Austria: on the 5th of May 2011 she will perform 'Transitory Life', a retrospective collection of her past stories.

The conversation touched on subjects like New York City in the 1970s vs. 2010s, record charts, art and politics, the making process of the 'Homeland' album, the linguistics behind its title, the current state of mind of New York City, last year's concert for dogs in Sydney and the origins of 'O Superman' and 'Another Day in America'.

The Laurie Anderson Spezialstunde** was part of 'New York State of Mind', FM4's interview series "on individuals who set up the Big Apple a little crown". More info on the conversation with the Universalkünstlerin (basically the German translation of the interview) and some photos of the session can be found here.

You can listen to the whole programme in FM4's online archive until the 4th of May:

• New York State of Mind, Issue #3: Laurie Anderson (audio length: 54 mins 8 secs, file size: 49.5 MB)

(FYI: don't worry if you missed the programme in the online archive: stay tuned for a stripped-down-and-cut-and-edited version of the interview here.)




* universal artist
** special hour

The Charlie Rose Interview, 2004

"... But the real reason I wanted to walk to Paris [from Milan] was because I was trying to think about how to be free - 'cause that's really the only thing I care about now... Learn to be free from my prejudices, my patterns, my ideas of what I think is 'good' or 'bad' - just trying to not react to them automatically, and to open my eyes and see what I'm really seeing, not just what I think I'm going to see or what I think should be seen."

"I'm trying not to have a goal, but just to think about how it feels to pay attention."

(Laurie Anderson, 2004)

As part of my Google video rescue project, I'm happy to include here my personal favourite interview with Laurie Anderson: as Charlie Rose's guest in May 2004, she talked about (among others) her Japanese garden project, the importance of freedom, her method of 'working', the walking project / audio diary that later evolved into 'Nothing in My Pockets', and she gave a short demonstration of the Pillow Speaker. Plus, at that time she was still being NASA's resident artist. Sigh.

UPDATED: The 'Click' Interview

In today's edition of BBC World Service programme 'Click', Laurie Anderson talks to Colin Grant about adopting and adapting cutting-edge technology in her art, and how she can't bear the compression of mp3. Listen to the conversation in BBC's online archive (please let me know if it gets removed from there so that I upload it to the blog) - Laurie's part starts at 11:06:

• Laurie Anderson at 'Click' (BBC World Service) - April 26, 2011

UPDATE: here you can read an extraction / loose transcript of the interview.

For Japan with Love: the Interview

"Our set was improvised. You never really know what's gonna happen when you improvise. But I felt like there was definitely a spirit there, that kind-of took over. I don't know if it's conscious or choice-- I don't think those are the right words-- but something definitely magical happened."

John Zorn on the trio of himelf, Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed
April 2011

In the following video by Japan Society NYC, Lou Reed, John Zorn, Laurie Anderson and Philip Glass are discussing their musical selections for the benefit concert for Japan, plus sharing some of their fondest Japan-related memories. Watch and learn about Lou Reed's first computer calculator watch and why Laurie's Japanese s-s-sucks:

A Singing Carpenter's Level and Other Everyday Stuff...

21 more or less tabloid-sort questions and 21 adequately neat'n'bland (sometimes informative) answers, still a pleasant read - this is New York Magazine's recent interview with Laurie Anderson.

Metrópolis, 1986

"While I criticize technology I use several thousand Watts of power to say that."

(Laurie Anderson, 1986)

Caution: the following videos are recommended only for those who are inclined to bear overdubbing on the original (English) sound.

TVE's (Spanish national tv) cultural magazine Metrópolis has made this interview with Laurie Anderson around the time of the 'Home of the Brave' Tour. I originally found the video in the online archive of TVE but soon it proved to be simply crap - halfway into the video, vision and sound slip out of sync which gets really serious / annoying towards the end (cca. 15-20 secs). So I decided to synchronize the sound bit-by-bit back to the video. Sadly, the overall quality of the original video was quite poor (for example, at some points you can hear an opera aria seeping into the left channel, etc.), plus, I had to create a different sound intro as well. Now the result is on YouTube; you decide about its enjoyability.

In the interview Laurie discussed topics like American pop culture; being a social critic; Laurie's love-hate relationship with technology; the wide range of one-of-a-kind instruments used during the 'Home of the Brave' Tour (including, among others, the keyboard tie and the drum suit) and many more. She was also talking about the imagery of 'Blue Lagoon' and the Spanish lyrics of 'Smoke Rings'.

Art Comes from Anger, Art Comes from Love

Q: What is the obligation of art?

A: I don’t think it has one. I think it has to be anarchistic. [...] I don’t think anarchy needs to be angry. In fact, I think tender anarchy is a great goal. It is what makes things a little different from the clamor of cultural products being hyped and bought and sold.

Read Don't Panic Magazine's interview in which Laurie Anderson tells about the romanticism of being an artist in New York in the Seventies, and the difference between that era and consumerism, today's major art form.

A Second and a Third Self

Excerpts of an interview made in Lublin, Poland during the KODY Festival last year:

Eerie Purple Clouds Moving around the Notes

At last - part three of Deirdre Mulrooney's Skype interview has arrived: "On 2011 projects, Lolobelle, and Inter-species Communication" (plus Laurie's violin, the evolution of 'Delusion'; Leonard Cohen and walking on the spine of a dinosaur).

Looks like a prolific year Laurie is looking forward to - just a couple of tags in advance: a new book! Short songs on violin! 3D movie installations! Interpreting the way fish move via violin playing for blind people! Walking in Ireland!

(Vulgo.ie has also put the transcript of the interview online oh, they removed it.)

Laurie at AndrewAndrew Again, Revisited

"[The reason] why the idea of infinity didn't go over in the Middle Ages [was that] the popes were going like "What if there are infinite number of planets - is there a pope on every planet? And if so, who's top pope?""

Talk radio at its best - no need to say more :)

AndrewAndrew put a video excerpt of Laurie Anderson's recent appearance on their show on East Village Radio's website: