Essay and Abstract for performance piece about Laurie Anderson
Laurie Anderson as Shaman
by
Victoria C. Vaughn
Perhaps it was because I was concurrently researching the
Inuit for my Native Arts of North America class that the parallels
between the performance art of Laurie Anderson and a shaman in
Inuit society first dawned on me. As I was learning of the
shaman's tricks, I noticed a similarity between the role and
methods of the performance artist in contemporary society and the
role and methods of the shaman in "primitive" societies. If this
sounds like a stretch, allow me first to introduce and elaborate on
some parallels in an attempt to justify this stance. First of all,
both shaman and performance artist generally rely on themselves as
main performer in their piece and their effectiveness frequently
rests on the strength and force of their individual personality.
Secondly, they both rely on cultural encoding and decoding for
their effect in that each are very culture-specific in as they
direct a performance to their audience. Finally, they both rely on
ritual and it's tools to create an event that exists as a time and
site specific performance.
So then, in that it is the force of the individual that
makes some shaman and some performance artists more successful than
others: The shaman in the Inuit society is usually the one that is
physically different in some way (making him perhaps incapable of
doing anything else). He or she may frequently exhibit personality
characteristics which make him or her seem a little different from
the rest of the group (such as schizophrenia). In the group
dynamic this serves the function of not only channeling this
person into an appropriate livelihood but these differences give the
person an intensity that makes him a more effective shaman. (Peter
Farb in Man's Rise to Civilization also suggests that the shaman
provides the "acting out" of the rest of the tribes inner feelings.
Let's say one hunter had become too loud and boastful. A
suggestion of a spell from the shaman could undermine this man's
confidence for a while and kind of level off his ego folding him
back into the groups approval.) The artist in modern society is
frequently exhibited as the alienated member of society. The image
of Van Gogh is frequently touted out as the epitome of the artistic
struggle. (He heard voices, too, and exhibited a form of
schizophrenia.) Also, in terms of acting out for the rest of the
group, one has only to examine the effect of rock stars (referring
here to rock stars as performing artists - although some may
contest the usage) to see what effect these performers immediately
have on young people's wardrobe and demeanor. Laurie Anderson has
observed this herself and even done a piece on the concept of
Laurie Anderson clone's - all the people running around looking
like her and acting like her and her feeling like she almost looses
her own identity in the process especially when people mistake her
for a "Laurie Anderson clone." So, a kind of stage presence is
required for both the shaman and the performance artist to be effective.
Then there is the concept of cultural specificity, the shaman's
spell would have little effect on a member of a different language
speaking tribe (his speech and dance might even seem humorous to an
outsider, content being lost). What evokes fear in one culture
might very well evoke humor or contempt in another. So then, the
language has to be understood and there has to be a common heritage
or at least common references to draw from for the performance to
be understood (within the context of the culture) for it to have
it's desired effect. This works in the case of performance art as
well. The encoding and decoding of the message is very culture
specific. In one of her performances Laurie Anderson describes
having done in Japan, she says that she learned the words in
Japanese and then after the performance a man came backstage to
tell her that he did not understand how since she spoke English
very well why she spoke Japanese with a lisp. It turned out that
the Japanese man that she had had make the tape that she learned
the segments of the language from had a lisp. This evidently
undermined the value of her performance. Also, a lot of the points
that Laurie Anderson makes about our culture have to be understood
from the experience of living in this culture. When she comes out
on stage and parodies the evangelist you have to be familiar with
the "type" for it to have it's effect. One might still find
something inherently amusing about the character from the viewpoint
of objective observer (assuming such a being actually exists) but
the complete sense of irony would be lost.
