Space Is The Place

by Laurie Anderson (Contributor), Aleksandra Mir (Artist), Judith Richards (Foreword)

This catalogue for the traveling exhibition Space Is the Place (whose title refers to a movie about the super-experimental and influential jazz musician, Sun Ra) takes an inspired look at the theme of space exploration. Encompassing the concept of infinite potential, as well as historical outer-space successes and failures, it features installations, paintings, works on paper, and sound and video works made during the past 15 years by Laurie Anderson, Nina Katchadourian, Oleg Kulik, Julian LaVerdiere, Aleksandra Mir and Damian Ortega, among others, and investigates global attitudes from the time the Soviets launched Sputnik nearly 50 years ago to the era of the explosion of the Columbia space shuttle in 2003. While the featured artworks are united by the theme of outer space, the open-ended parameters of the subject also invite consideration of the technological, environmental and sociopolitical forces affecting life on earth today.

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Laurie Anderson (born Laura Phillips Anderson) is an American experimental performance artist and musician who plays violin and keyboards and sings in a variety of experimental music and art rock styles. Initially trained as a sculptor, Anderson did her first performance art piece in the late 1960s. Throughout the 1970s, Anderson did a variety of different performance art activities. She became widely known outside the art world in 1981 when her single "O Superman," reached number two on the UK pop charts. She also starred in and directed the 1986 concert film, Home of the Brave.

She has also invented several devices that she has used in her recordings and performance art shows. In 1977, she created a "tape-bow violin" that uses recorded magnetic tape on the bow and a magnetic tape head in the bridge. In the late 1990s, she developed a "talking stick", a six-foot long, batonlike MIDI controller that can access and replicate different sounds.