The Laurie Anderson talk was at a subterranean CUNY lecture hall catty-corner to the Empire State Building, which Beth did not recognize when I pointed it out to her — to be fair, it wasn’t particularly iconic from that low angle. “How’d you find out about this?” the guy who climbed over the seat next to me asked. “Umm…the Internet,” I replied, and turned to ask Beth about her classes. I was not in a mood to chat up strangers; indeed, I was in a distinctly misanthropic mode, having just endured the subway at rush hour without my iPod and noise-cancelling headphones. Fussy, grumpy me — but I digress…

It was introduced by Barbara London, whom I met at a lecture she did on curating and collecting video art, to which I was graciously invited by Greg of greg.org and forgot to post about. She showed a bunch of clips: mostly fascinating and beautiful, some all-system/no-sexy dreck (e.g., the artist whipping himself with a paint-soaked sheet on soapy grey hi-8).

Ms. Anderson has a warm, relaxing demeanor; the same feeling I get from her work. When asked if she felt compelled to get her music on the radio, she said, “no…I’m a snob,” and smiled. (See Beth’s post for the whole exchange — she’s three feet away and she won’t let me see her notes.)

She showed a two minute video from a forthcoming installation in a Japanese garden in Nagoya: words and pictographs streaming down columns and resting on fog… At first I thought it was all computer-generated. When I realized it was shot in a real space with columns, fog machines, and (many) projectors, it didn’t change my reception of the work, strangely. Just goes to show that it doesn’t matter what tools you use. Some of the slides of rejected design proposals for the garden made me laugh with delight, like faux rocks hidden among the real that would glow and seem to change texture (porcelain, steel) as you approached them.

What would I take away from this event? Well, if I had my notes I could tell you but I’m at Beth’s and she won’t let me see hers. I’ll add to this tomorrow.