Lastly, the ritual and the tools of ritual: the shake, rattle
and roll. The shaman seeks to heal the individual by focusing his
ritual most usually on an ill person and performing a specific rite
which might involve props, body paint, gesticulations, dancing,
chanting, drumming etc. while the performance artists seeks to
underscore the ills of society by performing specific rituals
(performances which may involve many of the same devices as the
shaman) which draws attention to a specific ill aspect of society
that needs to be examined and resolved. Both shaman and
performance artists rely on many of the same techniques (such as
singing, dancing, props, participation of groups and other various
means) to evoke a change of consciousness in the audience (be it
one or many). Both evoke at times a sense of mystery, at times a
sense of ecstasy (in the religious sense). The shaman's drumming
evidently triggers at some point a trance state in much the same
way that driving past a picket fence can evoke a seizure in an
epileptic - repetitive rhythm causes a change in consciousness.
I liked this passage from David Martin's Art and the Religious
Experience very much so I include it here:
" No other art, assuming equal capacities for the arts
by the recipient, is so likely as music to directly engage us in a
participative experience or to move us from the spectator to the
participative experience. For music more than any other art forces
us to feel causal efficacy, the compulsion of process, the
dominating control of the physically given over possibilities
throughout the concrescence of an experience. The form of the
music binds the past and the future and the present so tightly
that as we listen we are thrust out of the ordinary modes of
experience, in which time rather than temporality dominates.
Ecstatic temporality, the rhythmic unity of past-present-future, is
the most essential manifestation of Being human beings, the power
that makes it possible for us to project a world, but in ordinary
experience our consciousness is so measured by time that the
temporality from which time abstracts is forgotten. Music, however
returns us to our foundations by bringing temporality to the
forefront of our awareness and making us forget time. We cannot
listen to music participatively and also be conscious of time.
Listening to music is ecstatic because it thrusts us out of time
into temporality."
page 94
Usually a shaman associates himself with a spirit helper or
totem animal. In this case, I believe that Laurie Anderson
associates herself with the snake. Later in this piece I include the
lyrics for "Hot head..." She describes the snake as telling
stories about the world (something she does) and having it's tongue
make sounds (something she does when she sings 0 and lastly having
flickering light come out of its mouth - in one of her performance
pieces she puts a microphone with a violin solo being emanating
from it and light emanating from it in her mouth.
In conclusion to this section, I will submit this quote by Gregory
Battcock, "[Performance] art is perhaps the first art phenomenon to
clearly demonstrate that art has become antiquated."
Images of Women in Laurie Anderson Videos
In focusing on woman's issues I chose three cuts from Laurie
Anderson: Collected Videos and Laurie Anderson's rock video Home
of the Brave. I was very curious what her presentation of woman
would be. What I found was disturbing. If I were to give a feminist
interpretation of Laurie Anderson's message about women I would
conclude that she is very male-identified and frequently presents
women in a less than complimentary light while paying lip service
to another message. She says in her Home of the Brave video. "this
is the first life that I've been a woman maybe that explains it" or
ambiguous words to that effect(after having described numerous
previous lives as rabbis)
In the first cut from the video Laurie Anderson: Collected Videos,
Laurie relates a personal experience she had at the playboy mansion
when she was picketing with a group of people against the exploitation
of woman. She was making pamphlets with women as little cute animals and
talking exploitation. Evidently one of the Playboy bunnies drove up
and asked Laurie what was going on and Laurie explained why they were
demonstrating and the Playboy bunny explained that she had three children
to support and that this was the best job she had even had and if Laurie and
her group really wanted to help people they would go down to the
garment district where women really are exploited. Laurie seems to
agree at the end of this but the issue that is left unresolved
isn't really the monetary issue but the question of objectification
of woman and woman as objects which still exists and is really
inherent in the Playboy mentality. How can you help women who
don't want your help is the implicit message here. If this seems
like too far a stretch let me move to my next proof the second cut
which follows directly after the story about the playboy mansion.
