Laurie Anderson: Strange and Disorientating Landscapes

About this episode

Naomi Alderman discusses the intersection of art, fiction, and biography with guests Laurie Anderson, Nina Allan, and Joy Sleeman.

What happens when art, fiction and biography take us to places that unsettle, reorient and transform our sense of the world? On Radio 4’s weekly discussion programme, Naomi Alderman moves from science fiction and land art to the landscape of the mind. Pioneering multimedia artist and musician Laurie Anderson discusses The Republic of Love, which she is performing at the Brighton Festival on 6th May. It’s an immersive multi-sensory experience, in which she reinterprets past pieces, including her 80s hit Big Science, to illuminate the political and emotional strangeness of the present moment. (Her new album, Let X=X is released on May 8, 2026) Writer Nina Allan reflects on co-authoring The Illuminated Man, the biography her late husband, the novelist Christopher Priest, had started about J. G. Ballard. She explores Ballard’s singular imagination, shaped by wartime internment in Shanghai, and his repeated motifs of flooded cities, drained swimming pools, and the violence seeping through gated communities seen in books including Empire of the Sun, Crash and The Drowned World. Art historian Joy Sleeman introduces the first major UK exhibition devoted to the American artist Nancy Holt…

People in this episode

Host: Naomi Alderman

Guests: Laurie Anderson, Nina Allan, Joy Sleeman

Topics covered

• art
• fiction
• biography
• land art
• multimedia
• landscapes
• politics

Keywords

• Laurie Anderson
• Nina Allan
• J. G. Ballard
• land art
• multimedia art
• Brighton Festival
• The Republic of Love
• MoonSunStarEarthSkyWater

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: BBC Radio 4

Books & works: The Republic of Love, Big Science, The Illuminated Man, Empire of the Sun, Crash, The Drowned World, MoonSunStarEarthSkyWater

Places: Brighton Festival

More episodes of Start the Week

• Scientific discovery and misunderstanding · June 8, 2026 · 42 min
• Searching for economic solutions · June 1, 2026 · 42 min
• Mythmaking at Hay: from Medea to Rasputin · May 25, 2026 · 42 min
• Farming, food production and rural life · May 18, 2026 · 43 min
• German history · May 11, 2026 · 41 min
• Chemical Reactions · April 27, 2026 · 42 min