Laurie Anderson
Brooklyn Academy Of Music
One could claim that Laurie Anderson is a second-generation, card-carrying conceptualist by simply sketching the outline of her United States Parts I–IV, a six-hour anthology of 78 performance bits from her last seven years of performing. “Numbers count,” this double-talking allusionist might say, and in this epic case they add up to both more and less than their large sums.
Since her first significant performance, As: If, 1974, Anderson’s work has been remarkably consistent. Like all major artists she repeatedly, obsessively treats a handful of themes: technology, urban daily life, alienation,