This second cut takes place in a smoky barroom. Laurie
Anderson in t-shirt and blue jeans comes into the bar. Laurie
Anderson dressed in red with fruit earrings and a hat is singing
backed up by an assortment of multi-ethnic women also dressed in
red and the woman is singing a song "Woman in Red". Laurie
Anderson as a cocktail waitress starts taking about the disparity
between the wages of males and females and describing how long it
will take for woman wages to reach the place where men's wages are
today. Laurie as the woman in red singing also goes on to say and
"I go could on and on about this put I have a head-ache" at which
point there is a cut again to Laurie Anderson in tight t-shirt and
slacks shaking her head side to side in reaction to this as she
leaves the bar. This seemed like a real strong mixed message. My
interpretation of this was kind of like this combination devalued
all that had just come before. It seems to have this message of
How can women really get anywhere if they are going to act like
women, the whole stereotypical headache thing which is an amusing
joke seems to be the stereotypical excuse women give for not
having sex so giving this as a excuse for why she cannot continue
elaborating on the inequality between the male\female wage
disparity seems really inappropriate. The third example, I feel is
the most indicative of the mixed message Laurie Anderson presents
in her portrayal of woman.
In the third cut from Home of the Brave called "Hothead: Langue
d'Amour" Laurie Anderson changes her costume from the white suit
and white tie that she wore for the first part of the video to long
black gloves, low cut scalloped sequined top and sleek floor length
long skirt. She moves slinkily across the stage and hold the mike
like the stereotypical torch song singer as she tells this story of
the first love triangle: the relationship between Adam, Eve and the
Snake. The lyrics are included here:
Let's see. Uh, it was on an island. And there was this snake.
And this snake had legs. And he could walk all around the island.
Yes. That's true. A snake with legs.
And the man and the woman were on the island too.
And they were not very smart.
But they were happy as clams. Yes.
Let's see. Uh...then one evening the snake was walking about
in the garden and he was talking to himself and he saw the woman
and they started to talk. And they became friends.
Very good friends.
And the woman liked the snake very much. Because when he
talked, he made little noises with his tongue, and his long tongue
was lightly licking around his lips.
Like there was a fire inside his mouth.
And the woman liked this very much
And after that she was bored with the man.
Because no matter what happened,
he was always happy as a clam.
What did the snake say? Yes! What was he saying?
OK. I will tell you.
The snake told her things about the world. He told her about
the time there was a big typhoon on the island.
and all the sharks came out of the water. Yes.
They came out of the water and they walked right into your house
with their big white teeth.
And the woman heard these things. And she was in love.
And the man came out and said: We have to go now!
And the woman did not want to go. Because she was a hothead.
Because she was a woman in love
Anyway, they got into their boat and left the island.
But they never stayed anywhere very long.
Because the woman was restless. She was a hothead.
She was a woman in love.
And this is not a story my people tell.
It is something I know myself.
And when I do my job, I am thinking about these things.
Because when I do my job, that is what I think about.
Then at this point she removes the gloves and a white
man's shirt descends from the ceiling which she puts on and white
shirts descend as well for all the members of her band which they
put on. This seems extremely significant. Yes, it is true that
the man is no better presented in this song and the snake is
presented in the best light. This is who I think Laurie Anderson
identifies most with earlier in another of her pieces she has a
microphone in her mouth which also imitates light and this image
reminded me very mush of the image of the snake telling the woman
things about the world and voices coming out of the snakes mouth
with light.
When asked (in her interview with Rob La Frena page 296) if
she thinks that the human being is going to evolve very fast she
says:
Let's just take women, for example> Look at what women tried
to do in the late sixties and seventies, the seventies
particularly, and the backsliding that has happened since then>
You can't legitimatize relationships> They're too deeply
ingrained> Too deep in women, too deep in men> Maybe in a
thousand years, but not in twenty, things could be different."
Justification and Documentation for Laurie Anderson Presentation
I have long been a fan of Laurie Anderson's music. I like her
because she writes such provocative lyrics. So, while I had
listened to a lot of her tapes (over and over again), I'd never
seen any of her videos or any of her live performances. Seeing the
visual performance part of her work added a whole other level of
depth to those words that I'd been listening to for so long. This
is why I decided to create a performance piece based in a Laurie
Anderson genre.
It was only through the presentation of a variety of sensory
media that I felt that I could do Laurie Anderson tribute by evoking some
sense of who this artist is and what her art is about. So taking
elements directly from her repertoire of techniques I assembled a
Laurie Anderson clone performance. (Twenty minutes is not that
long so to some extent I felt that I did have to sacrifice content
in the sense of not including too much biographical information
about her but I hoped to make up for that in the verisimilitude of
the performance and in overall impact.)
