Laurie Anderson: Delusion

Laurie Anderson is one of the most recognizable figures in performance art and is most well known for her song " O Superman" Broadcast in mainstream radio in 1981. She is also recognized fro her work in music, writing, video, and projection art. Her later work, Delusion, is not like her concerts where the music and performance is presented on a bigger scale. It's deals much more with projections and feels more like a solo performance than a concert. The video above is just a short segment of a larger piece, but it shows Laurie Anderson playing her violin in these ambient overtures that are calming yet creates some tension. While she's playing she also integrates dialogue into the performance. In the beginning of the video she asks " Why does it Rain?" sounding like a form of poetry. The piece itself is a series of short stories that jump between what we perceive as everyday and folklore. What drew me to this piece was that it was so different form her other works like her concert film Home of the Brave. The visual images created by the projections and the smaller scale of the performance created a more somber feeling from the piece.