[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/20240524_LaurieAnderson_EbruYildiz_182_300DPI-Shaun-MacDonald.jpeg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tLaurie Anderson is performing a show titled \u201cRepublic of Love\u201d at SummerStage in New York\u2019s Central Park on June 26, as part of the 40th-anniversary season of the City Parks Foundation\u2019s outdoor concert series. She\u2019ll be backed by Sexmob, a downtown jazz band that grew out of the free-improv scene around the Knitting Factory in the 1990s, and she\u2019ll be singing songs of hers in the midst of other contributions by fellow American visionaries like Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, John Cage, Gertrude Stein, William S. Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg in what she\u2019s calling \u201ca celebration of freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tFrom her home in Greenwich Village, Anderson spoke with ARTnews <\/em>about the evolution of her show and her thoughts about a country marking its 250th birthday soon.<\/p>\n What is the origin story of \u201cRepublic of Love\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tThere is a guy named Milo Rau, a wonderful character who does a lot of political actions. He came to New York and wanted to meet with me. We were supposed to meet for breakfast, but he called me up and said, \u201cI\u2019m at a demonstration in Times Square and I\u2019m going to be an hour late. Sorry but I have to rush\u2026\u201d He showed up later, out of breath and wearing a sandwich board calling for artists\u2019 freedom. I asked him how the demo went and he said, \u201cWell, it was just me.\u201d I thought: I\u2019m in love with this guy!<\/p>\n \n\tHis invitation for me was to go to Vienna for a festival called Republic of Love to give a talk about the rise of fascism at ORF, which is the radio station where Hitler announced the annexation of Austria. It was kind of obvious why we might know about the rise of fascism in the United States. It was a creepy place: a bunker, more or less, with all these old microphones and a really creepy \u201830s vibe.<\/p>\n \n\tThat talk was long, so I went very far afield. I was reading Marcus Aurelius\u2019s Meditations<\/em>, a book I love so much. His advice to people is like: \u201cDon\u2019t let people jerk you around like a puppet\u201d\u2014it reads like he wrote it yesterday. So I did that talk and then wondered: Where else can it go? What could it become? I started thinking of Americans who\u2019ve talked about government and freedom, so this show has guest ghosts in a way. It starts off with Cornel West, who said, \u201cJustice is what love looks like in public.\u201d Then there\u2019s Bob Dylan, Gertrude Stein, William Burroughs, Arthur Russell, Pema Ch\u00f6dr\u00f6n. And Allen Ginsberg, who wrote \u201cAmerica why are your libraries full of tears?\u201d<\/p>\n How do those figures work along with your songs?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tI combined these American ghosts with some old songs of mine. Many have horn lines, because I love Sexmob and they can really do that well. I wondered what some songs, like \u201cBig Science,\u201d would sound like now. When we started playing it, I was like: That sounds exactly <\/em>like now, with the lyrics \u201cevery man for himself.\u201d The song \u201cLanguage Is a Virus\u201d is about what happens when language spins out of control and you can say anything\u2014like \u201cthe Reflecting Pool is blue.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tSo that\u2019s what this show has become. It includes a couple of things from the last show I did with Sexmob. One is a song that Lou [Reed, with Metallica] wrote called \u201cJunior Dad,\u201d which is one of my all-time favorite songs about fatherhood\u2014and connects to a Founding Fathers theme. It\u2019s going to be a 90-minute show that I\u2019m going to try to adapt to New York\u2014if we can figure out what\u2019s going on here.<\/p>\n You mentioned Arthur Russell\u2014are you going to be performing a song by him?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tI would say it\u2019s a little homage to him. He joins as a kind of voice in the background. Arthur was in my first band, and he was just the greatest guy. He wrote songs that were so simple and beautiful, like \u201cIt\u2019s a lovely day \u2026\u201d\u2014that\u2019s it, that\u2019s the song! His songs [reflect] different approaches to living. You can be really theoretical and political, or you can just kind of go look out the window at the day.<\/p>\n How are you feeling about our country around its 250th birthday?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tI was asked by Tanglewood to do an event about the 250th celebration of that document, which is now seriously compromised. Rather than directly talk about that, because we talk about it endlessly, I\u2019m writing something that we\u2019re going to do in August with some string players. It\u2019ll be step past the Republic of Love when we look at what happens when you really find it very difficult to change things. It\u2019s hopefully more of a celebration than a dirge, because it is really dire what\u2019s going on\u2014there\u2019s no nice way to say it. As an analyst of what\u2019s going on, I really try to think about it, but endlessly writing sad songs about it isn\u2019t something I want to do either. Time is limited.<\/p>\n \n\tMy last show was more about my teachers and how most of them really emphasized joy. Robert Thurman was a wonderful teacher for me who I went to Tibet and had a lot of adventures with. I\u2019ve listened to Liberation Upon Hearing in the Between: Living with the Tibetan Book of the Dead<\/em>, his teaching about the Bardo, probably 100 times. It\u2019s so profound, and now that he\u2019s actually in the Bardo, it\u2019s really intense for me. Another thing about that is it\u2019s this 49-day period of a shift in consciousness. When does that end for him? It\u2019s on August 3\u2014his birthday. So he\u2019s born again on his birthday. Who has the wherewithal to figure out timing like that? It was an incredible stroke of genius that only Bob could pull off.<\/p>\n \n\tI\u2019m trying to study those kinds of things now. I\u2019ve been spending time in dark retreats, where you go to a place in complete darkness for many days. My next one is going to be double the length. That is kind of where I\u2019m going mentally and emotionally and intellectually, into situations where you can really can confront stuff. Though I can\u2019t say the last one was like that\u2014it was more like a series of amazing hallucinations. Anyway, I don\u2019t really know how to talk or write about it, but that is what I\u2019m doing now.<\/p>\n Do you have memories of Central Park SummerStage?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tI love it. It\u2019s really fun, and I love being outside in the park\u2014though there are ticks, so whoever\u2019s going, bring some tick spray. They finally came to the city. Everyone in New York would gloat about all those people in the country with their houses getting ticks. Now we need tick spray and to look at every square inch at the end of the day.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/laurie-anderson-talks-about-fleeting-freedom-and-america-turning-250-years-old-1234790294\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/20240524_LaurieAnderson_EbruYildiz_182_300DPI-Shaun-MacDonald.jpeg?w=1024″] Laurie Anderson is performing a show titled \u201cRepublic of Love\u201d at SummerStage in New York\u2019s Central Park on June 26, as part of the 40th-anniversary season of the City Parks Foundation\u2019s outdoor concert series. She\u2019ll be backed by Sexmob, a downtown jazz band that grew out of the free-improv scene around the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2010892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2010892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2010892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2010892\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2010892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2010892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2010892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}