When Laurie Anderson’s rat terrier Lolabelle lost her vision, the artist hired a trainer to help the small dog learn the piano and paint with her paws. It was a second life for the pup, who eventually succumbed to age and illness in 2011. Fascinated by the concept of the “Bardo,” or the stretch of 49 days between death and rebirth as described in The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Anderson realized that her birthday would come 49 days after Lolabelle’s passing. Inspired by that connection, she launched a multimedia exhibition (“Forty-Nine Days in the Bardo”) which used sculpture, illustration and soundscapes to create the sensation of floating through a soup of sensation and memory. When Anderson was commissioned to make a short film in the early 2010s, she already had the seed for a larger project, and Heart of a Dog (2015) was born. Widely known for her work across various mediums, including performance art (“Duets on Ice”), filmmaking (the avant-garde concert film Home of the Brave, 1986) and music (“O Superman”), Anderson’s work has never stopped evolving. Heart of a Dog is no exception and shows the culmination of her years working in various mediums. Pulling from multiple, seemingly unrelated subjects, Anderson’s second film in over twenty years ponders love, mortality and the cycle of life. Using memories of Lolabelle, her mother, and her late husband Lou Reed (founder of the Velvet Underground and a respected musician in his own right), Anderson guides us through ink prints, drone footage and text to craft an ode to our brief time on earth. The artist’s gentle, pondering narration drifts through dreams and memories of people, places and times gone by and addresses the 9/11 terrorist attacks, childhood in the Midwest, the Orwellian rise of data collection and surveillance and the relationship between predator and prey. She taps the philosophies of Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein and poses questions from a child’s point of view as rain, trees and the urban-scape drift across screen. Aspiring to make something organic and leisurely, Anderson was in no rush to complete the film. When Reed passed away in 2013, she stepped away from the project for a year, only to return with original music and new ideas. It all comes together to craft an epic poem about how we move through time.
by Thomas Davant
