Performance Artist/Art Performer: Laurie Anderson

Abstract

Since her first performance work in 1974, Laurie Anderson has found herself concerned with a basic aesthetic dilemma that has troubled a number of other performance artists: how to create an intensely personal art that is not just simple autobiography. That is, how can the performer-author bring raw, unmediated materials from their life and structure them to strike a balance between their own needs and those of the audience? For Anderson, the resolution is not only intellectual but technical. It is one that leads to a new performance style.

I always felt it was a mistake being labelled as an autobiographical artist… Most of the work that I do is two-part or stereo, not monolithic at all — so there’s always the yes/no, he/she, or whatever pairs I’m working with.

Laurie Anderson, 1979