When I read her writings and saw her videos the issues and
themes that stuck with me most that she dealt with were the images
alienation of individual from society, gender ambiguity, artist as
personal voice, artist as jester/parodist, artist as hunter/shaman
and artist as teacher.
I chose to divide my presentation into three parts and myself
into three personas as well. I tried to make sure that for every element
I used in my own performance that I could find some justification for
it in the work of Laurie Anderson. Here is a list of Laurie Anderson
elements that I observed in her work and chose to draw on for my
presentation of her:
1. Use of parody and use of unifying theme for
performance: She usually parodies aspects of American society. In
1984 she did her piece United States. In the Home of the Brave
video she comes out (modulating her voice to sound like a man's and
parodies the archetypal American hunter\traveling
salesman\television evangelist type and gives a quick sermon on 0(zero)
and 1. I used this to justify my extended parody of women evangelists
and of Laurie Anderson herself.
2. Use of personal confession: she frequently will
describe events from her own life and present them with photos to
go with it in a very straightforward documentary style. In Laurie
Anderson:Collected Videos she describes her experience picketing
the Playboy mansion. I used this to justify putting my own
confessional in as part of the performance
3. Use of costume: she has frequent costume changes
during an extended performance for each different piece so I had
three different costumes on and took of outer layers to signify
changes. I began with the female evangelist became a sister in
confession or sister giving testimony (as at a prayer meeting -how
I found savation but in this case I relate to the theme of when I
first realized that I was different being a woman) and in the end
I became possessed of my own sense of self and my own magic, hence
the fertility goddess costume.
4. Use of symbols: She will often display crude images on
the screen behind her to illustrate aspects of her talk. In Home
of the Brave she just has the numbers 0 and 1 up when she is
talking about "being number one and the implications of that in
this culture" and then modifies these symbols during the piece to
evoke new imagery. I used this to justify the symbols I projected
during her song "Woman in Red". and having the bunny drawing
projected on the screen while she was talking about her experience
picketing the playboy mansion in Laurie Anderson:Collected Videos.
5. Use of contrast:
6. Use of simultaneous event:She frequently has a lot of
things going on a once. She is singing and dancing, playing an
instrument and has projected images going on behind her. I tried
to accomplish this as well. I had her videos running while trying
to compliment her performance and simultaneously make her a part of
mine.
7. Use of light and dark: She frequently uses lower light
conditions with site specific lighting. I did this with the
lowered lights and the candles and the hand show (making the
rabbits picketing with my hands)
8. Use of music: I brought in zills to ting and used
Laurie Anderson's music to provide music for my piece.
9. Use of objectification of personas: Laurie Anderson
hated it when People objectify her but she frequently does this to
other people bringing them into her pieces and making people or
objects "found objects " in her performances. I did this with her
by presenting her in the fashion that I did. For example when I
weave her into my performance by saying and now I am going to let
sister Laurie tell you about it and then I turn the video on.
10.Use of appropriated images:She borrows images from
current culture and makes that a part of her piece. For example
she used the picture on the couple(man and woman on the explorer)
in her piece United States. I used that same picture to illustrate
the concept of Adam and Eve in my piece. I also used Laurie
Anderson appropriated images, images that I had previously taken
from magazines and even an art piece of one of my friends.
11.Use of people as props:She will have someone just
walking across the stage or for example in Home of the Brave she
has her back-up singers pretend to be game contestants during the
song "Que es mas Macho". I used Valerie to pass out the apples for
the communion and had Erin and Liz read in a liturgical voice the
names of girls (one reading backwards the other reading forwards
from what to name your baby books as though it were some sort of
sacred document.
12.Use of interaction with audience:Laurie will
frequently talk directly to her audience(not individuals) but
collectively. I did this by making the audience an assembly of my
church.
13.Use of voice modification: She frequently alters her
voice to sound like a mans. I don't have the machine to do that so
I just appropriated the barker speak of a tele-evangelist.
