Laurie Anderson honored for her entire career
The 75-year-old New York artist, who excels in several forms of expression, was able to share two of her films with festival-goers.
“I want to show you the clouds in the sky. In fact, I have never seen a difference between meditation and being an artist,” said Laurie Anderson, here in Locarno on August 9, 2022.
KEYSTONE/Urs Flueeler
The immense New York artist Laurie Anderson leaves the Locarno Film Festival with a prize for her entire career, dedicated to the pioneers of creation. The public was able to see two of her films and discuss with her at the Spazio Cinema Forum on Thursday morning.
Petite and sporty, Laurie Anderson, 75, kept her haircut short, but above all her smile and her dimples. In front of more than a hundred people gathered in the open air at the Locarno Forum, the artist who excels in different forms of expression – music, film, sculpture, drawing, writing, performance – seeks only to tell stories and not to tell each other, she explained.
But social criticism, which takes playful forms at home, is never far away. “When I was a student, I was not sure of becoming an artist. I had decided to be radical, which is intimately linked to the 60s. In other words, someone who causes mayhem”.
Avoid a January 6 bis
Referring to the current situation in the States with the “hearings”, the hearings, which are held following the events which occurred on January 6 at the Capitol, Laurie Anderson explains that she is trying to organize a big demonstration with other artists.
“The groups that attacked the Capitol will do it once more,” she said, recalling that they had a large number of heavy weapons.
Even if the situation is difficult in the United States, as in the rest of the world, the multi-artist is betting, like the musician John Cage with whom she has often worked, that things will improve while becoming more complex. This man, when he was old, remained amazed, a path that the ex-rich girl from Chicago also decided to follow.
Laurie Anderson received the Ticinomoda Vision Award on Wednesday evening in the Piazza Grande before the screening of “Home of the Brave”, a restored version from 1986. The film is dedicated to one of the American’s concert tours.
Laurie Anderson received the Ticinomoda Vision Award on Wednesday evening in the Piazza Grande.
KEYSTONE/Urs Flueeler
After the instrumental ‘Good Evening’, ‘Zero and One’ (spoken) sets the tone for ‘Home of the Brave’: ‘we live in a digital world, pretending that we are still free from the pressure of becoming either a zero, or a number 1. And there is nothing between these two numbers…”
The return of large format
Far from the tone of a sermon: “Home of the Brave” is joyful, colorful, a little crazy with a Laurie Anderson who looks like a puppet, halfway between a mime and Charlie Chaplin. The artist said she was especially happy to see her film in large format on the Piazza Grande, the size for which it was originally designed, far from iPhone screens.
The previous day in the crowded GranRex hall, moviegoers were able to see the feature film “Heart of a Dog” (2015), dedicated to her husband, the unforgettable Lou Reed.
Dreamlike, critical, political, humorous, poetic, this film has the life of the artist’s dog, Lolabelle, as its red thread, while evoking September 11, the surveillance society, the memory of a loved one, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, a broken back…
The voice of Laurie Anderson punctuates the text of the film in a spellbinding “Spoken word”. If the shadow of Lou Reed, who died in 2013, hovers over the film, we only see it briefly in the last images. In the end credits, we still hear him singing “Turning Time Around”.
“Laurie Anderson has made inventiveness and experimentation her trademark.”
In the news of Laurie Anderson, the largest exhibition of her career, which lasted almost a year, just ended on August 7 at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC Titled “Laurie Anderson: The Weather (Le temps)”, it contained major works like Habeas Corpu (2015) and a multimedia journey on his process of creative storytelling.
She once more mentioned Thursday morning the film “Sisters with transistors” (2020), which tells the untold story of the pioneers of electronic music, mostly women. Laurie Anderson is part of this “underground” tradition.
Last year, she gave six Norton Lectures, a prestigious series of lectures organized by Harvard University, the recording of which is available online.
“This artist has made inventiveness and experimentation her trademark,” said the festival’s artistic director, Giona A. Nazzaro.
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