Laurie Anderson

Performance Artist

One of the premier performance artists in the world, Laurie Anderson has consistently intrigued, entertained and challenged audiences with her multi-media presentations. Anderson's career has cast her in roles as various as visual artist, composer, poet, photographer, filmmaker, ventriloquist, electronics whiz, vocalist and instrumentalist.

Laurie Anderson's "O Superman" launched her recording career, rising to number two on the British pop charts and subsequently appearing on "Big Science", the first of seven albums for Warner Bros., including "Mister Heartbreak", "United States Live", "Strange Angels", "Bright Red", and the soundtrack to the feature film Home of the Brave. Ms. Anderson recorded for Nonsuch Records, "Songs and Stories from Moby Dick", which actually turned into her most recent release "Laurie Anderson: Life On A String", while her award winning CD-ROM "Puppet Motel" was re-released by Voyager.

Ms. Anderson has toured the world numerous times with shows ranging from simple spoken word performances to elaborate multimedia events. Anderson's most recent tour was in France at the Musee Art Contemporain of Lyon, which produced a touring retrospective of Laurie's work, encompassing installation, audio, video and art objects and spans her career from the 1970's to her most current works. This opened in 2003 and will stay open through 2005. Her stage production of Songs and Stories from Moby Dick opened the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in October 1999, and subsequently toured major cities in the US and Europe. Previously, Ms. Anderson toured the world with both her one-person show The Speed of Darkness and her major multimedia stage production The Nerve Bible.

Ms. Anderson's work as a visual artist was most recently on view in Expo 2002 in Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland. Her work has also been exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum in Soho, The Whitney Museum of American Art, Prada Gallery in Milan, as well as in Europe. Her newest visual work will be unveiled at the reopening of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris in January 2000. The Sean Kelly Gallery, New York, represents Ms. Anderson's visual artwork.

Ms. Anderson has created numerous videos and films, and she has contributed music to films by Wim Wenders and Jonathon Demme and dance pieces by Bill T. Jones, Trisha Brown, Molissa Fenley and others. She has created pieces for National Public Radio, The BBC and Expo '92 in Seville. In 1997, she curated the two-week Meltdown festival at Royal Festive Hall in London. The American Composers Orchestra has commissioned Ms. Anderson to write an original musical work for Orchestra. The piece, which is based on the life of Amelia Earhart, had its world premiere at Carnegie Hall on February 27, 2000.

Recognized worldwide as a leader in the pathbreaking use of technology in the arts, Ms. Anderson is currently devising new creative tools - including the Talking Stick - with Interval Research Corporation, a research and development laboratory founded by Paul Allen and David Liddle.

Abrams will publish the first major career retrospective of Ms. Anderson's work in a volume that was released in April 2000. In 2003 and 2004, Laurie is the first artist-in-residence of NASA.