I will begin the review with a concise quote from the text The Virus is Still in Language, by art historian Leila Topić (Ravno do dna portal), so that I don’t have to summarize this part: “Have you ever listened to an artist who sounds like a philosopher, a radio announcer from the future, a performer, a stand-up comedian and a pop star at the same time? That’s exactly Laurie Anderson.”

Tonight’s concert The Republic of Love (with Sexmob musicians) at Zagreb’s Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall literally corresponded to that description through its diverse civic audience: a measured mix of popular rock, popular jazz, moderate graphic projection, pleasant intonation of Laurie’s continuous story… But Laurie Anderson’s original potential only emerged a few times in atonal sounds, verbal flowing images, demonic talking stick voices, excerpts from her lecture on cities (Cities), which she used much more ambitiously, masterfully, in her online Norton lectures at Harvard in 2021 (I already mentioned on social media that she and her management team allowed me, immediately after the premiere, within 12 hours, to show the Cities lecture to my UniSB students, before the official release on YouTube).


However, at Laurie Anderson’s concert 35 years ago, there was more of a punk spirit, turning on the lights in the middle of the concert while she stared at the audience, experimentation (I remember a male voice from the audience yelling “whore” at her)…

Tonight we followed the pleasant Laurie Anderson, more refined, but less rebellious, than we are used to…

PhD. Vesna Srnić