Vox Populi

How indecision made Laurie Anderson the reigning performance artist of our time.

If you don’t know who Laurie Anderson is, chances are you missed the 1981 moment when she emerged from the Manhattan art scene and stumbled onto the national psyche with the single “O Superman”—a mesmerizing eight-minute homage to the coming technological age. The peekaboo may have been brief, but it was enough to garner the Mills College alumna a lifetime supply of worldwide fans who mob her multimedia concerts to hear her haunting combination of insightfully cheeky vocals and electronic strings. Meanwhile, her pop stardom subtracted absolutely nothing from her status within the art community: As a poet, sculptor, photographer, composer, filmmaker, inventor of two instruments and NASA’s first-ever artist-in-residence, Anderson could well serve as the illustration for “performance art” in the current edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Or you can turn back to “New York” and read the entry she wrote to describe her hometown of four decades, where she lives with longtime boyfriend Lou Reed. No wonder she’s at peace with turning 60.

Why have you crossed so many more genres than most artists?
If I had gone to an art school where they were worried about it, I would have had to decide. But nobody ever asked me what I wanted to do, so I never had to define it. And that’s worked well for me. I’ve always loved having the option of switching gears. Plenty of times, I don’t have an idea of what to do in a song, for instance, but I do have an idea for a little film.

What’s your theory about why “O Superman” broke through to the mainstream in 1981, making it to No. 2 on Britain’s pop charts?
British radio is adventurous in a way that we’re not. And I also think that, whether or not the listener identified it immediately, the song’s subject matter—that technology will not save you—was and is on everyone’s minds. It’s a song that gets to people. I love to work on issues that are in the back of your mind.

Your piece in the Dalai Lama exhibit at YBCA is basically a video of you and your dog projected onto a small clay figure. What inspired you to create it?
I think of animals when I think of the Dalai Lama, because I think of empathy. In the process of getting their food ensured, dogs have honed this skill that I would love to have more than any other thing—the ability to put yourself in somebody else’s place. It’s one of the greatest of the many great teachings of the Dalai Lama: Get outside of yourself. I guess I also focused on my dog and fear because the increasing fear that’s totally endemic to our country now is really getting to me. And it’s getting more extreme, this idea of “security.” Watching people take their shoes off in airports, which I find so humiliating, and looking at people’s frayed little socks—I just can’t stand it. And the worst part is that you can’t even joke around or talk about it. It’s all so serious, and it’s bringing people way, way down. I can’t get used to it. I find it very sad and very disturbing.

Your new album, Homeland, addresses this issue of our obsession with security.
Yes. I’ve got this anger and frustration about it. And that’s a different thing than knowing what to do about it. I don’t know what to do about it, but I can try to describe what it feels like and make it less of a white elephant.

What have you learned from being NASA’s first artist-in-residence?
That’s a big one. The basic thing is that artists and scientists have a lot more in common than I thought. They don’t really know what they’re looking for. They get a hunch, work with materials, have some theories and then make something. Then you have the really big question, “When is it finished?” The most intense conversations I had there were with nanotechnologists, guys who would quote Einstein, saying he had rejected some of his major theories because they weren’t beautiful. I said, “Wow, what was he looking for?” We had some very interesting conversations on that level.

You collaborated on several projects with the late William Burroughs—what was that like?
He was very, very funny and very, very dark. I had a few problems with him: He loved guns, and he really didn’t like women. That was awkward. But we got along for some reason—maybe because when we first met, he thought I was a boy [laughs]. It was fine, and we became friends or, should I say, friendly. He had a radically different point of view, talking about mummies and sex and drugs—and that terrified people. Shaking things up is never a bad idea.

How did it feel to turn 60 this year?
Physically, I feel strong, and that’s really important. If you’re not feeling good, it’s no fun, no matter how old you are. But on the plus side, you don’t have to go to clubs anymore. I pass them by and think, I’m so glad I don’t have to spend the night there—it’s so cold and everyone’s vomiting and it just doesn’t look fun at all [laughs].

Anderson’s From the Air appears in “The Missing Peace: Artists Consider the Da lai Lama,” at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; Dec. 1–March 16.

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