By Shelly Silver
A response to Refiguring the Spiritual, a public conversation with artist Laurie Anderson on February 10, 2011.
Finding a seat in the crowded Miller Theater at Columbia University, I overhear the artist next to me whispering about the difference between poetry and utility. This could have been an equally good title for this evening, which instead went under the heading “Refiguring the Spiritual.”
Laurie Anderson then takes the stage with the look of an inquisitive child, in an oversized, wrinkled shirt, and red socks and shoes. She is alone; she will later be surrounded by three men: the art historian and critic Irving Sandler; the painter Gregory Amenoff, who is chair of the visual arts department at Columbia; and the philosopher Mark C. Taylor, chair of Columbia’s religion department. These esteemed interlocutors will spend the evening, like the audience, leaning slightly forward, focusing on her intently.
She starts by stating that art is not about making the world a better place. “If it was, for who? For you? For you?” I disagree. Art is for making the world a better place for me (this is less megalomaniacal than it sounds). I think of a quote, which for decades I mistakenly ascribed to Nietzsche, but which is by Goethe: “If the possible has become impossible I must allow myself to believe that the impossible must become possible.” Art allows us to think the impossible. Art inelegantly, violently or tepidly, consciously, or by haphazard, trips over the space between.
Anderson moves on to Herman Melville. I would have thought her affinities closer to the story-generating talents of Laurence Sterne, but then I remember that a comedienne needs a straight man. She references what she sees as the central question in Moby Dick: “What is a man if he outlives the lifetime of his God?” He is a man who has picked a strange god, I think, or not watered him or her sufficiently (insert image of a dying Chia pet). My atheist upbringing shows.
She talks of important things, of overconsumption, of the deadening influence of the art market. She came of age (oh, not so very long ago) when the art world viewed money with suspicion, and financial success was equated with selling out. She talks of the small electronic devices that steal people’s concentration today. But this kind of direct talk is not what she excels at—she excels at telling small stories about the familiar with a twist, a ‘what if.’
A notable story about Jesus. How we are lucky, from an art-historical point of view, that Jesus lived in the times of the New Testament, which decreed death was by crucifixion. Her arms spread apart, Anderson conjures the central image of the Passion: Jesus on an upright, centralized cross. Consider how changed the history of art and architecture would have been forever had Jesus lived during the Old Testament, when the punishment was stoning. She gestures a prone figure swatting away a chaotic array of stones.
She tells of a formative year in her life where she decided not to get out of bed until she had an idea. I want this year.
She addresses the students in the audience (we’re all students) telling us: “Do not wait for someone to ask you to do something.” She echoes more direct advice that experimental filmmaker Barbara Hammer recently gave to my video students: “Ask for what you want.”
Editing comedy, I learned it’s all about timing. Making an edit a little too early or a little too late makes something funny. On the beat, it’s not. Anderson’s work is also about timing— leaving an off-shaped space for the contingent, the invisible, the poignant—and there is something very poignant about her elf-like presence.
“We’re here to have a really, really, really good time.” (Off beat). “A good time.” The audience inhales, Anderson looks up at us, then down at her hands, and we laugh.
What is the difference between poetry (little explosions in the brain) and utility (home improvement)?
Shelly Silver is an artist utilizing video, film and photography. She is also Associate Professor in Visual Arts, School of the Arts, Columbia University. A version of this post can be found on her blog, 5 lessons and 9 questions about Chinatown.