“All The Things I Lost in the Flood – Essays on Picture, Language and Code”. New York; Rizzoli Electa, 2018. Squarish 8vo in wraps as issued. 319 pages, illustrated. New copy, unopened

First edition, the first book on the artist’s full career to date, as curated by the artist herself: “Laurie Anderson is one of the most revered artists working today, and she is as prolific as she is inventive. She is a musician, performance artist, composer, fiction writer, and filmmaker (her most recent foray, Heart of a Dog, was lauded as an experimental marvel by the Los Angeles Times). Anderson moves seamlessly between the music world and the fine-art world while maintaining her stronghold in both. A true polymath, her interest in new media made her an early pioneer of harnessing technology for artistic purposes long before the technology boom of the last ten years. Regardless of the medium, however, it is exploration of language (and how it seeps into the image) and storytelling that is her metier. A few years ago, Anderson began poring through her extensive archive of nearly forty years of work, which includes scores of documentation, notebooks, and sketchbooks. In the process, she rediscovered important work and looked at well-known projects with a new lens. In this landmark volume, the artist brings together the most comprehensive collection of her artwork to date, some of which has never before been seen or published.Spanning drawing, multimedia installations, performance, and new projects using augmented reality, the extensive volume traverses four decades of her ground-breaking art. Each chapter includes commentary written by Anderson herself, offering an intimate understanding of her work through the artist s own words.” – ““I began as a painter and sculptor and for forty years I have made drawings, music, paintings, installations, film, sculpture, electronic design, software, opera and theater. At the root of all of these works are stories. They are the engines. Stories and words are what I love most. This is a book about the many different strategies I have used to put stories and words into things. Since there are no story museums or museums of narrative art, many of my visual works have been represented as pure visual art instead of the collaborations with words that they actually are. This book is about the development of this process and the catalytic relationships between pictures and stories and about the many codes we use to represent the world.” Contents: Out on the ice : As: if ; Duets on ice ; The lake — This must be the place : United States ; Hidden inside mountains ; Chalkroom — Talking statues : At the shrink’s ; Dal Vivo ; Habeas corpus — Made of light : Some performances from the 1970s ; Light devices ; Stories from the nerve Bible ; Delusion ; Sidewalk — This is your captain : Narrators ; Clones ; Fenway ; Dearreader ; Songs and stories from Moby Dick — Speak my language :Talking instruments ; Talking and singing ; Touring ; Concerts for dogs — From the air : Artist-in-residence at NASA ; From the air ; Aloft — Time to go : Calendars ; Diaries ; Heart of a dog ; Dreams ; The withness of the body