For the 2003 Hong Kong Arts Festival, Laurie Anderson performed Happiness – a narrative of a collection of poignant stories told with her sultry voice, enhanced by improvised electronic music that she plays and DJs.
Laurie Anderson personifies the contemporary Renaissance woman. She is writer, instrumentalist, composer, visual artist, photographer, art historian, performer, vocalist, poet, film-maker and electronic artist rolled into one. Her inspiring multi-media presentations and works of various disciplines are celebrated worldwide.
Typical of deserving well-rounded artists, she looks not for conclusions in her creative process but to unlearn and seek new perspectives. To prepare for the captivating collection of stories that made up the show, she had for the past year put herself in weird situations with a goal of escaping her preconceived notions. From getting “work experience” serving burgers at of McDonald’s in New York’s Chinatown to canoeing down a river for weeks in silence with a group of Japanese Zen Buddhists, she presented an autobiographical account of stories that were not only thought provoking but also poetic.
Her immense talent with the simple spoken work in Happiness, among others, reflects an artist’s sensibility that is human, humble, inspiring and constructive. Unlike some others who use knowledge as an armour to hide foibles and to set boundaries, she uses it to provoke and enhance our understanding of the human condition and to suggest hope and alternatives.
The rich, unusual but real-life stories serve as guided meditations on truly important subjects – of human connection, positive thinking, relative values, core beliefs, faith, expectations, deception, doubts and fears. The audience was first mesmerized and then led to contemplate the paradox called Life. The production strikes the audience as pure poetry, as verbal painting or choreography of sheer delight – an ingenious method of expression that marks the artist’s worth. A study of life itself, Happiness is frank, wise, expansive and full of possibilities.
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