(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)

Laurie Anderson (1947) is one of the artists who defined the term "avant-garde" at the end of the century: a cold, detached, abstract pose, refinedly vulgar, underpinned by an irrational fear of the present and disturbing premonitions of the future, and masochistically subservient to modern technology.

Anderson combined electronic music, minimalism, gesturalism, and infused music-hall style into experimental vocalism. Standing out as a point of fusion and compromise, her singing style is important mainly for having ennobled spoken recitation. Her compositional art is above all a matter of arrangements, of integrating events (sonic and otherwise) that are culturally distant from each other, into a new sophisticated and light genre, futuristic and pan-ethnic, in song form. Anderson especially excels in the multimedia aspect. The music, in itself, is often inferior to the premise.

Her fundamental limitation is her inability to interiorize her experiences, limiting herself to photographing them and then displaying them, losing everything human that distinguished them from a mere static image.

Born in 1947 in Chicago and passionate about art since a very young age, Laurie Anderson moved in 1965 to San Francisco to study at Mills College and then in 1967 to Manhattan to study sculpture and teach Egyptian art. She performed her first piece in 1972, and since then has commuted between Boston and New York. Her artistic growth progressed in parallel with the multimedia collaborations she participated in (alongside writers such as John Giorno and William Burroughs, musicians such as John Cage and above all Philip Glass).

One of her first multimedia shows consisted of a complex stereophonic sculpture from which the sound could be propagated only through bone conduction (that is, the listener had to lean against the structure); in another she played the violin on a block of ice until it melted. But her performances rely heavily, beyond the technological apparatus, on repetitive melodies, Cage-like lecture-pieces, and �absurd� vocalizations that run throughout the show.

Thus her performances (for example New York Social Life of 1977, one of her first humorous sketches, or the reggae It's Not The Bullet That Kills You It's The Hole, dedicated to the artist Chris Burden who used to shoot himself in the arm and roll on pieces of glass), can be compared to off-theater and electronic cabaret, via Cage (father of gesturalism and musical recitation) and via Var�se (to whose memory she could dedicate the "tape bow violin," a violin played with pre-recorded tape inserted into the bow). The voices that populate these absurdist sketches are ethereal and cosmic, marked by a magical blend of irony and pathos.

The litany of Time To Go (composed in 1977) is the first trance piece to reach a mass audience. A slight deviation toward the paganism of discotheques was enough to impose her charming electro-vocal harmonies on the attention of disc jockeys. From the multimedia work United States (sixteen hours of words, sounds, and images) she extracted the material for Big Science (Warner, 1982), diaphanous and arcane fragments of pop subculture performed with the accompaniment of Brian Eno, David Van Tieghem, Peter Gordon, and George Lewis.

It is a subtle exercise in electro-danceable humor with charming breath-rhythm melodies and a sharp sense of universal melancholy, starting with the beguiling recitation of the "oriental" siren of Big Science and the boisterous fanfares of From The Air, passing through the medieval dance of Born Not Asked and the Caribbean sarabande of Example 22, to end with the organic pulsations, but hymn-like in structure, of Oh Superman, whispered in a subdued nightclub tone, and the soft robotic ballad Let X=X (the two hits).

Her sketch-songs unfold slowly, repetitively, and colloquially, in a subdued and unreal atmosphere made of ethnic rhythms and soft electronic textures, halfway between hypnosis and dream. Layers of filtered vocalizations, more spoken than sung (according to the technique of Sprechgesang, the song-speech), give rise to recognizable melodies. The lyrics are themselves inspired by a comic philosophy of everyday life.

The opera United States (1983), which in addition to music and action also requires the projection of images and videos through devices invented by Bob Bielecki, also includes futurist ballets (Talkshow, Odd Objects), sonatas and solos for electric violin (the romantic Pictures Of It and the surreal Duet), hilarious music-hall fanfare-gags (Cartoon Song, Yankee See, Dog Show, Sweater) and epic funky sarabandes (Language Is The Virus, City Song, We've Got Four Big Blocks).

In 1983 Anderson commissioned Bob Bielecki headlight glasses for her increasingly technological live performances.

Mister Heartbreak (1984) tells the story of the psyche of a grocery clerk as he travels through the ruins of the American dream, now spectator and now spectacle himself. To Anderson�s psychotic falsetto and psychedelic synclavier is added a heterogeneous crowd of illustrious characters: Peter Gabriel, Adrian Belew, Arto Lindsay, Anton Fier, Bill Laswell, Van Tieghem, and even William Burroughs. An expanding web of sonic trivia and oblique symbols gives rise to the tracks. An orderly accumulation of world music, cacophonies, hard-rock riffs, fairground tunes, dance steps, South American tribalism, choirs, and fanfares composes, for example, the crescendo nursery rhyme of Sharkey's Day.
Amid the tumult of arrangements emerges Anderson�s languid and verbose, fatal and anemic recitation (or whisper...), chiseling the martial suspense of Gravity's Angel (obsessive bell chimes, random dissonances, African percussion), the Zen atmosphere of Kokoku (liturgical organ, jungle noises and cries, Japanese choir), the magical impressionism of Blue Lagoon (music-hall cadence, sparse percussive flutter, melodic synth breezes), to close with the sarcastic Caribbean fanfare of Sharkey's Night.

