Λόρι Αντερσον (UPDATED)

That bunch of characters in the title is the Greek translation of "Laurie Anderson" - just my sad attempt to be in style since Laurie performs 'Delusion' in Athens tonight ("one of my favourite places in the whole world", she says). In a recent interview made by ESC TV (Greek tv show) she recalls her memories of working on the 2004 Olympics ceremony in Athens, and talks about 'Delusion' and her alter-ego Fenway Bergamot:

UPDATE: a bunch of photos of 'Delusion' in Athens where Fenway Bergamot's section had an extra reference to the then-current protests on Athens' Syntagma square as a special one-time update (thanks for the vigilance, timeiswide!).

'Delusion' in Athens, Greece
Badminton Theater, June 8, 2011
photo by Alexandra Katsarou 

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.

"Deals with the Spiritual Issues of Our Time"

"I don't actually believe in angels but I do believe that we are them."

(Laurie Anderson at Columbia University, 2011)

Listen to how Laurie Anderson navigated her way through the sometimes elusive / dim / intangible subjects of spirituality, faith and religion in a public conversation held at Columbia University on February 10, 2011 - thanks to the CU Institute for Religion, Culture & Public Life website, the conversation can be downloaded as a podcast:

• 'Refiguring the Spiritual' with Laurie Anderson (audio length: 61 mins 35 secs, file size: 28.1 MB)

It's almost impossible (and unnecessary) to list all the topics touched upon - just to name a few: Melville and the Biblical symbolism of Moby Dick; silence, pain and meditation; being a spy as an artist, Laurie's pentecostal missionary grandmother, Capitalist Realism, making freeform fiction out of Egyptian architecture; John Cage, NASA's poetic projects, pressure of technology; pitch and prayer; How to Be Idle, the School of Life, what is an artist, etc. etc. etc.

You can find a bunch of great reviews of the conversation on ircpl.org by Elizabeth Kipp-Giusti, Courtney Bender, Shelly Silver, María Cristina Fernández Hall, Kali Handelman and Nora Griffin.

Twitter's archive has also got a series of enthusiastic tweets from the event by keith_wilson and saletteg. :)



(FYI: all URLs open in a new window)

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.)

Drum Dance 2010!

Last night Laurie appeared as a guest on Brazilian talk show 'Programa do Jô'. After a conversation rambling on subjects like Fenway Bergamot, the story of the Singing Table, working at McDonald's and NASA, she even did a new version of her drum dance, too - see it in the second video.

"I love pushing buttons."

"Everything I do is a kind-of long last piece in the last forty years."

"As an artist I try to make things that I like and hope that other people will get it. And if they don't, I don't really care, if they do, I'm really happy."

(Laurie Anderson, 2010)

... Just some of Mnemosyne's favourite quotes from an interview of yesterday.

AndrewAndrew SoundSound on East Village Radio talked to Laurie Anderson via phone on the day of the New York City premiere of 'Delusion'.


You can listen to the whole show in one in the archive of the show's audio archive (under the date of September 21, 2010) or just the interview here, edited into two parts:

• AndrewAndrew interview September 21st, 2010 - part one (audio length: 10 mins 0 secs, file size: 13.7 MB)

• AndrewAndrew interview September 21st, 2010 - part two (audio length: 8 min 40 secs, file size: 11.9 MB)

Laurie's Brainwave

Janna Levin, astrophysicist and writer. Laurie Anderson, multimedia artist and amateur anthropologist. A free-form public conversation between these two women with BRAINZ, recorded at the Rubin Museum of Art in 2010, as part of the 'Brainwave' series. What a treat.

(More photos by Michael Palma)

Janna Levin is the author of 'How the Universe Got Its Spots', a book on spacetime, the universe and quantum theory. Laurie Anderson is NASA's first (and last) artist-in-residence.

Thanks to the magnificence of the world wide web, we (i. e. distant inferior forms of life) have access to this intriguing and hilarious exchange of thoughts-- in both audio and visual format. Hallelujah.