Title card: The Eleventh Hour #257, Laurie Anderson, Rec: 11/9/89, Dir: Andrew Wilk

Reel opens to a music video clip produced by Performance Artist, Laurie Anderson

Funding for the program by announcer and overlay The Eleventh Hour graphic.

Host Lipsyte welcomes viewers and introduces himself. He introduces Laurie Anderson.

Lipsyte cuts to an excerpt from Laurie Anderson's second major show, "Home of the Brave"

INSERT INTERVIEW:

Laurie Anderson:
mouth, basically. And I think that i think that i think that what he meant but you'd have to really ask bill because I was just writing a song for him was that language is a kind of trick in a in a Buddhist sense to actually William Burroughs Buddhist thinking is also fascinating to me. Anyway, he says, of course, there's the thing and there's the name, then there's the name of the thing. And it's one thing too many. Because sometimes you think you can name something you think you understand it, you know, all you knows the word that sort of indicates that you don't necessarily understand it at all

Robert Lipsyte
when you hear something like that. Now, how does this kind of get filtered into your creative consciousness? I mean, you heard this line language is a virus from outer space. Now all of a sudden, there are people dancing, people seeing this electronic sounds, how does it work?

Laurie Anderson
Like at any time, someone can step away and look at something at a big picture. And I really like that I also like teensy, tiny details. But and William Burroughs has that kind of a viewpoint, it's funny, you know, but every 10 years, he kind of rises up out of his grave says one thing, and you and it's really true, you know, this time, there's, there's a movie that he said, drugstore cowboy, cowboy, and he rises up and says something about the right wing coming down on that rag, you know, and you go, that's right. And then he goes back, and, you know, whatever closes the curtain in front of the window,

Robert Lipsyte 6:12
is that how you find your ideas, I mean, somebody else's sudden epiphany

Laurie Anderson
Sometimes I like to, or I like to just, I really like to walk around and meet people and find out who they are, and what's on their minds, that that really fascinates me. And sometimes, you know, because I get a chance to do that people sometimes recognize me on the street, and they used to bother me. But, you know, I, I suddenly realized I shouldn't take that personally. Because they're, what do they say to you, when they recognize Laurie Anderson? And, and then I kind of go, oh, they're interested, because nobody believes in the second dimensional world, they see my picture of the same television, it's sort of as proof to them that, that 3d people who are also in the second dimension are walking around going to banks walking on the street, you know, mailing their letters. And so I have to congratulate them, you know, you have made the connection between the second and third dimension. Good job, you know, so, it's, it's that because

Robert Lipsyte
what do you think the fact that they find out that your real is inspiring to them? Is that

Laurie Anderson
not particularly? No, I think that, that it's, it's just interesting to see what the people really don't quite, quite believe in television, you know, or, or, exactly. Yeah, that's great.

Robert Lipsyte
televisions dangerous, isn't it?

Laurie Anderson
Well, it's dangerous. A lot of things are dangerous, informations. Dangerous, that's boredom is dangerous. And maybe it's it's so silly to just say, you know, something like that, because television is many, many things. I mean, it's since it's part of just a whole technological package, it's easy to blame it for things. people blame it, because they say, you know, well, it's hard to communicate because of technology. Like, because we have telephones or something. I mean, basically, it was hard to communicate 500 years ago, was hard to communicate 1000 years ago. And in fact, you know, telephones can sometimes be I can help you. I mean, I mean, I, I know a lot of people have their first love affairs on the telephone, you know, because you can, it's very intimate duck right into someone's ear. And if you're shy, you don't have to see the other person. And so it's something that actually makes it quite easy. You know, but I think because people don't feel that they have control over all that. Look at all the things that are in your house that are broken.

Robert Lipsyte
If anybody's use technology for communication, it's certainly been you. Laurie Anderson's fantastic shapes and sounds are born in a loft on Canal Street, crowded with technology and ideas.

Laurie Anderson walking through her apartment

Pan inside Anderson's equipment room, lots of electronic equipment, keyboard, film projector, wires

Hand pushes floppy disk into floppy disk drive.

Close up a board with entangled wires

Converse sneakered foot stepping on numbered floor switches

Close up on a pile of cassettes

Anderson at keyboards in her equipment room

Anderson still in her room full of equipment, standing holding mic and smiling as she demonstrates the "delay" feature in her equipment.

Close up hands on computer keyboard, circa 1989

Anderson at keyboard singing into mic in her studio

Shelf with clutter - a basket filled with "stuff" other unidentifiable items.

Finger hits the off on a red On/Off Switch outlet.

Laurie Anderson performs a "story" from her national tour in The Eleventh Hour studio.

