Ai Weiwei is God, Elon Musk is the devil, the Doomsday Clock is ticking, atomic bombs are exploding and the audience are screaming their lungs out. And that is just a fraction of Laurie Anderson’s sprawling and discombobulating Ark: United States V. It is a mix of music, cinema, opera and performance that, according to Anderson, tells “stories moving through myth, journalism, fable and TikTok, conjuring alternate realities and stories from my own life. Part ruminations, part long-form poems.” It’s “a large-scale portrait of a country … asking questions about democracy, war and freedom”.
If that sounds muddy on paper then it doesn’t get any clearer on stage. This three-hour multimedia performance is part beat poetry biography backed by an instrumental avant-jazz duo, part AI-generated film, part Ted Talk, part biblical allegory, part who knows what. At one point Anderson instructs the audience to scream for 10 seconds (quite fun), based on Yoko Ono’s response to the election. Then the Velvet Underground song Ocean is spun into a bit on rising sea levels, though it fails to harness the crashing, cascading power of the original.
There is a genuinely moving version of the Lou Reed and Metallica song Junior Dad, with Reed’s spoken word booming over the speakers – which is extra poignant given the stage is littered with clouds (references to both the mushroom and online-data varieties) and it feels as if his voice is coming from above. But such moments are in short supply. While Anderson clearly has a vivid and bubbling imagination, Ark is a mess. In the TikTok segment, with an electro-jazz-funk soundtrack, she plays a troll and wears a Maga hat before referencing Pizzagate. It’s beyond baffling.
Twenty-plus members of the Sacred Harp group coming out to sing makes for a stirring finale, but there is another sharp turn before the end, when Anderson asks the audience to stand up and join her in doing tai chi. You could say that maybe the only way to depict the US right now is via something as confused, chaotic and bizarre as this, but in truth it just feels like far too many ideas thrown together without rigorous quality control.
• Ark: United States V is at Factory International, Manchester, until 24 November.
