ARK: United States V – Review

Whenever “the great and the good” turn out in numbers for a show, it is more likely they are anxious to be seen rather than to see. Laurie Anderson’s remarkable ARK: United States V provides a notable exception to this rule. Familiar faces are much in evidence, here and there in the auditorium, but unquestionably they are here to see this new show by one of the great performance artists of the last half century.

I was about to say this may be well be Anderson’s swan song so far as UK appearances go (she is, after all, 77 years old, now). However, the evening demonstrates her indefatigable creative energy and a gobsmacking stamina in performance – so, who knows? Perhaps we will see her again, and how blessed we would be.

When she and her fellow musicians (Doug Wieselman on guitars, saxophones and winds; Kenny Wollesen on percussion) bowed and exited after 90 minutes, most of us reached for our coats and bags, having happily been served up a treat. Then, the single word, “INTERMISSION” swirled up onto the screen. Fifteen minutes later, Anderson and her crew returned to gift us a further 90 minutes of eclectic magic. How to describe it?

The first thing is not to dawdle in the new brutalist bar. Anderson starts prompt at 7.30pm. On screen, a stylised image of the Earth revolves. On stage, two 3-D clouds stand, stage left and right. I don’t know how they’re constructed but they shift shape during the show in ways that seem more than just effects of the light. Ominously, one of the clouds is a mushroom cloud. The threat of nuclear war has been a constant thread through Anderson’s work. She tells us (and she is the consummate storyteller) that she was born in Chicago in 1947, the same place and time as the invention of the so-called Doomsday Clock (which aims to assess how close humanity is to nuclear annihilation – since its inception, the clock has mostly stood at one minute to midnight).

ARK is clearly still in development, in the sense that the recent US Presidential election is being built into the narrative. In a kindly attempt (and it’s hard not to see Anderson as a benign presence) to save us from confusion, she outlines the plot (such as it is) of the narrative and introduces the characters. The Chinese dissident artist, Ai Wei Wei, takes the role of God (somewhat thoughtlessly shaving his beard halfway through filming) while Anohni (the artist fka Anthony and the Johnsons) plays the Buddha. They debate respectfully, about whether time is linear or circular. It might not surprise you to learn that Anderson has cast Elon Musk as the devil. (Musk appears in cartoon-strip form, only).

Religious references are generally playful and light. Anderson tells the story of an artistic residency in Australia where she was invited to set a task for a “supercomputer.” After pondering why the supercomputer wasn’t up to setting its own tasks, the result is a version of the Bible reinterpreted through Laurie Anderson’s artistic outpourings. Typically, she undercuts ego, being bemused and underwhelmed by the notion of “the Bible according to me.”

Clouds and rain are the running motifs of the show.

Talk of storm clouds and flooding are the preliminary to a story about Noah’s Ark being, according to one fundamentalist researcher, located in upstate New York. It’s a familiar theme for those of us who have followed her work – the stories that people concoct to serve their preconceptions.

“I have wasted my life on a stupid legend,” Hansel laments to Gretel. And more rain falls…

Sometimes, the rain is the falling of tears. As a technophile Anderson embraces some of the wonders of the age – using AI to construct a photo album of her grandfather’s life as he liked to tell it (travelling alone from Sweden to America aged eight, starting a business aged nine, getting married aged ten). She does this all the while knowing the brutal reality of her grandfather’s childhood – placed in a reform school by a drunkard father.

The cloud of digital information is key to the show. On screen, bits of data are repeatedly seen falling from the sky (the Cloud). “What will become of us if/when it all comes crashing down?” Anderson seems to be asking. There is such mess and menace all around, and yet she never rants, speaking always in that soft, wry tone – even when the technology lowers her voice to an almost comical masculine register.

The first half of the show ends with a moving recording of Anderson’s late husband, Lou Reed, reading a poem whose closing words are “state of grace.” It is a reminder (as is her whole creative persona) not to despair.

There are some empty seats when we reconvene after the interval. No doubt, some people just had to get home, but it also serves as a useful way to weed out the soulless.

Original music (mainly performed live) and animated forms and images add colour and mood throughout. There is always something to see, something to listen to, something to ponder, and much, so much, to delight in.

Anderson tells of walking on a beach in Bora Bora (she’s a well-travelled artist), whilst the heat melted the glue of the book she was reading (Neuromancer by William Gibson). As the pages fell away and scattered, she felt herself “leafleting the island” with random extracts (echoing the collapse of the Cloud – how can we make sense of disjointed fragments?)

The stories we tell and are told, the lies we tell and are told – who is to have control of these? she seems to be asking.

We have screamed (for 10 seconds) as a nod to Yoko Ono’s three minute scream (Ono’s response to Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory). Now, we close the evening with a little tai chi after the manner of Lou Reed, including one position dubbed by him, “Carrying the Tray”. It’s a gentle, warm and playful exchange between artist and audience.

I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

ARK: United States V is at Aviva Studios from 12-24 November.