only an expert

And even though a country can invade another country, and flatten it, and ruin it, and create havoc and civil war and refugees in that country, and if the experts say it's not a problem and if everyone agrees that they're experts and good at solving problems, then invading these countries is simply -- not -- a problem.

And if a country tortures people, and holds citizens without cause or trial, and sets up military tribunals, this is also not a problem. Unless there's an expert who says it is the beginning... of a problem.

Cos only an expert can deal with the problem.
And only an expert can deal with the problem.
And only an expert can deal with the problem.

Only an Expert
Laurie Anderson, Homeland
more, here.

. . . . . . . . . .

An Interview with Laurie Anderson
by Rebecca Cook

Time and distance have been protagonists in artistic voyager
Laurie Anderson’s recent adventures, from looking back
at the birth of civilization in Greece to gazing forward into
the future of space exploration. Anderson was burnt out by
multimedia when she was confronted by an enormous screen
that she was meant to fill for the opening ceremony of the
Olympics in Greece in 2004. Ironically it was in Greece, the
home of tragedy, philosophy, epic poetry and sculpture that
she found inspiration for another project, Homeland, an epic
musical poem about America.

Anderson was assigned the chief archaeologist of the
Parthenon as a coach to help her learn about Greek history,
culture and patience, a man whose task will take about 500
years to complete. She asked him why the amazing period of
Grecian innovation ended. ‘How come we’re not a thousand
times smarter now?’ Her coach, who looked remarkably
like Plato, told her: ‘People would come to the Parthenon in
ancient times to worship Athena. They would all bring these
statues, then it got more and more competitive. People were
making more and more beautiful statues – it got to be like
an uncurated art show. People would come to worship this
goddess, but in the end they said they couldn’t worship in an
art museum.’ This resonated with Anderson.

‘It was as if the need to believe something was greater than
the need to know something or to be curious. Then I thought
wait a minute, that’s exactly what’s happening in America,
people have to believe in a thing rather than say “how is
this working?”’ This theme echoed with worries that the
performance artist had held for some time about America.
‘It’s almost unrecognisable. To me it’s really shocking that
more people don’t talk about the amount of surveillance
and things going on here. It’s not just the States, you go to
London and there are 15 cameras on you at all times and
those are the things they don’t tend to reverse, they tend to
get more extreme.’

Fieldwork or placing herself in unusual situations is a major
part of Anderson’s modus operandi. She has previously
worked the register at McDonalds and lived the simple life
on an Amish farm, but for Homeland she simply kept her
ears open and ‘watched what seems to be going on versus
what people describe as going on. Words are tricky anyway,
it’s like what 9/11 was here. You watch how things are
represented and you want to write about it then. You want to
say, “it’s not exactly like that”, and delusion and illusion are
really great topics for art. Homeland started with that and
then it became a lot more personal than I had imagined. A
lot of the songs and stories are not so overtly political, they’re
much more personal poetic/political. Just as the way that
your own hopes and fantasies mix with the fantasies about
your country. Then when you try to pull them apart you say:
well who am I? What is this place? What’s making it run?
What’s the engine? What’s really driving this thing because
everybody seems half-asleep. That’s what I’m trying to do
in Homeland.’

Anderson has been shaking people awake since the seventies
with performances that have revealed that the trickery behind
expectations is a cage, so it’s no surprise that she lists avantgarde
writer and sometime collaborator William Burroughs
as her enduring influence. ‘He made his own rules. I like
some [rules] … the ones you invent yourself. Not the ones
you’re blindly following. The great thing about making art is
there’s no specific way to do it. It’s the one thing in the world
that you can do where you are completely free. Nobody can
say “this is the way to make art”. It’s the ultimate form of
freedom and that’s why I keep doing it.”

As a true multimedia artist who glides between filmmaking,
composing, sculpting and inventing musical instruments,
Anderson doesn’t have a set process for developing work,
she uses ‘anything that will work. Sometimes a word will be
there perfectly to start, other times it’s this little melody that
has no words. You chip away at it until you find something
and sometimes you don’t and that’s a good thing to
remember too. If I can’t make it work as a song, maybe it will
look great as a potato print. These are just various modes of
working, one isn’t better than the other.’

But once the idea takes shape she often shows it to someone
she trusts. ‘If that person goes “I don’t know what that really
is at all”, [I] realise I’m speaking my own private language
again and that’s fine; there are certain things you do for
yourself that you never bring out into the public. I’m really
dependent on audiences to make edits. I’ll do a show and if
people have that expression of bafflement on their faces then
I’ll take it out, not because I’m trying to please everyone, but
[because] I’m working in an art form where you don’t have
tomorrow – it has to work right at that second or it’s never
going to work.’

Increasingly technology is making it easier for Anderson to
improvise or edit as she performs. Homeland ‘is the most
complicated thing I’ve ever done, but it looks the simplest
because it’s all software. It’s all soft synthesizers, numbers
and foot pedals, but for the first time I have a huge amount
of flexibility, I can do things that aren’t linear. It makes the
shows much more spontaneous.’ It seems surprising that
the queen of synthesis harbours a love/hate relationship
with technology. ‘I love to make it do as much I can make
it do. Maybe because I’m a control freak, I have to force
boxes to go through their paces.’ But while she believes that
the availability of technology that enables five-year-olds
to create their own CDs and Photoshop the cover artwork
is important to buck the control of record companies, she
also acknowledges the sensory overkill and the sameness
of computer-generated work. ‘How do you get off the grid?
It’s really hard to get lost. How do you keep the spirit of
adventure and exploration?’ Taking an artist-in-residence
position at NASA is one way. ‘They look at the world in such
a different timeframe. One of their projects is a 5000 year
project – the idea is to move all the manufacturing off the
earth to Mars and the Moon and over 5000 years let the
earth return to its natural state.’

Her time at NASA appears to have had a lasting impact.
Anderson was once quoted as saying that when she reached
a zenith where she’d sharpened her senses to such a point
she felt she was living in a work of art she would stop
creating. Thankfully she hasn’t reached that point yet. ‘I was
thinking of 5000 years from now when everybody’s hearing
has been bionically enhanced – they can hear like birds,
they can swim like dolphins, they have the empathy of dogs
– [a time] where we’ve really tried to maximise our own
equipment. There are many days when I walk around and
say the world is so beautiful all I want to do is pay attention
to it, I don’t need to make pathetic little representations
of it. Other times I think I want to make a representation
that makes this particular part of the world make sense.
I don’t mean to say artists will disappear, I just think they
will be making it in different ways. It won’t be limited to a
certain group of people making things and other people
appreciating them.’

‘My deepest wish is that everyone could have that experience
of making things freely. That’s what I think would make a
great fantasy for the future.’

(Do programa de Homeland, aqui)

Adults are Idiots, no Guardian, aqui. Para ver - em Espanha - em Maio próximo.