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JOHN NOWELL Travel, politics, money, and love-these are the respective subjects of Laurie Anderson 's four-part performance United States; two additional, projected parts deal with science and communications. The same topics are dealt with in four Anderson sound sculptures recently shown at Holly 88 Solomon's gallery. Each plastic object presented an emblematic image of American culture complete with participatory audio-visual gadgets. Telephone, map, $10 bill, TV-these are contemporary icons chosen with an archaeologist 's eye for social and symbolic meaning. The map, printed off-register in social studies colors, (bright green and orange), juxtaposes two kinds of significant shapes (super-imposed grid and organic outline) to draw a picture of the country. you can look at this sketch through attach- .ed dime-store binoculars while earphones L give you the sound of seagulls disturbed by an airplane flying over (taped at JFK?). I felt like I was scanning an empty land. As do the other pieces, the map and its participatory action encourage the punning metaphorization which Anderson uses so effectively in her performances; the process puts double and triple meanings to simple linguistic constructs like "to map out," "to look at,'' "to fly over." And, of course, this is all happening inside an art gallery-I'm looking at the country but not really (another double-take). The TV is a meditative study, its screen full of 3-D dots 0 Ur 7 0 F'") I I ~,yJ (not brought together by the attached Lone Ranger mask) with a soundtrack of latenight movie highlights. As a distilled abstraction, you could probably watch it longer and to more purpose than actual television-I could. The $10 bill was more' elusive as an experience; I couldn't make out exactly what the audio was up to (a visitor walking through a busy office). Maybe I should have put on the cashier's visor. And I don't think I got the phone at all (sound: an ostinato of cash registers). But these doodads are Anderson's best translation yet of her performance methods and subjects to static objects. They move. 89 ...

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