Laurie Anderson

Party in the Bardo: Conversations with Laurie Anderson was a radio series created during Anderson’s 2019–2020 artist residency at Wesleyan University. Broadcast on WESU 88.1FM, the series featured intimate late-night conversations with artists, writers, and thinkers, exploring uncertainty, imagination, and connection during a moment of global upheaval.

Created and hosted by Laurie Anderson, Party in the Bardo brought listeners into quiet, expansive conversations with Anderson’s close friends and collaborators—artists, writers, and thinkers drawn together by curiosity and a shared desire to understand the world. Each episode aired on WESU Middletown 88.1FM, premiering intentionally at 4am, a liminal hour when boundaries between waking and dreaming soften, and rebroadcast later the same day. 

The series took its name from the Tibetan concept of the “bardo,” an in-between state of transition, and was shaped in response to the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many listeners found themselves awake, unsettled, and searching for meaning. Episodes were available through WESU’s archives for two weeks following broadcast. Party in the Bardo was produced with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Philip J. ’71 and Lynn Rauch Fund for Innovation, with additional support from the Center for the Arts and WESU.