malik@delphi.DEC (Karl Malik ZK01-1/F22 1-1440) (08/02/84)
Subj; writing by Laurie Anderson Thumbing thru the July issue of Vogue magazine (a woman in a bar had it), I came upon an article on Laurie Anderson. It lists 2 books/pamphlets by her. 'Words in Reverse' - "Laurie Anderson's contribution to Top Stories (228 Seventh Ave, NYC 10011), a series of pamphlets devoted to experimental writing, mostly by women, many of them artists." 'United States' - "(Harper & Row), a lavish book that attempts to reproduce all the images as well as all the words from the six-and-one-half-hour show that Laurie Anderson put on to wild acclaim at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in February '83." I checked with a book store, the 'United States' book is available in both hardcover ($24) and paperback (circa $14). I've ordered it. Will let you know how it is. However, the reviewer thought that 'Words in Reverse' was better. I'm going to check into that, too. ,Karl
gtaylor@cornell.UUCP (Greg Taylor) (08/03/84)
Well, you puppies have sure been great in ferreting out the LA stuff. The new Harper&Row is available in paper (20) or hdbnd. (30), and is in essence a sort of fancily laid out and illustrated script for USA(1-1V). The Top Stories stuff you may have trouble finding (I got mine in SLC Utah at the Cosmic Airplane bookstore while on a recording-peddling jaunt). It's a pleasant little slim volume, and you will find that a fair amount of it appears in some form or other in the text of UNITED STATES. These are generally some slightly older text pieces, which seem to date from the days when US was a much shorter piece called "Americans on the Move". If you are indeed hungry for more text stuff, you might want to check out an anthology of work by various Post-Modernists, called "Individuals: Post Movement Art in America"...I've forgotten the publisher (it might be Dutton), but I am sure that the author/editor is Alan Sonnier. It contains a text cycle of Laurie Anderson's work from the mid-seventies, called "For Instants." I find it to be a pretty satisfying piece of writing, right on the border between Literature/textuality and Performance/storytelling. This book is out in paper and hardcover, and I'd recommend it right alongside the "Performance Art" text that Karl mentioned recently as an introduction to the whole Post-Modern enterprise. greg ________________________________________________________________________________ If you ask me, I may tell you gtaylor@cornell it's been this way for years Gregory Taylor I play my red guitar.... Theorynet (Theoryknot) ________________________________________________________________________________
janzen@sunfun.DEC (Thomas E. Janzen CSS GNG CWO 714 850-7849 SUNFUN::JANZEN) (09/21/84)
The catalogue from Laurie Anderson's Pennsylvania show, which was also at UCLA, has arrived. It shows her sculptures and photographs. It also shows her in her middle twenties with long straight dark brown hair, contact lenses, and her violin. She looks like a hundred undergraduate violinists I've known. The blocks of ice she played on were smaller than shoe boxes, just big enough to freeze the runners on the skates. I'd had this idea they were very big two feet on side blocks of ice. Doing United States Part two in a blazer and her hair pulled back in '79, she looks like Liv Ullman imitating Jane Curtain. She once did straight man for Andy Kaufman. It's strange to see her age in the photographs, grow thinner, cut and later dye her hair, wear make-up differently or at all. Tom Janzen costa mesa CA Digital Equipment corp. Fri 21-Sep-1984 08:53 PDT