The Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life at Columbia University is presenting a "series of conversations with leading contemporary artists on the implications and influence of the changing spiritual landscape for the visual arts," Refiguring the Spiritual. This evening's guest (2/10) was performance artist Laurie Anderson.
Anderson began her career as an "uptown girl" (degrees from Barnard and Columbia) with a "downtown" mentality. She moved way downtown and lived (and continues to live) a free-spirited bohemian life. Her work always blurs boundaries between music, art, storytelling, video, projected imagery, sculpture, acting, and poetry. She is the definition of the downtown spirit and will modestly claim no special brilliance in any specific area. (A talented violinist, she decided she would never be happy locking herself in a practice room for hours every day to take her playing to its highest level). Her work reflects the whole being far greater than the sum of its parts. What she is is highly intelligent, curious (the most important element), independent, funny, and a people person.
Before Ms. Anderson spoke, Irving Sandler, renowned art historian and insightful observer of recent American art, reflected on Anderson's career and on how he had observed her life and activities. Sandler was a key developer of Artists Space in New York, a place for artists that has served as a model for many like it across the country.
Anderson then gave a short talk with which to illustrate her thoughts on spirituality in art. She noted that she was stunned when she was asked to serve as Artist-in-Residence for NASA (NASA!?!). They did not tell her what her duties were to be except that she would spend time observing what when on at various NASA sites and then create an artwork. Lest one think that this position might be an example of "government waste" it must be noted that some bolts used on spacecraft probably cost more than her stipend as A-in-R. Being a people person, she most clearly enjoyed talking with scientists and getting a sense of their work and lives. (She said that her main activity in life is being a benign spy. The more invisible she is, the better.) What seemed the most spiritual to her was the fact that these scientists and technologists were planning for events (such as manned exploration of Mars) that might not take place for years and years (certainly not in their lifetimes). They were part of something bigger, larger and potentially more significant than what they were doing -- but they were playing a role. And, she said, they worked hard and were totally committed to their work. She delighted in seeing art and technology so intermingled.
As she neared the end of her residency, she was of course asked what her art work would be and she stunned them by saying it would be a poem. They were probably expecting some high-tech multimedia extravaganza. She loves to surprise people. The position of NASA artist-in-residence was also cut.
She then spoke of a project she worked on in Japan. She was to create "an opera in rock and water." In all honesty, I could not always follow her activities here (and a look at several websites did not help). What I did gather was that she was charged with the responsibility of listening to nature and let it guide her; for her not to impose her ideas on nature. Working on this project allowed her to think more about Buddhism, the natural world, and patience.
During an extended question and answer session initiated by Irving Sandler, Gregory Amenoff (Chair of the Visual Arts Program at the CU SOTA and Mark C. Taylor (Chair of the Department of Religion at CU), Ms. Anderson addressed the theme of the program in interesting ways. For one, she was asked about her grandmother, who was a preacher and missionary for (I believe) Jehovah's Witness. They were apparently close and it might be assumed that Ms.Anderson inherited some of her grandmother's traits, though they have been channeled in different ways.
Ms. Anderson talked about her experience with silent meditation at a Thai Buddhist retreat. She commented that when she arrived at the retreat center, one of her guides commented that she looked like she was in pain. Ms. Anderson replied that she felt great and was experiencing no pain. However, shortly after entering silent meditation she became aware of pain she was shouldering and not even aware of and also became aware of its release. Part of this philosophy is that positive feelings tend to flow through a person out into the world while negative ones tend to get stored up somewhere in a person and are not noticed until the pain they produce becomes noticeable. Interestingly, later that week I heard a talk on homeopathic medicine that inferred the same thing.
Ms. Anderson talked about a Bible owned by Herman Melville that she was given as she was working on a work about Moby Dick. She noted Melville's underlinings and marginal comments, especially some of those that related to Moby Dick.
As part of her discussion of the spiritual she plugged a series of open houses that she, her husband (Lou Reed) and John Zorn were holding on each Saturday in February. She mentioned a library and book list they maintain for those who are seeking to change aspects of their lives. One book she is enthusiastic about at this time How to Be Idle by Tom Hodgkinson. She commented that just as we live in an information-oriented society (the more things you know, or seem to know, the smarter you are felt to be) and that as we live in a task-oriented society, where completing tasks is a sign of accomplishment, we take pride in completing tasks and perhaps measure our work by that yardstick almost exclusively. Her comments resonated those of John Cage. They also brought me back to her NASA experiences where the scientists knew that their work would never be finished and that their tasks were a part of something larger than themselves.
Artists such as Laurie Anderson clearly illustrate that spiritual issues are not the property of the traditionally religious and that an essentially secular individual often pursues spiritual themes in her/his own way.
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