Laurie Anderson Has a Message for Us Humans: For half a century, she has taken the things we know best— our bodies, our rituals, our nation — and shown us how strange they really are. Sam Anderson writes a NYT longread profile of the venerated multi-faceted performance artist. Archive link.
“Anderson, despite all her success, still works in this spirit. The anti-careerism of her career is part of what has made her illegible, and often invisible, to mainstream audiences. Although she is a legend in some circles, she is totally unknown in others. She remains uncategorizable in a way that strikes me as both naïve and deliberate, pure and perverse, simple and profound. She moves in the tradition of John Cage, Fluxus, Schoenberg, Warhol. I mentioned to Julian Schnabel that I was having trouble summarizing Anderson’s career. “Well, it’s not really a career,” he said. “She’s really unemployable.””