We meet Laurie Anderson in the library of the American Academy of Rome, on the edge of the Janiculum, the “Mons Aureus” protected by the walls of Urban VIII, in a place that seems made especially for those who have spent a career and a life questioning the relationship between voice and power, word and landscape, bells and responsibility. From here Rome is not a postcard but a musical nervous system: the domes like refrains, the Tiber like an electric bass, the entire city like an archive of samples in which past and present speak to each other continuously, subject to appropriate arrangements.
Laurie Anderson is calm and focused, as if mentally recording everything that happens around her. Especially during breaks, he goes on to show us the medieval and Renaissance maps hanging on the walls of the Academy. Sometimes she asks us, amused, to put our finger where we are in the city; more often it is she who puts him in the scourge of the reality in which we live.
This summer Anderson will be in Italy for just one date, July 7th at Umbria Jazz, with Republic of Lovea project born from a pertinent and insolent question: what relationship is there between government and love today? The show has a hybrid, mobile, radically contemporary form: concert, story, assemblage of voices, collage of literature and rock, workhorses that change meaning because the world has changed. On stage, next to her, there will once again be Sexmob: jazz as a democratic method, as a space of continuous friction between individuality and collective. In this dialogue between the unpredictable energy of jazz and the conceptual architecture of his work, Anderson wants to pose a question that today is anything but purely musical: who controls the sound, who decides the rhythm, who has the right to speak?
How it will be Republic of Love to Umbria Jazz?
It will be an expansion of the show you saw in November in Rome. We will probably continue to add more as we test. It all started with an experience of mine last spring: writing a two-hour talk on love and politics, invited by the Vienna Festival. I admit I was a bit in difficulty at first. To look for inspiration I reread some authors who had already dealt with the topic, and in particular Marcus Aurelius.
The last of the five good emperors?
Just him. One day I was in Rome and I was observing his famous equestrian statue. A Russian-American poet I love, Iosif Brodsky, said that, during a walk in the Capitol, on a cold and rainy night (in which he was also both tipsy and tormented by a project of his), he began to stare at that statue, wondering what that great Stoic would have done in his place. Here a Dalmatian dog appears on the scene and starts staring, for his part, at the emperor. At that moment Brodsky has the perception that the statue has moved. There are moments when you come across a song, a work of art, and it suddenly changes the way you see things.
In your performance the words often arrive slightly late, as if thought was always trying to catch up with the experience, and vice versa. Do you think that delay and, with it, hesitation, silence, are forms of resistance in a world obsessed with immediacy?
I love breaks. Furthermore, in the case you mention, they are quite functional, as I also chose to speak in Italian on stage. It's a language I studied for five years at university, but today the most I can do with it is read The betrothed.
No small thing!
How I would love to have a conversation in Italian! However, I'm gearing up, right here at the American Academy. They come back to us, I love breaks and slowness. The same slowness of that encounter between a man and a statue, in which he gradually realizes what he is really seeing. Rhythm and tempo are everything. By changing the pace you give the people listening to you an opportunity to think: «How strange. Am I really feeling this, that or something in between?” I had a professor in college who kept taking breaks during her lectures on luminism in American art. We thought she'd forgotten something or gone crazy. Instead he was showing us the way his thinking flowed. Normally teachers don't do this. They tell you a truth and then test you to see if you understood it.
At the Auditorium we had the impression that, for you, love is never just sentimental, but always also structural, like an engineering or architectural work. If love were a building, what kind of structure would it be: a ruin, a shelter, a temporary construction site?
All three, because building something is always an act of love and faith. The villa we are in is a multifunctional place: it houses both my little apartment, upstairs, and the library of rare and ancient maps, in which we are currently sitting. Looking at them I realize how imagining this city in ancient times was an extraordinary act of love because it was linked to projecting it into a future much earlier than the one in which it would have been built. When I go to the Davos Economic Forum, however, I realize that today we think about the future by stopping at six weeks at most. Tick tick tick.
It's nice to hear you say that while the Aurelian walls still embrace us exactly as they did in the 3rd century AD.
Rome is truly number one in the world in this.
For better or for worse. What else do you do in Rome?
About six different things, all unrelated to each other. For example at 2am last night, Italian time (laughs), Harvard University had organized a Zoom dialogue between four artists, entitled Class Act. We talked about a lot of things and, in particular, intergenerational communication on some of the topics that are closest to our hearts. Artificial intelligence was the one that came back most often. The most interesting challenge that this technology poses is that of learning to use it without being used by it. She's capable of doing some amazing things and it's fascinating to see her expand so quickly.
