When Laurie Anderson talks about carrying no baggage in her new book, All the Things I Lost in the Flood, a tome literally about loss, of precious objects and dross, of anything that weighs you down, take her seriously. At her current one-woman exhibition at Guild Hall, comprised of large scale paintings of her dog Lolabelle, now deceased, in the Bardo, and films, including “Heart of a Dog,” an Academy Award nominated documentary, plus two extraordinary works of Virtual Reality, let’s just say, she gives the label multimedia new meaning. While all of this work is impressive, the two trips through Anderson’s virtual “looking glass” completely knocked me out.

At the Guggenheim Museum, at MoMA, VR seems a component of many installations. At MoMA’s Bodys Isek Kingelez exhibit, you can drive at rapid speed through the streets of this artist’s extraordinary imagination for a few minutes. In “Aloft” and “Chalkroom,” both collaborations with Hsin-Chieng Huang, Anderson extends the medium to narrative. “Looks like you are the only person on this flight,” she tells you in her gentle, reassuring voice: “I am your pilot,” she says as the plane falls apart around you. You are left in your red seat navigating a route through pieces of debris including the plane’s black box. You reach out to a manual typewriter. As you clack imaginary words, your hands etched in white light, the keys go flying, an alphabet spraying up. Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment appears, a giant book opened to a specific page. You may wonder, what was going on in Raskolnikov’s mind when he murdered his hateful landlady? Or not.

For “Chalkroom,” you guide your own tour through doors, your choice. I remember a wondrous tree. Clouds. Speeding against a wall. Seeing nothing below: yikes I was in a buoyant free fall. And it took no mushrooms to make me large or small. A consummate storyteller looking for her next great moment, Laurie Anderson invites the question, where will she take this medium, and us, next?

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura