PRESENTATION: Lynn Hershman Leeson-Are Our Eyes Targets?
Lynn Hershman Leeson is among the pioneers of interactive media art. She has worked with a range of different media throughout her entire creative career: photography, video, electronic environments, software and Net Art as well as in film and performances. Over the decades, the artist and filmmaker has continued to acquire the most recent technologies, examine and question such concepts as identity in discourses on present-day consumerism, privacy in the age of surveillance, man-machine interfaces and the relationship between real and virtual worlds.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Julia Stoschek Foundation Archive
“Are Our Eyes Targets?” is the first solo exhibition by the renowned artist and media pioneer in Düsseldorf, Lynn Hershman Leeson. Spanning the entire second floor of the Julia Stoschek Foundation, the exhibition features videos, photo-collages, and interactive and mixed-media installations that delve into the artist’s groundbreaking practice. 2024 marks the fortieth anniversary of the epic video installation, “The Electronic Diaries of Lynn Hershman Leeson 1984–2019” (1984–2019), which forms the centerpiece of the exhibition. Hershman Leeson examines her per-sonal experiences of abuse and illness and the relationship between technology and self, amid the global political con-text. As the work shifts between time frames and perspectives, viewers encounter the evolution of multiple, sometimes contradictory personas that represent the artist. These slipping identities lead us to question how much of what we see on our screens is true, revealing a gap between reality and our mediated images of it. Set against the contemporary media landscape, Hershman Leeson’s work rings truer than ever. In addition to the six-channel video installation, the exhibition comprises the historical mixed-media installation “Paranoid” (1968–2022), from the “Breathing Machines” series; a selection of seven “Phantom Limb” photo-collages (1985–90); the interactive installation “CybeRoberta” (1996); the print “Are Our Eyes Targets?” (1984); and two videos, “Seduction of a Cyborg” (1994) and “Shadow Stalker” (2018–21). The first video addresses the invasion of technology into the body while the latter takes a closer look at the creation of digital identities and surveillance by the state. Together, these works investigate the reciprocal effects of seeing and being seen—whether in person, through the camera lens, or in virtual spaces. Through her novel use of technology and psychological analysis, and her play with identities, Hershman Leeson brings about a power shift that draws attention to and subverts our voyeuristic desires. Across critical, speculative, and documentary registers, she emboldens us to take back control of our bodies, our images, and our narratives, especially as women.
First working in drawing and sculpture, Lynn Hershman Leeson turned to performance and conceptual art in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Her most influential performance work is “Roberta Breitmore” (1973-78) – the fictional char-acter that she, then three subsequent female personas, enacted in real time and space, using artifacts of the time. Roberta Breitmore’s conceptual idea of fractured identity and multiplicity of contemporary life anticipated the explo-ration of surrogate identities that flourished in the digital and virtual worlds several decades later. Hershman Leeson’s investigation of identity and various modes of surveil-lance developed into a variety of works, ranging from “Lorna” (1983/84), one of the first interactive projects on video disc, to “Teknolust” (2002) which addressed cyber-identity, artificial intelligence, cloning, and the decoupling of sexuality and human reproduction, to “Present Tense” (2014) which tracks environmental pollution via color-coded films of swimming babies. In her most recent works, Lynn Hershman Leeson includes robots, mass communication media such as smart-phones, as well as the latest scientific developments in the field of genetics and regenerative medicine including 3D bioprinters that create human body parts. A strong feminist voice, Hershman Leeson released the ground-breaking documentary, “Women Art Revolution”, distributed by Zeitgeist, in 2011. “!W.A.R. “charts the history of the feminist art movement in America and features footage filmed and collected by Hershman Leeson since the late 1960s. It was screened at major museums internationally and received first prize at the 2012 Montreal Films on Art Festival. Among Hershman Leeson’s feature-length films are “Strange Culture” (2007), an examination of the state control of art, science and public policy through the case of Critical Art Ensemble’s member Steve Kurtz; “Conceiving Ada” (1997); and “Teknolust” (2002) – all featuring actress Tilda Swinton. Her films have won many awards and have been featured at the Sundance, Berlin, and Toronto International Film Festivals.
Photo: Lynn Hershman Leeson, CyberRoberta, 1996, mixed-media installation; custom-made doll, textile, glasses, webcam, surveillance camera, mirror, original programming, and telerobotic head-rotating system, approximately 45 x 45 x 20 cm. Courtesy of Hess Art Collection GmbH, Bolligen, Switzerland
Info: Curator: Lisa Long, Assistant Curator: Line Ajan, Julia Stoschek Foundation, Schanzenstrasse 54, Düsseldorf, Germany, Duration: 12/4/2024-2/5/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 12:00-18:00, https://jsfoundation.art/
Right: Lynn Hershman Leeson, Camerawoman, 1990, photograph; digital print, 76.2 x 101.6 cm, part of Phantom Limbs, 1985–1990. Courtesy of the artist, Bridget Donahue and Altman Siegel
