Look, I don't have to defend the merit of Laurie Anderson's art and many achievements to a bunch of jackaninny internet creeps, but, what the hell, here goes a few (not all choice) words...
Read her wiki listing as a primer, I suppose
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurie_Anderson
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~jimmyd/lau.../hotwired.html (hasn't been updated in some time)
Laurie Anderson was born in Glen Ellyn outside Chicago. She went to California after high school to Mills College and then moved to New York City in the early seventies and
graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, studying art history at
Barnard College. She became a close friend of Andy Kaufman. She played straight-woman for Andy during his initial nightclub and open mic nights. Much of Andy's future comedy, indeed his comedic trickster vision itself, emerged over this early period. She was playing loft parties with Glenn Branca and Rhys Chatham back before No Wave even really hit. Laurie got her MFA in sculpture at Columbia in '72. She gained an interest in an art not yet realized fully, multimedia performance art. She is the person that pretty much did it first. At least there is no doubt that she is the person that made the masses the world over aware that such a conception even existed. The list of technical and performance innovations is too specific and lengthy for me to possibly go into in an abbreviated way such as this (& it's too much research). In her lifetime, she has garnered numerous prestigious awards internationally, has shown works of varying media in galleries all over the world, and has authored several publishings.
Before her initial critical successes Laurie invented a musical instrument, the tape-bow violin.
She would play the tape-bow and/or the violin standing on blocks of ice. When the ice melted, the performance was over. Folks, this is before climate change had even reached mass consciousness, but certain people in the seventies knew about peak oil and global warming way back then.
One day, frustrated in her work and life choice, after a few days of preparation, Laurie decided to hitchhike from the East Village to the North Pole. Along the way, she learned much about life. At several points she was stranded with little or no food or water for days. She got rides on small private planes and automobiles from strangers and eventually made it as far north as Greenland.
Laurie also came out with the first interactive music cd-rom in Puppet Motel.
She nearly died trying on one climb in the Himalayas. She still climbs when she has spare time.
http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:j6Bj2D-iXL8J:bcruickshank.brinkster.net/page24.htm+laurie+anderson+everest&hl=en&ct=clnk&c d=2&gl=us
She speaks several languages. Okay, I'm getting lazy now with my writing...but to refer to her as a pretentious intellectual (as a couple of nincompoops talking out the side of the neck just did in this thread) is
soooo redneck.
And finally, much like the line between Schnabel (Oldman) and Basquait (Wright) in that biopic, Lou Reed says himself that few people know anything about art or music. He's stated that along with Andy Warhol, who he now deeply regrets he was not closer to, that Laurie knows more about art and music and has more talent than anyone he has ever known. He said these things on Charlie Rose (
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ol-AcKzRcc4&feature=related).
To this day, Laurie maintains a healthy and active lifestyle and her seeker's mentality for the most part, but she also reportedly smokes Marlboro Reds and drinks Jack Daniels notoriously. She's not exactly a woman in the mold of a detached, know-nothing, prudish and off-putting intellectual arty fartbag. Instead, she's a legend.
Spent two weeks in silence at a Buddhist retreat, 1977
Worked as a migrant cotton picker in Kentucky, 1978
Worked as a straight man for Andy Kaufman in comedy clubs, 1978
Wrote the score for Spaulding Gray's film Swimming to Cambodia, 1987
Taught story-writing to first graders, 1991
Covered the presidential campaign for NPR, 1992
Trekked the Tibetan Himalayas with 27 yaks, 8 sherpas, and 10 hikers, 1993
First artist-in-residence for NASA, 2003
Last artist-in-residence for NASA! 2005
(& who ended the NASA residency you may wonder? The Heritage foundation scapegoated her meager 20,000 stipend (she spent far more out of her own pocket coming and going as NASA directed her) as a case of government waste of funds! Here's a link to a portal where Laurie-haters can, you know just be themselves haha
http://www.heritage.org/)
http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/20...first_and.html