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Laurie Anderson

Considering all experiences of reality and acts of creation occur in the present, it’s the clearing in which spiritual people and artists look to dwell. I was reminded of this recently when Laurie Anderson came through the Midwest, taking part in a talk about art and technology at the Chicago Humanities Festival this Fall.

A composer, photographer, instrumentalist, poet, sculptor, filmmaker and all around rock star artist extraordinaire, Anderson is an outré thinker renowned for cutting-edge ideas and works that span spoken-word presentations to visual immersions to experiential albums. Having a disdain for formula and championing mistakes and spontaneity, she was even NASA’s first (and last) artist-in-residence.

Embracing, manipulating, and incorporating technology into art ever since staging street performances over three decades ago, Anderson surprisingly criticized modern technology  when she suggested it is largely responsible for human beings losing touch with who they are and what they are doing as a species. In pointing out that technology eradicates the full potential of our consciousness, Anderson “sat like a statue, not moving a muscle or saying a word, as she stared out at the talk’s near-capacity auditorium – a clever response to a question posed by an audience member about how to reemphasize the present,” according to the Tribune’s write-up on her visit. The article was titled Laurie Anderson Urges Exodus Back To Reality. During the talk she also praised producer Brian Eno for the manner in which he recognizes the opportunities afforded by faults.

Finding solace in simpler communication, she expounded upon how the haiku, stripped of metaphor and related comparative devices, forces one into the moment and boasts the capacity to remind of us of places we’ve never been. However, plain language, not technology, said Anderson, remains the basis of realities supposed and actual, the foundation for the stories that shape our purpose and identities.