fbpx Laurie Anderson | CIRCA

Laurie Anderson is one of America’s most reknowned – and daring – creative pioneers. Known primarily for her multimedia presentations, she has cast herself in roles as varied as visual artist, composer, poet, photographer, filmmaker, electronics whiz, vocalist, and instrumentalist.

O Superman launched Anderson’s recording career in 1980, rising to number two on the British pop charts and subsequently appearing on Big Science, the first of her seven albums on the Warner Brothers label. Other record releases include Mister Heartbreak, United States Live, Strange Angels, Bright Red, and the soundtrack to her feature film Home of the Brave. A deluxe box set of her Warner Brothers output, Talk Normal, was released in the fall of 2000 on Rhino/Warner Archives. In 2001, Anderson released her first record for Nonesuch Records, entitled Life on a String, which was followed by Live in New York, recorded at Town Hall in New York City in September 2001, and released in May 2002.

Anderson has toured the United States and internationally numerous times with shows ranging from simple spoken word performances to elaborate multimedia events. Major works include United States I-V (1983), Empty Places (1990), The Nerve Bible (1995), and Songs and Stories for Moby Dick, a multimedia stage performance based on the novel by Herman Melville. Songs and Stories for Moby Dick toured internationally throughout 1999 and 2000. In the fall of 2001, Anderson toured the United States and Europe with a band, performing music from Life on a String. She has also presented many solo works, including Happiness, which premiered in 2001 and toured internationally through Spring 2003.

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Laurie Anderson: A Fantasy Notebook for Freedom

“As a child, I was a kind of a sky worshipper. This was the Midwest and the sky was so vast. It was most of the world. I knew I had come from there. And that someday, I would go back.” (Heart of a Dog, 2015) Is Laurie Anderson an alien? Or a “strange form of life”, as Pitchfork suggested in 1982 when reviewing her debut album “Big Science”? Laurie Anderson’s relentless contributions over the past four decades have often been reminders that our imagination makes us all aliens. Through fantasy, we can expand the sense of what is possible. “Speak my language” (Speak My Language, 1994). A call from the underwater inviting the brainy Ulysses to put aside his goal and intuitively plunge into the unknown. “I’m lost in your words. I’m swimming.” (Freefall, 1994).

Laurie Anderson can hardly be labelled; she is a total artist, a spatial innovator.

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