How can we preserve the integrity of human creativity in such a scenario?
It doesn't matter to me whether a song is written or sung by a human or artificial singer: if it's a good song it's a good song. To tell the truth, I don't produce my work to express myself. I don't care if my performances lead to my recognition. I'm interested in being able to say, even through them: “Hey, look at that thing over there!”. I won't hide from you that it was a difficult point to make with last night's interlocutors. It seemed to me that others much preferred to express themselves. What is the name of the most famous AI-generated actress?
Tilly Norwood.
Here you are. They say she's a terrible actress. But what if she was good? Wouldn't we honestly accept and rate a movie with her just because she's an AI creation and not human? And yesterday, in unison, they answered me: of course not! And here we are again talking about us, us, us and not about what we create. Because we created AI. They often tell me: “Those poor kids turned into zombies, on the phone all day!”. Telephones are also our creation and can do wonders. We can even look at the stars! The hard part is teaching kids how to balance reality and everything else.
This is why we are so happy to do this interview in person and not on Zoom.
Me too. I was once asked to write the “New York” entry for the Encyclopedia Britannica. I was excited and scared, but they reassured me: you can write about just one aspect of the city. Then I asked myself what was the most human thing I could describe about New York. And I answered myself: the sound of the city at night. The manhole covers that rattle when garbage trucks drive over them. Here's something an AI would never write about. We need to go out into the streets, go into nature, listen and see the world firsthand.
Where would you go tomorrow?
In Minneapolis. There's nothing like being there, now, with your body. We can talk as much as we want about what is happening there, we can even write poignant pages about it. But since the first murder I have woken up every two hours at night, seeing it in my mind, and I wish I were there. The situation is worsening. I planned to go there if only to celebrate the people who are creating those networks around the two victims. Renee Good was an extraordinary poet, a student of a friend of mine, and Alex Pretti was simply one person who was trying to save another.
At the center of Republic of Love there is a tension between introspection and community experience, between I and we. This tension plays a crucial role in today's landscape, especially in a world reinvented by social media and political polarization
Precisely for this reason I included in the program the theme ofOrdo Amorisinvoked by the dispute between my fellow citizen Leo XIV and US Vice President JD Vance, based on different ideas of love and responsibility. Leo, an Augustinian, is for me a Pope of love. Vance, in turn, says he is influenced by St. Augustine, but is convinced that love works in layers: you love your partner, then your family, then your neighbors, your fellow citizens, your compatriots and then… that's it. Too bad for everyone else! Leone replied: «JD, your model is wrong. We don't do a ranking of love.” A wonderful and courageous thing to say. “Love those outside your circles, those who have nothing, those who are suffering more than you can imagine, as much as you love your brother or your mother.”
Was it understood?
Alas, we are under the reign of a mad king. Nobody says it, but he's crazier than King George! «I want Greenland! I want Iceland!», without even being able to distinguish them. «I want them and I'll take them. We can do it the nice way, we can do it the unkind way.” What to do? It's a strange kind of fascism, followed by sleepwalkers in its wake. We feel trapped. Protesters can be killed twice: once when they are shot, and once when they are accused of being a domestic terrorist.
How will it end?
I just think the problem needs to be addressed with love and not more violence. It is the lesson of Martin Luther King, very hard to learn.
You've spent your life giving sound to abstract forces: fear, authority, technology, memory. Is there still something today, politically or emotionally, that you feel still has no sound, something that art has failed to name or express?
The problem is not naming or expressing but being believed. When you read Truth, or social media, in general you realize how the contemporary world is a structure made of stories. In 2004, a Bush advisor said: «Do you still think you can analyze such a situation using reality? Reality no longer exists.” Was a person killed? Wait, I'll tell you another story. We write stories while we are extras in history.
A history written, as always, by the winners, but in live action.
To be precise, in the form of theatrical improvisation. There isn't even a particularly interesting plot. The plot of our mad king is the story of himself. Nothing but self. «How much money can I have? How much power can I get?”. But let's not panic. It's just another story.
How do you think this idea of the USA is perceived by Europe, and by Italy in particular?
There is no need to make generalisations. Just because we have a mad king doesn't mean all Americans are mad. My Italian friends express great sympathy for my condition as a US citizen. They don't really understand what's happening, also because we don't understand it either. It's chaos. Every five minutes there's a fresh piece of news and the usual rush of: “Can you believe he actually said that?” So it keeps us all busy, non-stop. It's almost a hobby. It's a form of terror we've never seen before. Fascism happened and is happening in some parts of Europe too. This is the American version. It's an amazing time to be alive.
