Conferència del 26 de juny de 1982

Authors

  • Laurie Anderson

Abstract

After an artistic practice devoted to minimal sculpture, art criticism, movies, artist's books, etc... I began working with sounds and I realized that most of the things I have done are based on words and language.

As regards the series I am just finishing now, United States, it is basically structured in four parts: transportation, politics, money and love. Each section has a kind of direction associated to a hand gesture. One of its main themes is the use of technology as a means.

One of the reasons that I use a lot of filters in sounds is to try to understand voices without bodies. Most of the voices in my work come through very different systems such as the one used in airports, where the speaker's voices is heard over the radio or the TV.

The difference between my work and theatre is that I am neither really creating characters withs pasts and futures, nor relating them to things like motivations. My characters are tones of voices.

I like to make a situation in a performance in which you are not actually really sure whether you have it or seen, it... In relation to that, one question that I used to gest asked a lot was: «What are you? Are you a sculpture ora musician ora filmmaker or what?» I never thought that it was a very important question, but it has something to do with virtuosity. Rather than being technically proficient within the rules of that particular medium, virtuosity is a resonating mechanims of the words where my works come out from.

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Published

24-04-2020

Issue

Section

Articles