Thanks for the story about your father's horse.
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Two of many Uppsala, April 2010 |
Apr 8, 2011
Apr 4, 2011
What about That Dress?
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"Not a story my people tell." |
"One of the things that people have remarked on having seen [the 'Home of the Brave' concert film] was "now what about that dress?" Well, it is a chain metal dress that weighed about 70 pounds - that I were in 'Langue d'amour' - I could hardly hoist myself up onto this platform to walk back and forth and tell the story, so I had to wear sneakers, too. Well, if I had worn heels - what you really should wear with a dress like that - I would have been pile driving the spikes into the beam and just completely destroying this thing.
The song 'Langue d'amour' is of course about a woman and a snake, so I tried to be both narrators in that song: the gloves were supposedly the head and tail of this long snake who keeps slithering around.
[...]
I felt that since this was a story about the Garden of Eden - and this was a woman's story if there ever was one, I mean she initiated this action, Adam really just kinda stood around - so I figured since she was the main person in that story, she should tell it, so that's why I departed from my usual - as they say, androgynous - look to something more appropriate to that story."
(Laurie Anderson, 'Home of the Brave' promo interview, 1986)
Apr 3, 2011
Setting the Stage for 'Delusion'
By clicking to Laurie's projection above, you can browse through Seth Litroff's photo gallery from January 2010 when Laurie Anderson visited Bergen Community College (Paramus, NJ) for rehearsing for 'Delusion' which was to be premiered some weeks later at the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad.
Mar 31, 2011
Big Science v0.1
"'Big Science' started out as an orchestra work called 'It's Cold Outside' which the American Composers Orchestra played, and this was something that I consider something of a failure. I don't really know how to make an orchestra sound and [...] I found that my ideal instrumentation is a few electronic instruments mixed with real ones which are sometimes processed, sometimes not. My favourite combination is violin and saxophone and then other things added to that.
[...]
One of the things about writing works for an orchestra is first of all [that] it's hard for an orchestra to spend much rehearsal time on new work and also you hear it a day before it's actually performed for the first time. So it kind-of is a huge shock and you realize "oh, I should have had the French horns do that" and it's really too late then.
[...]
['It's Cold Outside'] was a work for tape and orchestra. I couldn't quite leave audio tape out of it."
(Laurie Anderson, 1984)
Slide Show from Rio
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The Talking Pillow being tested by its creator |
By clicking to the photo above, you can watch a video (more of a slide show) made by Marcello Dantas, the curator of I in U / Eu em Tu, Laurie Anderson's retrospective exhibition in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Mar 29, 2011
Painting with Light on an Enormous Canvas
Dead
stars
t h e i r l i g h t s t i l l
trapped
in time.
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Light installation by Laurie Anderson Sydney, Australia 2010 photo by huailimay |
The picture above is part of this gorgeous photo gallery of Laurie Anderson's light installations on the sails of the Sydney Opera House during last year's VIVID Festival in Sydney, Australia.
Thanks to Darek for the URL!
More Ice from Rio
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Laurie Anderson's skates in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, March 2011 photo by Cristina Granato |
FYI: for more photos of the latest performance of 'Duets on Ice', click to the photo above.
Duets on Ice, Rio de Janeiro Version - UPDATED
Laurie Anderson treated the audience to another Duet on Ice as part of the vernissage of I in U / Eu em Tu, her retrospective exhibition in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (let's hope there'll pop up a more extensive recording of the event on YouTube soon):
UPDATE #1: a longer video - from the second performance on March 29:
UPDATE #2: an HD video - the best one so far (presumably recorded on March 28):
UPDATE #3: another HD video; this one is from the second performance:
Mar 27, 2011
A Closed Circuit, Baby.
I'd rather not try to guess what the following performance might have meant to the average moviegoer in Western Germany, 1983...
Laurie Anderson performs 'Closed Circuit' in Rudolf Thome's movie 'System ohne Schatten' (English title: 'Closed Circuit'):
The Suddenness of Things...
