Thank heavens for youtube.
The work of the artist is to make us see the familiar afresh - to defamiliarize and thus cause us to look anew at the thing conceptualized.
In the late 80's or early 90's (they blur), Laurie Anderson did a series of "public service announcements" from Women and Money to Jerry Rigging. One of these was about the Star Spangled Banner - the US of A's National Anthem. I had certainly never thought of the song this way - as she puts it - just a series of questions: heh, is that a fire? couldn't really say, it's early in the morning...
And that's it really: a nation's anthem is about someone noticing a place going to hell during a fire and a flag waving away. So important - no matter what. The brand label survives. X marks the spot. Let X, knock knock, equal X.
anyway, here it is:
Posted by mc at June 27, 2008 12:12 PM