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Laurie Anderson's Technology-"Neither Love It Nor Leave It"

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Laurie Anderson's Technology- Laurie Anderson's Technology-"Neither Love It Nor Leave It" Viki D. Thompson W.rlder Laurie Anderson. like her work. has tended to defy record players. Images themselves have often come from labels. John Howell in a 1983 Ariforwn ariiclc called her technological sources. televisions. aircraft. electric clocks. representative of ·a generation that graduated from college electric sockets, to name a few. In the book made to doc­ in the ac1ivis1 60s (she was born in 1947). studied itself in ument United States, Anderson addressed this technologi­ the 70s. and now stares blankly at the start of the 80s· cal aspect of her media directly. In Part Ill she provided a asking itself "what to do'!" 1 However, Laurie Anderson has numbered and labelled diagram of the perfonnance area a history of being an answerer to that question. By doing (Figure 2), writing: ·Let's take a look around the stage at poetry, music. photography. fi lm, video, installations, per­ what wc like to call The Systcm- i.e., the highly sophisti• formane<.-s. bits and pieces of the above. and doing them all cated (very expensive) state-of-the-art gadgetry with which al the same time, she has in turn suggested that Howell's I cast my spell." J 1983 evaluation was not quite apt. In this ironic statement Anderson encapsulated one of Beginning in 1970 with a one-person show at Barnard the most riveting themes or aspects of her work. Technol­ College in New York City, a 1971 publication entitled Tire ogy. that is, the symbol for the mechanical, the material, Package: A Mystery, and an initial perfonnance in Roches­ the precise. the knowable, the rational, the logical, the ter. Vermont in 1972, she moved during the course of ten intellectual. the scientific, the analyzable and therefore con­ years from a more limited northeastern U nitcd States trollable, the symbol for the pride of America. has here audience co a "~der mainstream America n as well as intera been countered and transformed. First, ii ha, been de­ national circuit Her audience increased in 1981 in part due scribed as cliche, "what we like to call The System·; then it 10 a step into pop culture with the production of O Sur>er­ has been reduced in spite of its ·sophistication· 10 a lowly man on the Warner Brothers record label. (Some say that pun, "state-of-the-art gadgetry•; next it has been removed the quality of her recent work has suffered from the pres• from its own realm of association and identified with ,ures of this move.) Even without this her list of perfor­ wizardry. Anderson uses it to "cast [her] spell." mance locations had alrc-ady criss-<:rossed N orih America Finally she alluded to the cost for this "gadgetry" in and Western Europe. Her list of exhibition locations during several ways. Not only did she point out that it was ·very these years was as ,,~despread. Her tempo continued while expensive"" but in the next line with the most mundane of a major work came together. United States. Parts I to IV American idiomatic expressions. "this stuff docs not grow premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in February on trees."' she emphasized the dollar and em;ronmental of 1983 (Figure 1).2 costs for the culture. Despite this listing of accomplishments and the mulli- In American culture. Anderson's mess.age was and is 1ude of accompanying explanatory and review articles representative. Like a twist on that famous bumper sticker ,vhich accrued during sixteen years. her work has remained (a direct and indirect result of technology) slogan, technol­ hard to describe. Overlaying sound, image, and action via ogy for her has been a ·neither love it nor leave it" proposi­ technology and time. the pieces have taken on a dis­ tion. She and we have simultaneously been attracted and embodied quality remembered and described afterward in th reatened by it. a myriad of details. the whole experienced seldom. not This self-<:onsc ious and stormy marriage of technology really translatable or understood except as itself, expe­ with art has not had a lengthy history.' but its relationship rienced first hand. Partially it is the nature of performance and the concommitant changes inherent in artistic produc­ pieces. but also the nature of light electronics applied to tion seemed to begin with the arrival of Daguerre's metal imagery or imagery mixed with sound that has produced plate images and Talbot's chemical method fo r creating this disembodiment In some pieces images and shadows permanent positive pictures via the camera. Talbot pub­ have been projected and changed, lights and color have lished a book of photographs in 1844. Affected directly­ been handled similarly. In general. act ions and/ or sound/ for example. at one point Turner believed photography 10 music. both transitory by nature. have