The latest issue (#4) of 200% Magazine now features an interview with Laurie Anderson. A fragment her rage at expertism can be read on the Flash page of the magazine.
Mar 26, 2011
About the Man
"I could totally relate to the dry salesman [persona] that he created; this very underplayed thing, just very-very removed... [He was] also very-very interested in death. And I think that's what scared Americans more than his writing itself."
(Laurie Anderson on William S. Burroughs; as heard in 'A Man Within')
Mar 24, 2011
The Record of That Time
Rick Liss' stop-motion video of New York City's streets from the first half of the 1980s; soundtrack by Laurie Anderson ('For Electronic Dogs'):
Switching Channels
Read a story of "a morning of ventriloquism, conspiracy theories and the presidential ambitions of a blowhard named Bergamot" by Jonathan T. D. Neil in Art Review Magazine's online archive.*
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Photo by Nick Haymes (more photos of Laurie and a pair of beautiful red shoes at ArtReviewDigital*) |
* FYI: You'll need to register to be able to read the magazine's online archive. (It's free.)
Mar 23, 2011
Coming Soon
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Art Review Magazine April 2011 issue |
Mar 22, 2011
The Song That Left Mnemosyne Speechless
Once upon a time...
"For the 50th anniversary of WNYC's FM station in June of 1994, we decided to embark on a program of commissioning music from diverse American composers to celebrate the occasion. [...] We asked the noted poet John Ashbery for a poem, and then sent it to 12 composers. Their instructions were simple: write a piece based on the poem — it did not have to be a typical voice-with-piano setting; it could use some of the text, all of the text, or none of the text. [...] In the end, a splendid concert took place on June 13, 1994, when thirteen pieces by the twelve composers had their world premieres at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall."
(WNYC Music Host John Schaefer)
Laurie Anderson was among the twelve composers involved, and she
"provided a tape piece, 'This House of Blues', in which she set her own inflected reading of the poem, in slightly rearranged form, against a soft-edged, electronically altered ensemble."
(Allan Kozinn / The New York Times)
'This House of Blues' was later included in 'The WNYC Commissions Vol. One', released in 2002, almost completely unavailable in 2011.
After a months-long journey through the United States and half of Europe, thanks to a bunch of helpful friends, the CD has recently arrived to Mnemosyne.
The awesomeness of the song has left Mnemosyne speechless but she was convinced this song cried for visual accompaniment. And publicity. That's why she asked lukeslark to create a video for it.
Here's what Luke has to say about his creation:
"[...] decided to take a very simple approach visually, partly due to the fact that the lyrical content is quite abstract and complex and really needs to stand by itself without distraction, but also because I'm drawn increasingly to simplicity, the transparent, like the 'pellucid statues' mentioned by the daughter. Interesting how Laurie's intonation of 'she said' following the daughter's words ties the piece back to her earlier work i.e. 'It Tango'. [...]
My first thought with the song was to use tight claustrophobic blue corridors [...] - but as soon as I found the sky footage I thought, 'that's it!'."
(FYI: lyrics and credits under the video)
No Longer Very Clear
by John Ashbery
In this house of blues...
It's true that I can no longer remember very well
The time when we first began to know each other
However, I do remember very well
The first time we met. You walked in sunlight,
Holding a daisy. You said, "Children make unreliable witnesses."
In this house of blues...
Now, so long after that time,
I keep the spirit of it throbbing still.
The ideas are still the same, and they expand
to fill vast, antique cubes.
My daughter was reading one just the other day.
She said, "How like pellucid statues, Daddy. Or like a...
an engine."
In this house of blues...
In this house of blues the cold creeps stealthily upon us.
I do not dare to do what I fantasize doing.
With time the blue congeals into roomlike purple
That takes the shape of alcoves, landings...
Everything is like something else.
I should have waited before I learned this.
Credits:
Laurie Anderson, vocals and keyboards
Cyro Baptista, percussion
Joey Baron, drums
Greg Cohen, bass
Brian Eno, drum treatments
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