Laurie%20Anderson

1
Laurie Anderson

2
Outline

• Introduction Her Works and Styles
• Critique of
• TV and other forms of language,
• national
• and gender politics
• Story-tellers
• The Dream Before Hansel and Gretel ? history
  not progressive
• The Ugly One with Jewels  ? cultural relativity
• Strange Angels ? lifes unpredictability
  appreciated as strange angels

3
Introduction Laurie Anderson her Works

• MFA in sculpture from Columbia University
• One of the group of avant-garde artists in New
  York in 1970s.
• Albums
• Big Science 1982 (O Superman)
• Mister Heartbreak 1984 (Sharkey's Day)
• Home of the Brave 1986 (Smoke Rings, Language Is
  A Virus)
• Strange Angels 1989 (Strange Angels, The Dream
  Before)
• Bright Red (1994) 195
• The Ugly One with the Jewels (spoken word) (1995)
  
• Talk Normal (greatest hits) (2000)
• Life on a String (2001)
• Live in New York (2002)
• Multimedia Works UNITED STATES LIVE Natural
  History, Stories from a Nerve Bible Songs and
  Stories from Moby-Dick.

4
Introduction Laurie Anderson as a Multimedia
Storyteller or Bricoleur

• Musical Style
• No pretense to authenticity use electronic
  machines and filters to change her voice and
  looks
• e.g. 620 makes fun of her own music-- Intro to
  Smoke Rings I seem to count music in a
  different way from the other musicians . . .
• 2740 introduces her studio and how she produces
  sound effects
• Combining Kitsch and art
• a storyteller with an allegorical impulse
  layers of stories, memories, interest in
  language and cultural codes

5
Introduction Laurie Anderson as a Multimedia
Storyteller or Bricoleur

• Re. electronic reproduction
• her views are different from those of Jean
  Baudrillard, who argues that there is no longer
  reality or the possibility of political actions.
  ? promiscuity of media penetration and pervasion.
  (ecstasy of communication)
• McLuhan artist can sidestep the bully of new
  technology. . . The artist is the man in any
  field, scientific and humanistic, who grasps the
  implication of his actions and of the new
  knowledge in his own time (Understanding Media
  70-71).
• E.g. 3339 Sharkys Day

6
Sharkys Day

• Sun's coming up. Like a big bald head. Poking up
  over the grocery store. . .
• All of nature talks to me. If I could just
  figure out what it was trying to tell me. Listen!
  Trees are swinging in the breeze. They're talking
  to me. Insects are rubbing their legs together.
  They're all talking. They're talking to me. And
  short animals- They're bucking up on their hind
  legs. Talking.
• All of life comes from some strange lagoon. It
  rises up, it bucks up to it's full height from a
  boggy swamp on a foggy night. It creeps into your
  house. It's life! It's life! I turn around, it's
  fear. I turn around again, and it's love. Nobody
  knows me. Nobody knows my name.

7
Critique (1) Language is a Virus. 1800

• Dedicated to the Beat writer William Burroughs
  who coined the phrase language is a virus from
  outer space,
• scrutinizes everyday examples of language-use
  from pain cries, to performances, to repetitions
  of TV programs.
• relates a terror of communication.
• A beautiful island with people from TV
• While Language is a Virus and other songs and
  stories from United States bemoan the
  ever-increasing dependence of Americans on
  technology, each song is marked by Andersons
  sense of irony and humor. (source)

8
Critique of TV Culture Language is a Virus.

• I saw this guy on the train and he seemed to
  gave gotten stuck in one of those abstract
  trances. and he was going uUgh...ugh
• TV showing the same pictures over and over again
• everybody on the island was somebody from tv.
• Alsofilm 536 I hate television

9
Political Critique mixed with Humor O
Superman

• 'Cause when love is gone, there's always justice
  
• And when justice is gone, there's always force
  And when force is gone, there's always Mom
• Hi Mom!
• So hold me, Mom, in your long arms
• So hold me, Mom, in your long arms In your
  automatic arms
• Your electronic arms In your arms

10
War is the Highest Form of Modern Art

• Improvisatory performance for custom officers
• War ? the beauty and elegance of the American
  strategy of pinpoint bombing
• Reporting in-between opera and the Superbowl.

11
Beautiful Red Dress Affirming Femininity 1143

• And asserting the gender inequalities
• Menstrual cycles
• And I've been around the block
• But I don't care I'm on a roll - I'm on a wild
  ride
• Cause the moon is full and look out baby -I'm at
  high tide.
• I've got a beautiful red dress
• And you'd look really good standing beside it..
• I've got some beautiful new red shoes and they
  look so fine
• I've got a hundred and five fever and it's high
  tide.

12
The Dream Before

• The song the last part
• History is a pile of debris And the angel wants
  to go back and fix things  To repair the things
  that have been broken But there is a storm
  blowing from Paradise  And the storm keeps
  blowing the angel backwards into the future And
  this storm, this storm  is called  Progress.

Laurie Anderson
13
The Dream Before

• How does the song deal with the fairy tale of
  Hansel and Gretel?
• They live in a life not as heroic and adventurous
  as their life in the fairy tale.
• Hansel
• 1) attached to the witch (why?)
• 2) Expresses Walter Benjamins view of history.

14
Paul Klee's "Angelus Novus"
15
Benjamin on Paul Klee's "Angelus Novus"

• An angel looking as though he is about to move
  away from something he is fixedly contemplating.
  His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his
  wings are spread. This is how one pictures the
  angel of history. His face is turned toward the
  past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he
  sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling
  wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of
  his feet. ? historical change and progress
  destruction of the past

16
Benjamin on Paul Klee's "Angelus Novus"

• The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead,
  and make whole what has been smashed. . . . But a
  storm is blowing from Paradise . . .
  irresistibly propels him into the future to which
  his back is turned, This storm is what we call
  progress. Walter Benjamin, Theses on the
  Philosophy of History

17
Cultural Relativity The Ugly One With The
Jewels

• FULL fathom five thy father lies  
•   Of his bones are coral made  
• Those are pearls that were his eyes  
•   Nothing of him that doth fade  
• But doth suffer a sea-change
• Into something rich and strange.  
• And I alone am left to tell the tale.
• Call me Ishmael. (the role of a storyteller)

18
Storyteller in her appreciation of life "Strange
Angels"

• They say that heaven is like TV A perfect little
  world that doesn't really need you And
  everything there is made of light And the days
  keep going by Here they come
• Well it was one of those days larger than life
  When your friends came to dinner and they stayed
  the night And then they cleaned out the
  refrigerator - They ate everything in sight And
  then they stayed up in the living room And they
  cried all night Strange angels - singing just
  for me Old stories - they're haunting me This
  is nothing like I thought it would be.

19
Reference

• http//www-static.cc.gatech.edu/jimmyd/laurie-and
  erson/interpretation/