THEATRICAL REVELATIONS - United States Parts 1 - 4 by Laurie Anderson

DOMINION THEATRE - LONDON 

FEBRUARY 1983

First there had been that distinctive single- Oh Superman, quickly followed by a one off London performance at the Lyric Hammersmith in 1982. A show mainly a compilation of tracks from her debut album Big Science, interspersed with her characteristicly elliptical monologues. Laurie Anderson returned six months later to perform the whole eight hours of United States Part 1- 4, at the Dominion Theatre over two nights in February 1983. I booked early.

Laurie Anderson had unexpectedly found herself with a cross over career. As both a respected performance artist and a very unique type of arty pop star. Her interest in linguistics, storytelling, gender roles and modern forms of alienation, found a vehicle in the quirky songs and wry monologues, often phased through a vocoder to make her vocal quality more masculine or feminine depending on whatever was required.

The subject matter of her tales spanned visits to her chiropractor, an old couple getting lost on a massive inter state highway, being on a plane that it might be about to crash, returning to your flat only to discover this is not like your home any more, and many others in this ilk. If there was any linking theme this was not immediately apparent. The impression it left, however, was that she was using the title United States, literally, metaphorically, disfunctionaly - all as a paradox.

She'd collected together a whole bunch of short vignettes that imbued this sense of loss, of longing, of dislocation from normal life, simply not knowing what to make of the world, or how to operate in the world that they were now inhabiting. The expectation was that we all live culturally in a united state with each other. But increasingly we do not. Some of the stories were hence sad ones, others oddly perplexing or simply funny social observations.

A favourite monologue is the poetic - Walking and Falling. Based on an observation that as you walk forward you are always catching yourself from falling over. The staging was a single bright overhead light forming a white circle on the stage. She recites the poetic monlogue whilst walking around its edge, niether fully in nor out of the light. Just a beautifully simple idea of the fleetingness of our existence. An existential truth movingly executed.

United States had an unusual quality in its visual imagery too. The threepin plug hole that looks like a ghost. In the piece Heading Out for the Territories which closed the whole performance, Anderson wore these torch goggles. They lookef like the bright headlights of a car. She walks forward along a plank out toward the auditorium. Hands ahead of her blindly feeling their way, as the goggle headlights rake the darkened auditorium.

She plays with our expectations, both visually and in sound. The tape violin, or her whole body becoming an ampified drum kit. It is the pictures painted in sound that strike you most. The poignant songs about families, lovers, existential worries in a world going badly awry. In some ways Laurie Anderson was way ahead of the curve on documenting 

our current metacrisis. 

The effect of this performance on me, was as a huge point of inspiration. Inventive, challenging, but remaining accessible, Anderson's performance work was the start of my appreciation for performance art. Which led to thinking maybe I should be a performance artist myself, and then doing that for a few years. 

Without her pioneering work crossing artistic boundaries between avant-garde culture and popular culture, she made it possible for the work of other female performance artists like Marina Abramovich to become hugely popular.