With her characteristic curiosity, Laurie Anderson opened Sunday’s concert in DR’s concert hall with a political statement and the remark, »Thank you for your attention to this matter.« The theme of the evening was a heavy political climate, to which Anderson – like a professor emerita of the avant-garde – offered a musical framing narrative of music, slideshow, and quotes from thinkers and artists who, each in their own way, nuance an increasingly dark world. A framework in which every piece of music had a clear purpose: to evaporate any residue of convention.
Slide by slide, the audience was guided through curious glimpses of the totalitarian and the conventional. The long list of words deleted from government documents by the Trump administration, for instance, served as an introduction to »Language Is a Virus«, inspired by writer William Burroughs, who also appeared on the screen behind Anderson and the band Sexmob. So did Lou Reed, Anderson’s late husband. Dressed in a glittering jacket that, like a kind of magical Kraftwerk, triggered sounds of drums, foghorns, and cash registers, Anderson shared the couple’s three life lessons while playfully dancing and narrating.
I don’t think I’ve ever attended a concert where the entire production team – both on and off stage – was credited with rolling end titles. Yet it felt like a completely natural conclusion to Anderson’s slightly dry and remarkably hopeful PowerPoint concert. A performance that, as a delightfully deconstructive reminder, united the experimental and the concrete in a hands-on first aid kit against tyranny and oppression.
