Anderson not only showed off her talents as a singer (including her electronically manipulated "male" voice) and musician (on her neon-lighted violin), but as a monologist as well. The best of her rants were both funny and political. Imagine a poet-feminist, postmodern Mark Russell.
You left Anderson's show that night with a better idea of what the overused, misunderstood term "performance art" is really all about. It's not about self-indulgence or inaccessibility, even though there are a lot of performances like that out there. One Valley artist's routine several years back consisted of sitting alone in a barren studio space and shouting "Get out! Get out immediately!" to anyone who tried to enter.
In Anderson's case, performance art combines a variety of media into a highly approachable, cohesive whole. Her first show was in 1973, back when performance art was widely considered to be just the brain-damaged offspring of vaudeville. Since then, the 44-year-old New York artist has staged countless well-received shows--including the staggering, seven-hour United States--recorded several albums of art-pop and performed in the avant-garde answer to the TV variety show, PBS' Alive From Off Center.
But live shows are her number-one interest, mainly because--as she told New Times in an interview last year--she loves "talking to people in the dark."
In contrast to the everything-but-dancing-waters format of her last concert, Anderson's current show is positively bare bones--little music or video and not one smoking machine. "It's mostly political monologues," explains Anderson in a telephone interview from her New York City loft. "I've stripped the visuals away because it's the best way to present these kinds of ideas. They don't go into pictures very well. So much of what is going on is wilder and more out of control than any images I could show."
Politicized spiels have always been a big part of Anderson's concerts. At Gammage Auditorium, she spoke out against the handling of the national debt and in favor of preserving the national anthem. (She enjoys hearing crowds futilely trying to sing that melody at a ball park.)
But these days the issues most on Anderson's mind, and the minds of many other artists, are National Endowment for the Arts grants, censorship and the scourge that is Jesse Helms--all of which are addressed in her current show. She never gave these subjects much thought until a few Congress members got in a huff over the federally subsidized exhibitions of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe's work. Mapplethorpe shot the luminous, black-and-white photographs of Anderson that appear on the front and back cover of her 1989 album Strange Angels. They're the kind of dignified portraits that defenders of the late photographer always pointed to as evidence that whips 'n' rectums weren't his only subject matter.
Considering that she already made a strong anticensorship statement simply by using the controversial photographer's work, is there really any reason to speak out on the issue now?
"Censorship was never dealt with during the whole [Mapplethorpe] episode," Anderson asserts. "That's why I'm talking about it now. The issue sort of dissolved into squabbling about money, about federal funds, and no one really looked at censorship itself. I think that was almost part of the plan. It was like, `Let them argue over the scraps.'"
Anderson's rounded up some of her best political harangues and personal anecdotes for her new Collected Videos. The tape contains probably her most memorable monologue, one that re-creates a confrontation she had with an angry Playboy Bunny while protesting outside the then-extant Playboy Club in New York. Also featured is a "tour" of her cluttered home recording studio and clips of her performances on Alive From Off Center.
The only things on Anderson's new tape that don't fascinate are the music videos themselves. Anderson was considered part of the video vanguard in the early days of MTV. But clips like 1984's "Sharkey's Day," with its primitive computer graphics, now seem about as dated as a Max Headroom Coca-Cola commercial.
Anderson's early records haven't aged especially well, either. Listening to the electronic bleeps and squonks on her 1982 debut Big Science is like spending too much time in a video arcade. Anderson feels these early efforts suffered from her lack of experience with high-tech equipment. "If you're a little bit scared, the machines do start to take over," she says. "You have to have a real intimate relationship with your keyboards, just like you would with a saxophone."
But Anderson admits that much of her early- to mid-Eighties stuff was deliberately unemotional. She created a computer-mutated voice that was cold and flat. And she cultivated an image--by her android-in-a-lab-coat pose on the cover of Big Science, for instance--that was the last word in futurism.
With Strange Angels two years ago, she did an about-face by releasing an album that sounded warm and fully human. Anderson--whose speaking style has become as much of a signature as her prickly haircut--even sings on a lot of the album, revealing a sweet and respectably strong voice.
"I'm trying to learn how to be a human being, yeah," says Anderson with a laugh, "instead of some kind of futuristic something or other. Not that the otherworldly doesn't still appeal to me--it does. But for the moment I'm enjoying being a person with a voice."
Whether she's singing or spouting polemics, it's Anderson's voice that ultimately engages an audience. She says she admires fellow performance artist Spalding Gray for his ability to mesmerize crowds with just "a mic and a spotlight" in his shows. Anderson has the same gift.
Call it a talent for talking in the dark.
Laurie Anderson will perform at Scottsdale Center for the Arts on Friday, November 15 and Saturday, November 16. Showtime is 8 p.m.
The best of her rants were both funny and political.
In Anderson's case, performance art combines a variety of media into a highly approachable, cohesive whole.
"So much of what is going on is wilder and more out of control than any images I could show."
She cultivated an image that was the last word in futurism.
At Gammage Auditorium, she spoke out in favor of preserving the national anthem. She enjoys hearing crowds futilely try to sing that melody at a ball park.