The arrangements on Home Of The Brave (Warner, 1986) are still precious and evocative, but the "songs" are "spoken" more often than "sung", and the sound effects are far from revolutionary. Smoke Rings is typical of Anderson's poignant narration over popular rhythms (in this case, Latin-tinged syncopation) and accompanied with disorienting stylistic quotations (in this case a doo-wop choir). Her smooth talk recites Language Is A Virus over a strong funk beat and amid a profusion of female backup vocals and horn fanfares. Late Show uses a distorted male voice (and no lyrics) over a medieval pace and next to a middle-eastern trumpet. Talk Normal focuses on the music but ends up sounding like one of Frank Zappa's novelties that parodied the 1950s. Sharkey's Night is awash in Afro-Caribbean polyrhythms a` la Talking Heads. The overall effect is one of a collection of cute songs but certainly not avantgarde music. The performance of Drum Dance (1985) featured a wearable drumkit that Anderson played by simply moving her body (an idea also being explored by Benoit Maubrey's wearable music system, first demonstrated in 1985 in Berlin).

Strange Angels (Columbia, 1989), the first Anderson album that was not a theatrical soundtrack, is basically only a collection of songs. Her stream of consciousness is bent to the format of the pop song. Catchy and witty, the songs rely on discretely eccentric arrangements (and dance rhythms), and largely abandon any avantgarde ambition. At best, the eerie atmosphere and exotic overtones of Coolsville echo Enya, and the vocals seem to mimick Sinead O'Connor. The romantic Strange Angels, punctuated by evocative accordion, the falsetto hymn Ramon, the Celtic progression of My Eyes offer the equivalent of the folk-rock canon revisited by the deviant intelligence of a Brian Eno. And Beautiful Red Dress sounds like Philly soul interpreted by Young Americans-era David Bowie. The album has even lighter moments: the reggae novelty Monkey's Paw is sprightly, infectious and childish, and Babydoll is a festive calypso-funk hybrid. She is no Jim Steinman, and a gospel choir is not enough to lift The Day The Devil into the epic exorcism that she aimed for. The lyrics take snapshots of ordinary lives. But Anderson's hyper-realist fresco of America is now as compelling as the Beach Boys'. This cycle of songs makes for a pleasant (not harrowing) experience.

After a five-year hiatus, during which she staged shows around the world (Empty Places, Voices From The Beyond), most notably Halcion Days: Stories from the Nerve Bible (1992), with large screens and three-dimensional structures (and later a website), she composed the music for an Arto Lindsay show (Ossuary, 1994), for a ballet (Bridge Of Dreams) and for a monologue by poet John Ashbery (House Of Blues) wrote a book and directed a film, the new album Bright Red (1994) employs an exceptional cast, but fails to move beyond the minimal pop of these works. With Brian Eno directing, Anderson offers more of a recital of apocalyptic verse (Speak My Language), humorous skits (The Puppet Motel) and high-class duets (Bright Red with Arto Lindsay and In Our Sleep with Lou Reed). Musically noteworthy is the tango of Beautiful Pea Green Boat and little else.

The autobiographical anecdotal stories of The Ugly One With The Jewels (1994), an album that is more spoken than played, reveals something of the twisted psyche of this collector of other people's lives, capable of embarking on a procession to Tibet or the North Pole just to gather material for her monologues.

Puppet Motel (1998) was an interactive CDROM of music, videos and monologues.

Dal Vivo (1998) was a performance for "fake holograms" with the live participation of a convict from his jail. Anderson's brilliant pieces of theatre, such as The Speed of Darkness, The Nerve Bible and Songs And Stories From Moby Dick (1999), became less and less interesting at the musical level. The live performance of the multimedia show Moby Dick include a "talking stick" (built again by Bob Bielecki), a long stick that remotely controls a computer Despite the wealth of distinguished guests, Life On A String (Nonesuch, 2001) only proves her limited compositional skills.

She also scored the soundtrack for Robert Lepage's multimedia show The Far Side of the Moon (2001).

Talk Normal (Rhino) is an anthology.

Live at Town Hall (2002), recorded a few days after the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, documented one of her most electrified performances.

A live 2008 performance of Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson and John Zorn was documented on The Stone Issue 3 (Tzadik, 2008).

Delusion (premiered in 2010) as usual combined storytelling, music and visuals but the format mimicked the medieval mystery play.

The DVD Homeland (2010) features Rob Burger (keyboards), Omar Hakim (drums), Kieran Hebden of Four Tet (keyboards), Shahzad Ismaily (percussion), Eyvind Kang (viola), Peter Scherer (keyboards), Skuli Sverrisson (bass), Ben Witman (percussion and drums), John Zorn (saxophone) and the Tuvan throat singers. The pan-ethnic chamber lied Strange Perfumes measures the distance between the celestial chants of her youth and the somber meditations of her middle age.

The trilogy of Happiness (2002), The End of the Moon (2005) and Dirtday (2012) leveraged her favorite trademark style and format: live electronic music (of the mellow melodic type), lighting and recitation. Unfortunately, the latter had become the main component. It was something in between stand-up comedy and sociopolitical commentary, a bizarre kind of stream of consciousness whose main goal was to entertain the audience with references to contemporary life.

She also directed the (boring) autobiographical film "Heart of a Dog" (2015), in which she proves the one thing that she never did well: tell stories.

Laurie Anderson also composed the soundtrack for her film Heart Of A Dog (2015).

Landfall (2018) was a collaboration with the Kronos Quartet.

The Art of Falling (2019), in collaboration with cellist Rubin Kodheli, was a multimedia piece for sounds, images and poems.