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TDR
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Laurie Anderson:- .
Performance f
Artist
by Mel Gordon
Since her first performance work in 1974, Laurie Anderson has found herself
concerned with a basic esthetic dilemma that has troubled a number of other
performance artists: how to create an intensely personal art that is not just sim
autobiography. How can the performer/author bring raw, unmediated materials fro
his/her life and structure them to strike a balance between his/her own needs and
those of the audience? For Anderson, the resolution is not only intellectual but
technical; it is one that leads to a new performance style.
What Anderson calls a "system of pairing," of placing polar opposites side-by-
side or before one another, of incorporating and transposing a kind of spiraling
dialectic of styles and frames of reference pattern her productions like an electrical
grid. Her performance methodologies revolve around a network of dualities: artist as
person/character, language/sound, private/public activity, memory/fantasy,
audio/visual space, male/female, nineteenth/twentieth century musical instru-
mentation, history/prophecy, filmic/live presentation.
Even Anderson's reception as a performance artist has a dual aspect to it.
Despite the dense theatricality of her work, her support and renown seem to come
almost exclusively from the art world, where she has an enthusiastic following.
Although a Life magazine photo-essay (January 1980) described her as "a former
teacher and critic, who may be the most popular performance artist," relatively few
individuals in experimental theatre are aware of her work. Possibly, the difficulty in
actually seeing Anderson's presentations-she normally performs only once or
twice a year in New York, where she lives-and her tendency to mount her
productions in art galleries and museums may also explain why she has been
generally overlooked in theatre circles.
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52 THE DRAMA REVIEW/T86
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LAURIE ANDERSON 53
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54 THE DRAMA REVIEW/T86
story
storyabout
aboutcarrying
carryinga violin
a violin
case in
case
Chicago.
in Chicago.
She performed
She performed
her violin her
duet,violin
and onduet
an up-stroke she released the bow, which sailed to the wall, hitting a projected
image of an apple, then William Tell, as other images begin to multiply.
Laurie Anderson's longest and most complex piece, Americans On the Move,
was presented at the Carnegie Recital Hall and at The Kitchen in the spring of 1979.
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