INSERT INTERVIEW

Laurie Anderson:
teaching actually, because I, I had a job teaching night school for a while, and I was using some I was teaching Egyptian architecture in a Syrian sculpture. And I would show slides, you know, and had I taught in a few City Colleges around town. And I wasn't keeping up with Egypt illogical journals, really. So you know, slide would come up, and I would look at it and just draw complete black. So I would just invent things about this, whatever. pyramid and the students would write it down, and I test them on

Robert Lipsyte 16:33
you making up stuff about anciet egyptian history a whole generation of Egyptologist with rolling information out there now. Well, you'd make up this stuff.

Laurie Anderson 16:42
Yeah actually, I did quit. Finally, because I did have not before I was fired, but it was very, very close. But I found that it was it was so wonderful to be in a dark room with people with lights on, and a few little gadgets. And I thought, Well, I better make up my own stories. It's true. Well, it was a little, I suppose. unfair? Hard to think back there really to 5000 years ago, a lot of people are, are taking a lot on faith. What actually happened,

Robert Lipsyte 17:13
there isn't a lot of tape. What was the first machine you use? What did you start with?

Laurie Anderson 17:19
The first machine I used? See, I live down in Canal Street. And that's like, great, because it's all kinds of junk down there. So I I learned about stuff, but taking it apart. And so a lot of when I work with like cheap little equipment, which I think is is great. I mean, I think I just tried to disassemble it and put it back and make it do something else. Or if it doesn't then use it for something else. It's plastic, it's great stuff. But I think the main thing really is to. And I think that it's something that young artists particularly should keep in mind is that it's always best if you're working with technology to actually work with it, no matter what level it's on, it's, it's better than trying to like a lot of people who work with it have to dream up this big project. And then they get the camera crew for like, one hour. And they have to then translate things real fast. Instead of treating it like material, which it is I mean, technology is just like working with stone or words or musical notes, you must work with it to understand it. Because if you don't it, you can't really force it to do things unless you understand its its nature,

Robert Lipsyte 18:35
you go into it for such long periods of time, like a novelist or a sculptor, then you emerge in a year or two with a work, which is I guess, different for performance artists. I mean, you don't seem to need that feedback from the audience so much as you seem to need the work itself.

Laurie Anderson 18:56
Feedback from the audiences is an editing mechanism for me, because I've got this great view of people once once they're at a performance and then I mean, people who basically think they're invisible, but I can can see their faces real well. And if they're kind of going, Hey, I could see that, you know, and, and then I'll have to consider whether really, if everybody's going to Hey, I'll just take it out of the performance. Not that I'm trying to be simplistic or that everybody should get everything all the time. I mean, if I thought that then I thought it would have to think that heavy metal music is the most brilliant music of the moment, which I don't. So I you know, I don't think that the more people to get it, the better it is. But I do feel a responsibility as an artist to jump over that gap quickly and vividly. And to make it because I don't have a lot of time and a performance. You have to make it work at that moment. Exactly that moment

Robert Lipsyte 19:52
where you haven't been getting a lot of lately, Laurie Anderson alters and sounds and sometimes even her own voice and appearance.

Clip from video made by Laurie Anderson, "What you mean, we?:"

Back to the Eleventh Hour set, where Lipsyte continues interview with Anderson.

INTERVIEW CONTINUES:

Robert Lipsyte
Well we have a rule now that says we do, let's not look at Yeah, it seems like it will probably have a chilling effect on a lot of artists who are not as established as you are

Laurie Anderson
those that's the important thing. I think, in particular, for younger artists who might be affected by this, for people like myself, I don't think it will have an effect except to pay more attention to that, too, to say that more often. I mean, I'm on the tour that I do. I'm doing a big show, but I'm also doing things in clubs and also in smaller places, so that I can talk to people face to face about this, because it's one thing to come into a town, do your show. And like everybody, it's real interesting stuff and real avant garde. So it's another thing to meet people and say, so what do you think about this? How is this affecting you? Tell me talk to me, you know, because I'm, it's up to young artists to look at this, understand it, and, and realize that they have a right to say, absolutely anything they want. I spent a lot of time as a young artist working in Europe. And because Germany was a place in particular, that is very supportive of American artists. They're big. He doesn't want an orchestra, or you go, you want to do this big project. Here you go. And then I came back to America because I thought, I want to be able to say anything I want, you know, and I didn't quite feel that freedom there. And so I mean, I, I'm an artist, first of all, because it's one of the very few things in the world where you can do. Where you can be free, there are no rules. And for someone in the government to try to establish rules is absolutely insane and totally obscene to me. And they're saying, of course, well, what does art have to do with politics? You know, you could ask what sexuality has to do with politics as well. They're attempting to legislate that as well. I mean, there's so many questions that people need to think about really clearly

Robert Lipsyte
You're telling us, Laurie Anderson, thanks so very much for being with us. Laurie Anderson is going to take us into the weekend. That's the 11th hour. I'm Robert Lipsyte.

Show credits over Home of the Brace performance by Laurie Anderson.

End reel.