American performance artist Laurie Anderson is one of those rare geniuses whose talents span diverse fields - music, painting, sculpture, film, storytelling, even the invention of musical instruments. The historical figures with the closest parallels to her are people like Leonardo di Vinci, Charlie Chaplin, maybe even Thomas Edison. Anderson has just published a thick art book reflecting on the last 40 years of her art-making career, "All the Things I Lost in the Flood - Essays on Pictures, Language and Code" (Rizzoli/Electa, $75). Out There took a deep dive into it, and here's our report.
The title and impetus for the book came from the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in NYC in October 2012. Anderson lost all of the archival materials she'd stored in her loft building's basement on the far West Side when the Hudson River flooded in. Writing this book was her attempt to reconstitute those artworks, or at least point to where they came from. (A related work inspired by Sandy, the recording of Anderson's "Landfall," a collaboration with Kronos Quartet, is just out from Nonesuch: see next item.)
This overview of Anderson's oeuvre shows how certain themes and preoccupations in her work have evolved over decades. By the time she released the album "Homeland" in 2010, we can see many of those concerns - changes wrought by technology, depersonalization, the "dramatic expansion of surveillance culture" - writ large. "Inspired by the Occupy movement's many branches, I wrote a lot of the songs and stories on the road in the midst of social unrest," she writes, "sometimes literally in the middle of demonstrations."
The book is not arranged chronologically, but it does survey her early years as an expatriate American artist in Europe in the 1970s; her magnum opus, the eight-hour-long "United States Parts 1-4" in 1983; her long catalogue of performances ever since; and some of her more obscure excursions in the art world. For example, four works that OT, a big Anderson aficionado, had little familiarity with are described: "Hidden Inside Mountains," a film commissioned by Japanese Expo in Aichi in 2005; "Chalkroom," a virtual reality work where "everything is hand-drawn, dusty and dark" (2017); and two "talking statues," "Dal Vivo" and "Habeas Corpus." The former involved the projection of the image of a prisoner in Italy (1998); and the latter was a livestream image projection of a detainee in Guantanamo, Mohammed el Gharani, onto a statue in the Park Avenue Armory in NYC (2015).
Anderson admits to an interesting dynamic in her work: its simultaneous intimacy and distance. "I realized that some of the best places to hide were stages," she writes. "I could control everything - the lighting, the volume, quality, intimacy and cadence of my voice. Even though I was saying things that seemed very personal, I never said anything truly private." The same could be said of this volume: its author is entirely candid about her art-making, but not much personal revelation comes out in the wash.
There's more, much more, collected here: her first use of digital filters to alter her voice at the Nova Convention in 1978 (like "being in drag" as a man); how William S. Burroughs' use of the second person "opened new realms" for her; the dark side of "Moby Dick," subject of her 1999 opera; her time on the Athens Olympics committee; her invention of the tape-bow violin; and her experience as the first (and only) NASA artist-in-residence. All of it stands testament to Anderson's genius as a creative artist, as well as to her stamina and work ethic. Her late husband Lou Reed said that if our country had its priorities straight, we would be erecting a statue of her. Out There would put her face on our national currency. Until then, this art-saturated tome may be the next best thing.
After the Deluge
Anderson also has a new CD release this month, her collaboration with Kronos Quartet "Landfall" (Nonesuch). It's again an artistic response to the devastation from Sandy. It's in 30 pieces, and their titles tell a narrative of the flood, e.g., "1. CNN Predicts a Monster Storm," "3. The Water Rises," "11. The Electricity Goes Out and We Move to a Hotel," "28. Everything Is Floating."
These are not "songs" but pieces for string quartet, sometimes with Anderson speaking, or with samples or effects. OT heard LA & the Kronos perform "Landfall" in Bing Concert Hall at Stanford a few years ago, but Anderson is a studio artist, and the work is most fully realized on recording. It's a dark, haunting meditation on possession and loss, calamity and its aftermath. At her most personal, Anderson conjures up a whole watery world.
Because we pre-ordered the CD from Nonesuch, we also received an Anderson-created print, hand-signed by the artist. It reads, "Some say our Empire is passing, as ALL Empires do." State of the Union.