From kobanogomi@yahoo.com.au Wed Jan 26 15:08:02 2005
This article is from "The Herald Sun" on Saturday, the 8th. 

Space Cadet

What's a performance artist doing at NASA? Faking it, Laurie Anderson
tells Nui Te Koha

She is the most famous performance artist in the world. But lately
multimedia maestro Laurie Anderson has found greater challenges in
working offstage, particularly in official capacities at Microsoft and
NASA. "The real test is trying to stay afloat in a room with 100 of
these brains trust people," Anderson laughs. Anderson, a former
artistic consultant at Microsoft, is now artist in residence at
NASA. "It's great fun, and the terms of reference are very broad,"
Anderson explains. "It's like: 'We don't care what you do. It can be a
symphony, a book, or it can be nothing'. I suppose my role is to act
as the one who thinks differently because I'm not too close to it. I'm
the one who says: 'Why don't you turn that upside down?' "

Surely the geeks would know Anderson is bluffing... "Oh I think that
all the time," she says with a laugh. "When I was at Microsoft, there
would be people working on impossibly complicated projects and they'd
turn to me and say: 'Are you familiar with the Q2 Qurak project?' "I'd
just nod and say: 'How does it work in this instance?' "

Fortunately, the latest work of Anderson, touring performance artist,
isn't so vague and allows her to report from the frontline in a piece
called happiness. In happiness she relates stories of mostly crushed
expectations after throwing herself into real-life experiences,
including stints at McDonald's, an Amish community and a river ride to
Zen. "Happiness is a trick word because it can be translated so
differently," Anderson says. "Ask the question: 'What makes you
happy?' Well, a huge car, or no car at all. The definition of
Happiness can be polar opposites.

It is why Anderson puts herself in different situations: to measure
expectation against reality. It took five minutes to fill out the
half-page application at McDonald's. "It asked me weather I'd been to
school and did I ever have a job," Anderson says. "To the later, I
said: Sort of..." She was offered the job immediately. "They said:
'Listen, because you live nearby, do you think you can do the
nightshift and lock up for us?' And I said: 'Boy, does that sound
horrible'. " Anderson opted for day duty and found her time under the
golden arches fun, purpose-filled and buzzing with camaraderie. "It
was everything I didn't expect," she says. "I'm not going to say that
it's like that at every McDonalds, but we had a great boss. He wasn't
a white gloves guy. Whenever something wasn't working, he'd get in
there and help us." Similarly, her expectations about a calm, communal
life on an Amish farm were dashed. "I felt enormous empathy because
they were truly choking on their own go!  odness," Anderson says. "The
couldn't say certain things because it wouldn't fit into who they
thought they were. It was very difficult to watch them doing that. But
at the same time, I had to be a good guest worker in the sense I did
what I was asked and I tried to be as helpful as I could. I didn't
poke my nose in where it didn't belong.

Anderson's river ride of silence to study the work of a Zen master was
anything by. "What I was trying to do, and I say this in hindsight,
was shake my expectations, anyway. As much as you try to be
experimental it's hard to find new territory. You know a lot of
things. You have figured most of it out. And you don't want to make
the same mistakes again. So it is good to have those expectations to
come out differently. It keeps it interesting and it keeps you asking
yourself: "What does make me happy anyway?'". For Anderson, mainstream
success isn't in the happiness equations. In 1982, she had a top 5 pop
hit in Britain and new Zealand with O Superman, an anti-Reagan era
tune, distinguished by a its monotonous asthmatic keyboard line. "I
didn't know what pop charts were. It felt like being in another
world. And since I'm a snob, I thought: "Uh-oh, if a lot of people
like it, it must not be any good. And I feel the same way as I did
then. The people who tend to come to my show!  s are writers, dancers,
graphic artists, people who are making things for themselves. I like
that a lot. It feels like a community to me.

Anderson says she is unlikely to do another high-tech show. "I'm burnt
out on tech and there is something that give me the creeps about it."
But whatever she chooses, it will get the once over from her long time
partner Lou Reed. "We live in a very creative environment were our
very creative dog is always coming up with new games to play. Living
with another artist is like a bunch of lawyers living together. You
don't have to explain 'Gee, my client is crazy and I'm gonna be six
more hours'. Your partner gets it. I have so much in common with
Lou. And he's a great critic. He doesn't like it so much when I play
critic on him, though."

Laurie Anderson, Concert Hall, Feb 15, Ticketmaster7.