Party in the Bardo: Conversations with Laurie Anderson

“Party in the Bardo: Conversations with Laurie Anderson” features conversations between writer, director, visual artist, and vocalist Laurie Anderson and special guests on WESU Middletown 88.1FM. Each program is available to stream from WESU's show archives for two weeks following the initial broadcast. Please visit our archives for information on previous episodes.

“Since the early ‘80s, I’ve dreamed of...having a radio show in the middle of the night” said Laurie Anderson. “When time slows down, where the lines between sleeping and waking, between dreams and reality, are getting blurred, and when people’s defenses drop away, and logic just seems to be very limiting.”

“Party in the Bardo: Conversations with Laurie Anderson” brings listeners into intimate conversations between Anderson and her close friends and colleagues—artists, writers, and thinkers who share Anderson’s zeal to ask questions, explore, and understand the world. “Party in the Bardo” was created for this moment in time, when our global and local communities are grappling with the new reality of COVID-19. In Tibetan tradition, the “Bardo” is the in-between: a state of existence after death and before one’s next birth, when consciousness is not connected to a physical body. By design, each episode initially premiered at 4am, when thoughts drift and new connections become possible —and a time, in 2020, when many of us were awake and wondering at the moment we are living though. (For those who sleep well, “Party in the Bardo” also aired again the same day at 4pm.)

“Party in the Bardo” was created and hosted by Laurie Anderson as part of her 2019-2020 artist residence at Wesleyan University, and is funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Philip J. '71 and Lynn Rauch Fund for Innovation, with support from Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts and WESU Middletown 88.1 FM.

Image of Laurie Anderson by Ebru Yildiz.