14.Use of slide show as backdrop: She uses either a slide
show backdrop or a film sequence of a space to set a mood or visual
frame for her performance. I used this with my slide show
15.Use of props:She uses a telephone on stage in Home of
the Brave during one piece, changes instruments for other pieces -
whatever fits the piece pretty much. I used this to justify the
props I brought in such as the apples, the alter covering, etc etc.
16.Use of other persona: When she modifies costume and
voice she changes her persona in a very piece specific way. I did
this as described above(when describing costume changes)
17.Acknowledgment of cloning phenomenon:In her piece
about cloning in Collected Videos she talks about the concept of
how other people emulate her. For the night of the performance I
thought of myself as a Laurie Anderson clone, using a lot of her
techniques I put my own spin of it by also bringing up my own
issues and slant. She would not have shown the very specific
images at the end of the dad South African man and the starving
child. She is provocative in her performances but not aggressive.
18.Use of guest appearances by artists she admires:In the
Home of the Brave video she has William Burroughs put in a guest
performance. I considered her to be my guest performer in my
piece(because I showed the footage of her)
19.Fragmentation of the artist:
"Artists are supposed to be innovators and yet we have our own
little system set up which is very closed and which doesn't really
infiltrate the culture (Laurie Anderson from page 242 of American
Artists on Art)
20.Use of dance: She dances. I tried to
dance but wasn't able to pull it off as well as I had hoped for due
to and attack of shyness.
21.Use of equipment which is most available to
artist: Laurie Anderson says:
Actually, the thing about using tools is that you
need constant access to the equipment. It's like a painter who
thinks about a work for months and then, one day goes out to rent
a brush-paints the painting in twenty-four hours and returns the
brush - clean the next day...As for me, I like to work with
whatever equipment I have,you know, and not plan things for
equipment I don't have - because it teaches things, the material
does, in doing it; it teaches me things."
Script for Performance Piece
[Priestess lights a candle and incense and passes apples round.]
Eat the fruit, the flesh of the earth! Sister Valerie will
you please pass out the sacrament? (Valerie passes around a bowl of
red apples).
Sisters and Brothers in art, we are here tonight to venerate
a few of our sisters in art. (Mention names of women in the panel
tonight). Sister Erin has testified for Sister Judy Chicago, Sister
Laurie has testified for Louise Nevilson and Sister Marie has
testified for Sister Eva Hesse.
The next sister from whom we will hear testimony tonight is
the sister, Laurie Anderson, (exhibit slide of Laurie Anderson),
Born in 1947, a performance artist who uses a multiverse variety of
today's media and technology to talk about the way we live as
sisters and brothers on this oblate elliptical planet. (slide of
planet)
Laurie Anderson has made films, records, video and books. Since
her first performance in Vermont in 1972 she has traveled around
the country and the world doing performances using a variety of
props, voices, instruments, costumes, and people. She is credited
by many as being instrumental in broadening the assembly of those
who appreciate performance art. (other slide of Laurie Anderson)
Her performances reveal to us aspects of our lives to ourselves
that we might not ordinarily see. (Picture of the male and female
image from the Explorer that she used in United States
Performance). She is a bringer of knowledge following a long
tradition, sisters and brothers that began at the beginning when
the snake spoke to Eve so very softly from that tree. (picture of
tree) Eve, whose very name means life and is the mother of all
living. (slide of black woman stretching up to moon with snake
coiled in it)
To Eve, sisters and brother, to the mother of all mankind.
(taking a bite of the apple - ting zill)
To the Snake, sisters and brothers, to the bringer of knowledge.
(A second bite - ting zill)
To the tree, sisters and brothers, to the source whose roots go
deep and branches high. (Taking a third and final bite - ting
zill)
For we all know, sisters and brothers that all human art and
literature did not come into being until after the fall, until
humankind became "self-conscious." Know thyself, sisters and
brothers, it was good then and it's good now.
Eat the Fruit and know thyself.
