Laurie Anderson: “Amelia Earhart is my hero.”

" Doing what I don’t know how to do is what inspires me most, " she says with a big smile. Laurie Anderson, a pioneering multimedia artist in electronic music, has always stood apart, often leading the way. As the first artist in residence at NASA and an inventor with a passion for science and AI, Anderson has spent over half a century exploring the blind spots of existence, seamlessly blending art and technology. At 77 years old, her age hasn’t diminished her enthusiasm; she continues to explore the unknown with the same unwavering ardor.

She discusses her tenth album, which revisits Amelia, an orchestral piece she first premiered in 2000 at New York’s Carnegie Hall. During the pandemic, she reworked the composition to focus more on the strings. This third version, mixed at the Miraval studio in close collaboration with Damien Quintard, has the sweeping grandeur of a film score. " For the record, I started with the orchestra, then added the bass part with the engines, the basslines, and the deep sounds, " she explains enthusiastically. The 22 tracks retrace the final flight of the legendary Amelia Earhart, from takeoff in California to the crash and beyond. You hear it all, you see it all.

The story of the American aviatrix Amelia Earhart, who disappeared at sea on July 2, 1937, during her attempt to circumnavigate the globe, deeply fascinates Laurie Anderson. However, in Amelia, it’s not the tragic fate that Anderson seeks to convey, but rather Earhart’s freedom and her drive to empower women through engineering.

Laurie Anderson is herself unafraid of death. Instead, her new project, ARK: United States Part 5, which will debut in Manchester this November, focuses on the passage of time and the collective sense that it’s too late to save the planet. Despite being more skeptical than ever about artificial intelligence, Anderson remains " optimistic for no reason. " Her only true fear for the future it seems, is the possible return of Donald Trump.