Laurie Anderson Returns to Brooklyn Academy of Music With Mesmerizing, Cathartic Performance
Four decades after performing her sprawling United States production hit the stage at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and changed the direction of performance art in the ‘80s, Laurie Anderson returned to the Brooklyn venue to open the annual BAM Next Wave Festival on Tuesday (Oct. 17).
For an artist who’s defied expectations ever since the unlikely mainstream crossover of 1982’s Big Science, the first surprise was how faithfully Anderson played the hits, as it were, from that album. Backed by NYC jazz outfit Sexmob, Anderson hewed closely to the studio versions of her best-known songs, from the ominous funk of “From the Air” to the hypnotic repetition of “O Superman (for Massenet).” The band branched out a bit for “Let X = X” (also the name of the show), with Anderson’s keyboard (set to organ mode) giving the song an almost religious intensity.
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But if anyone thought they were in for a fairly by-the-numbers concert after her opening songs, the avant icon shook things up before too long. “I want to thank the great artist Yoko Ono for her comment on the U.S. election way back in 2016,” Anderson intoned in her droll fashion. “When she was asked by the media for her thoughts on the winner of the election, she screamed for three minutes. And this is not like a metaphorical art scream — this was a bloody murder death scream from hell. In her honor, I’m going to ask you to scream not for three minutes, but for 10 seconds.
“In preparation for the scream, I want you to think of a few things, just channel a few things. Maybe the war in Ukraine; all the genocides around the globe; the hostages in Gaza tonight; the melting Arctic; the burning Amazon; or just how messed up your own life is.”
It was only after that 10-second communal scream was unleased by the 2000-person venue that Sexmob and Anderson began to truly let loose, trading mesmerizing minimalism for cacophonous free jazz (and even a brief bit of James Brown). In between spoken word segments and songs that touched on many of her favorite themes – technology, communication, the apocalypse, dogs – Anderson seemed to be taking stock of an artistic career that reaches back to the ‘70s, but with more curious amusement than pride. The most heartfelt, unironic moment came when the face and voice of Lou Reed appeared via his Metallica collaboration “Junior Dad”; as a segment of that Lulu track issued from the speakers, Anderson played along on violin, as if musically conversing with her late husband.
She admitted to being “depressed” by everything going on in the world, skeptical of “gibberish” AI art and briefly meditated upon “the story of the end of the world” that hangs like a specter over us all. “Is it even a story?” she asked. “A story is something you tell to someone. And who will hear this story? Is it still a story if no one is listening? Is it still a story if it’s told to no one. And so it dawns on us that we are the first humans to see a possibility of the end of our own species, and that this is our awesome job – to tell a story to nobody.”
Anderson closed the show with an unusual encore – not a song, but a tai chi lesson. As the audience followed her graceful motions (including a particular move that Reed nicknamed “holding the pizza”), it was a reminder that there’s palpable catharsis in community and shared experiences. Maybe we can’t tell the story of the end of the world to anyone – except to each other as it unfolds. And maybe that’s enough.
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