Venerate the bringers of wisdom, sisters and brothers and
Laurie Anderson is such a one. She is like the shaman who sings
the magic words and does the magic dances before the fire and draws
the magic pictures on the cave walls. She is like the tribal
jester who parodies society and through humor brings introspection.
She is a storyteller testifying to her own experiences on this
planet and weaves in cultural symbols and archetypes for comparison
and contrast.
Here is the sister, let her speak for herself.
(Play first cut of Laurie Anderson talking about her experience
at the playboy mansion have bunny ears on the slide show - make
spontaneous hand shadow show. Then it goes into second cut where
she is singing about how much money women make compared to men -
project hand drawn slides of male symbol equal sign dollar sign
plus, then female sign equal sign dollar sign less, therefore male
sign does not equal female sign an not not equal does not equal
equal. Question mark slide)
And why is this sisters and brothers when did it all begin, it
began with the first love triangle let sister Laurie tell you about
it.
(Put in tape of Laurie Anderson doing the snake\Eve bit. When
the shirts come on do the reading from the written personal text.)
I remember a time when I thought that I was a better woman
because I was more like a man. I prided myself on that fact. After
I broke up with my long term boyfriend, or rather after he broke up
with me, I enrolled in a woman's studies class at the college I was
going to> I soon discovered just how much I did have in common
with other woman and I discovered that a lot of my previous
discomfort with being a woman was an unconscious response to
cultural biasing that I had been picking up on from the time that
I was very small> I guess I didn't want to identify with victims.
(shot of the Helmut Newton photograph of dead woman with torn
dress). I had had very few experiences with independent,
intelligent and articulate female role models. (image of really
articulate looking black woman). I remember Once when I was about
fifteen my mother introduced me to this man that she was dating, a
real good 'ole boy type. When I extended my hand to shake his he
refused to take it. He said, laughing snidely, "I don't shake hands
with little girls." He also said that I was going to break a lot
of hearts some day and that I had nice wide hips for childbearing
as though that was really supposed to be the main function of my
life. I was really angry at that man for a long time> I think I
still am. Where was my voice, why couldn't I articulate my rage?
Why didn't my mother tell him to shut up? She just stood there
smiling sappily.
My girlfriend's had had similar experiences, most of them much
much worse than my own. My one girlfriend had been molested by her
step-grandfather from the time that she was in third grade. My
other girlfriend told her mom that her step-father was molesting
her and her mom said, "Either I have one sick fuck of a husband or
I have one crazy little daughter. I am going to believe that I
have one crazy little daughter."
I was getting the heavy message that this kind of stuff and other
stuff like this was just going to be how it was because I was a
woman these things were going to attach themselves to me
interminably (besides the part about my getting a lower salary)
just because I was a woman. I kept wondering what makes me so
different. What makes the difference between a man and a woman?
I'd heard the stuff about spatial reasoning and men's brains just
being different from females but since I got better grades that
most of my male friends it began to be really clear to me that
brains weren't really the issue. The issue was gender. I started
asking my friends(doing a random sampling), "What do you think of
the female genitalia?" I got a variety of answers like;
Ugh, I never really thought about it.
"Why do you ask?"
"Really mysterious"
"It's the last alter I have"
"MMMM. tasty."
"Well, I'd give you head because you're my girlfriend and
I love you but I wouldn't with anyone else."
I think the one that bothered me the most though was, "It's like
some weird cross between some undersea creature and some alien
space thing." Kind of ugly like feet." I though, wow and I went
out with this guy ten years ago and I never knew he thought that
way, how chilling. So I decided to make my own religion and my own
sacred art and I started to make a series and called it the space
pussy series and I made images of beatific and fearsome image of
alien genitalia. Self-knowledge is empowering, so I decided to
spend some time exploring my own internal images. I am a woman and
I have a voice that I am no longer afraid to use. I can dance. My
name is sister Victoria Vaughn and this is my testimony.
(Stand before images of space pussy series being projected on
face and end with slide of children around the world).
Come sisters and brothers, dance with me now. (Dance a bit
and then thank everyone).
FIN
"Indeed, without the participative experience the religiousexperience is impossible."
Art and the Religious Experience