Grammy Flashback from 1984

While browsing the Grammy website for any mention of Laurie Anderson's nomination for Grammy 2011 (no success yet, by the way), I bumped into the following eye candy from 1984: along with Ray Davies, Laurie was the announcer for Best New Artist - the winner was Cyndi Lauper.

Grammy Nomination 2011

Nominees for Grammy 2011, Best Pop Instrumental Performance:

• "Flow" by Laurie Anderson ('Homeland', 2010)
• "Nessun Dorma" by Jeff Beck
• "No Mystery" by Stanley Clarke
• "Orchestral Intro" by Gorillaz
• "Sleepwalk" by The Brian Setzer Orchestra

!!!

Intervista Laurie Anderson

"When economics goes down, art gets better. Because people improvise. [...] People will not stop making art, no way. They will make it in a different way. And it can be then exciting. [...] It will never disappear."

(Laurie Anderson on RAI TV, November 2010)

Click to the picture to watch a recent web exclusive interview with Laurie Anderson made for RAI TV in Firenze, Italy.

(Some tags for the impatient: Miracle in Milan. Balzac. Political-personal-mental delusion. Motivations. Politics = stories = acts of imagination. Invasion of words / language / music. Crying. Tyranny of the rectangle. The importance of teaching. Economics and art. Capitalist Realism. Inspiration from Lolabelle. Lolabelle's Christmas record. 1,000 chicken waiting for being named. Cows with open stomachs. "Children" with problems.)

'Transitory Life' in Bilbao

'Transitory Life' in Bilbao, Spain, last night:

(FYI: this video is available in HD, too - if you click to it more than once, it will direct you to the Youtube page)

I in U in the 'Metropolis'

"[...] To tell a story: this is really my art form, not technology."

(Laurie Anderson)

Brazilian cultural tv show 'Metropolis' featuring I in U / Eu em Tu:

Since the the Portuguese overdub was mixed to the left side and Laurie's voice on the right side in the stereo sound, I luckily managed to "extract" her voice and made a collage of the interview excerpts that had been made it o the show. They are sometimes disjointed, sometimes without end of sentences but, at least, listenable. She talks about how she feels being called a performance artist; making the paintings for the exhibition; Duets on Ice, Lou Reed's help in the making process of 'Homeland', Bob Dylan and politics:

• Laurie Anderson interview excerpts in 'Metropolis', 2010 (audio length: 1 min 29 secs, file size: 1.3 MB)

Vapor. Lawyers. Calcium. Imbrication.

No idea what the heck those words in the title mean? They are part of a list of words that have never been used in a song lyrics so far. In that way, they are also part of Laurie Anderson's Music Therapy in which the therapee's task is to write lyrics using solely words that have never been used in a pop song lyrics before.

"I think failure is probably the thing that's taught me the most about what I want to do, so I really value the moments when things really completely fall apart."

(Laurie Anderson, 2005)

The citations above are from Youtube's latest video of Laurie Anderson (a truly epic one!) - a lecture she did as an artist-in-residence at the New School in New York City, 2005, originally aired as a webcast (hence the fragmented video stream). The lecture touched on subjects like the idea of space, using the right tools; rectangles, mental hospitals, different kinds of therapies for people who have been using too much technology, taboos like sleeping in public; night courts and the 'Institutional Dreams' series, the 'Life' project (where the live webcast image of a prisoner was projected into an art museum), the fake hologram and different points of view, Alexander the Great, turning points in Laurie Anderson's career, pieces of advice for beginner artists, separating art and politics, form and content; voyeurism, hiding in the spotlight on the stage, using the wrong sense, being an artist-in-residence at NASA, and so on.

(FYI: Contrary to the description of the video, it does not contain the screening of 'Hidden Inside Mountains', Laurie's HD movie made for the Japan EXPO.)

Videos from Estoril

(At least try to) watch Laurie Anderson reading an excerpt from Don Delillo's "Point Omega" in Estoril, November 2010:

Part II is a video of questions and answers:

The videos were posted by the blogger of A montanha mágica - by clicking to the url you can find another photo of the reading there.

Lots and Lots of Photos

... from I in U / Eu em Tu, Laurie Anderson's retrospective in São Paulo, Brazil, on Ana Viaja's blog.

"Like Fine Wine"

Read Cheryl Martlage's review of 'Delusion' in Florence, Italy (in English), along with a neat description of Laurie Anderson's art,  the specifically Italian atmosphere of the event, plus a stage photo and video.

"I dreamt that I was living in a billboard...

... and I was living there because the city had become so crowded that billboards were the only places left..."

This is the beginning of Laurie Anderson's introduction to the episode on Place of PBS's 'Art in the Twenty-First Century' documentary series where "artists explore the idea of place by questioning commonly held assumptions about land, home and national identity".

Watch the video for more Andersonesque pondering on, for example, how she uses places as jumping-off points in her art or why we fall in love with places.

Just Because It Was There #2

Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed in Groningen, November 2008
photo source: Reyer Boxem / Redux

"Anatomical Study of the Soul of Laurie Anderson"

A review of 'Delusion' in Firenze in the Italian Rolling Stone Magazine - thanks to Google, we can read the English translation of it. Also worth checking out the photo gallery along the article.

Another Unconventional Reading

What a coincidence: I have just found another recording of a public reading by Laurie Anderson - this time from the PEN event 2004 State of Emergency: Unconventional Readings. So, Dearreader, enjoy this old/new eight-minute-long treat, a free podcast from the PEN archive:

• David Hickey's 'My Weimar' from Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy, read by Laurie Anderson (2004) (audio length: 8 mins 15 secs, file size: 7.6 MB)

Una meditazione sulle parole e le cose, sulla vita e il linguaggio

Intoscana's report about the Italian premiere of 'Delusion' in Firenze (dubbed in Italian):

Goodness from Estoril

Last Sunday, Laurie Anderson did a public reading of excerpts of Don Delillo's new book 'Point Omega' in Portugal, as part of the Estoril Film Festival's closing ceremony. Unfortunately there's no audio recording of the event available but Carlos Vargas was so kind as to provide me with his photos from the reading:

Obrigado, Carlos!


(FYI: by clicking to the photos, they'll open big in a new window.)