been added. In the be the death of a r16- thc traditional visual arts developed end no final object has been produced which a viewer their schizophrenic dance with the ensuing technological might hold. come back to. examine. The clements of the surge. The traditional arts were forced to defend their own 1>0rk have usually been brought together for a span of viability while at the same time noticing the possibilities time then disassembled. technology offered in new images, processes and thought Technology has therefore been imponant to the tone Thus began their discomforting questioning and dissecting and St)ie of Anderson ·s work. Technology has often been of their own roles and identities. The underlying crisis even• used to create her images in the first place ,•ia photography, 1Ually caused a shift to an either more intellec1ual or more cinematography. or video. Still images have been projected. emotional art often with an art for art's sake basis or struc­ Sound has often been dependent on electronic instruments tural formality. equipment. teched-up traditional instruments (like the A few examples indicate this technology attraction, ,·iolin). electronic modifications of voice. tape- recorders. repulsion theme that has run through the various art 59 movements to the present. In the nineteenth century the fea ture of 1his genre has been a type of direct communica­ ..scientific" approach of Seurat's pointillism conuasted with tion between the artist in person and the audience in per­ Gaugin's examination of primordial or primitive art forms. son. T he artist has shared gathered cxpericnce1 information In the twentieth century the duality continued with such more directly in spite of formal issues conoerning visuals. opposite features as Mondrian's utopian view of the indus-­ sound. or coordination. Anderson's performances have trially manufactured produc1 and its neo--plas1ic artistic syn­ ranged in formal i1 y. locale. and audience. In 1974. with the thesis versus the comcmporaneous Dadaist criticism of the immediacy of s1reet performance. she presented Duets on bourgeois industrial society after World War I. Interest­ Ice on street corners in Genoa. Italy and in New York Ci1y ingly. the Berlin Dadaists used photomontagc as a medium spots (Figure 3). Accompanying her own violin playing via for 1heir critique. 1he very photos from the mass media of a tape recording placed inside the instrument. she con- 1he indusirially based culture that horrified them. More 1inucd until the blocks of ice. in which 1he skates on her nearly current works. like Jean Tingely's famous 1960 fee t were set. had melted. In contrJSt United States. Parts I motorized self..cfestruct ing sculpture. Homage to New York. to JV was a bigger. two•night, more formalized. more cxhibi1ed a similar theme. diverse. 1hea1rical. and concert-like event. Between 1966 and 1971 when the Art and Technolugy In Anderson's case 1hc experience; information ga1hered Exhibition for the Los Angeles County Muse um of Ari was has mostly come from her observations and reactions to the being pul together. lhis dual feeling surfaced . .lane Living• culture in which she lives. Though not a performance piece. ston. in presenting an introductory essay for the publication Art and Illusion (1977) demons1ra1es 1his aspect. Herc she accompanying 1he show. discussed a hesitancy on 1he part presented a handwrinen. seemingly mundane story about a of many artists for political and aesthetic reasons to become student's visit to a stuffed seal display at the Museum of involved with technology or industry. She also stressed Natural History. Accompanied by a photograph as well as what she saw as a fundamental dualism: on one hand. some her reaction. the written and tape-recorded humorous words ar1ists felt that technology must be accommodated from to a song/comment on the story. the vieweri(istcner was within: others judged 1echnology as inhuman and felt art able not only to expand his/ her sensory experience but also must oppose it or at least be outside it. 7 to expand the piece's meaning 1oward a more generalized \Vith varying emphasis. seventy-six generally well• comment on reality, illusion. and art. The piece had the known artists. such as Stephen Antonakos. Anthony Caro. appearance of documentation. the 1·eal art having been the: Christo. Ellswor1h Kelly. Claes Oldenburg. Roben Rausch­ event and reaction on which it was based. Documentation. enberg. Robert Smithson. Andy Warhol. did pursue the of course. has been a major component of the American aims and offers of the mu.scum ·s progrnm. Laurie Anderson informa tion explosion. has been a contemporary recipient of this history. Perfonnance art. likewise. reflecting the second facet Although Livingston scpara1ed the artists in the Los of this type of art and technology experience. has made the Angeles show from the "recent cffons in the area of techno­ audience more self-aware.
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