Laurie Anderson: The Weather and Other Stories

“I’m a musician and my work is made of stories. Whether it’s music, film, performance, or virtual reality, there’s usually a story somewhere, a story from my own life, history, or the great shifting panorama of American culture.” — Laurie Anderson

The Weather and Other Stories is a survey of the work of legendary artist Laurie Anderson in her own words. At heart a storyteller, the artist serves as a personal guide through two of her most ambitious recent exhibitions that span fifty years of work: The Weather at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and Looking into a Mirror Sideways at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm.

Anderson reveals the creative impulses behind her many iconic works and introduces new bodies of work in detail. From the iconic Drum Dance and the violin duets of Duets on Ice to her cutting-edge experiments with virtual reality and artificial intelligence, the book explores how Anderson “puts things into words and words into things.” She provides behind-the-scenes insights into major installations like Habeas Corpus, which examines justice through the story of a Guantánamo detainee, and Salute, an animatronic display of red flags symbolizing a nation in upheaval. New works include a project centered on the life and “family lore” of Anderson’s Swedish grandfather Axel Ephraim Anderson and Scenes from ARK, a translation of the artist’s three-hour performance work which centered around “end-times fables, climate, survival strategies, love, American history, and stories from the Bible.”

Richly illustrated and filled with both expository and poetic texts (including maxims, dreams, and lyrics), the book is a walk-in notebook of an artist perpetually curious about the intersection of technology, memory, and the American cultural landscape.

Laurie Anderson is a multimedia artist, musician (with more than seven albums), and filmmaker. She has exhibited widely around the world, including at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; the Musée d’art contemporain, Lyon, France; Fondazione Tramontano Arte, Naples; the Park Avenue Armory, New York; and MASS MoCa, North Adams, Massachusetts.