Lynn Hershman's Roberta in Second Life (2007)
'The most influential woman working in new media'
Siemens Medienkunstpreis
A conversation between Michael Shanks and Lynn Hershman is at [link]
Lynn Hershman Leeson: Autonomous Agents - A Real + Second Life Symposium
Through The Presence Project we will be engaging with Lynn Hershman's development of current and new work.
Part of this engagement is a collaborative project - we are developing a game-based environment for encountering an archive of Lynn's work. It is called
Life to the second power (L2)
[link]
Gabriella Giannachi reflects on the process of Life to the Second Power
Stanford @ Duisburg: Life to the Second Power presented at Paradoxes of the Public | interview with Lynn Hershman and Michael Shanks
Lynn Hershman's Strange Culture opening at Sundance
"younger filmmakers should be looking to Hershman Leeson for lessons on how to reinvent old forms while at the same time telling an urgently topical story" [link]
for more information about Steve Kurtz see beneath
Life to the Second Power/The Presence Project [link] will be showing Lynn Hershman's film in Second Life on Monday 22 and Tuesday 23 at 10pm UK time at the cinema space seen above
Gabriella Giannachi was able to see and comment on the first cut of Lynn Hershman's film Strange Culture
Lynn Hershman Leeson's Strange Culture is a documentary feature film based on the arrest of Steve Kurtz, an Associate Professor of Art at the State University of Buffalo and a founding member of the internationally acclaimed Critical Art Ensemble, and Robert Ferrel, a geneticist at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health. (www.criticalart.org). On May 11, 2004 Steve Kurtz's wife Hope died in her sleep of cardiac arrest. Medics arrived, became suspicious of Kurtz's art supplies that were out in his home, as he was working on an upcoming exhibit, and called the FBI. Within hours, Kurtz was charged as a suspected bio-terrorist as dozens of agents in hazmat suits sifted through his work, impounded his computers, manuscripts, books, his cat, even his wife's body, and resulted in Kurtz and his collaborator Dr. Robert Ferrell, former Chair of the Genetics Department at the Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh, were charged with bio-terrorism and subsequently mail fraud, each potentially carrying a sentence of 20 years. Strange Culture features a remarkable cast including Tilda Swinton, Peter Coyote, Thomas Jay Ryan, Josh Kornbluth and Steve Kurtz. Written, directed and edited by Lynn Hershman Leeson and shot by Hiro Narita, with an original score by the Residents, the film also features Greg Bordowitz, Steve Dietz, Robin Held, Claire Pentecost, and Nato Thomson. The producers are Lynn Hershman Leeson, Lise Swenson and Steven Beer.
Gabriella Giannachi's article about Critical Art Ensemble and review of the first cut of Lynn Hershman's film are at [link]
Follow this link for Michael Shanks on Cinema Prosthetics and the politics of new media
Lynn Hershman's Strange Culture
Strange Culture at Sundance @ Second Life
Interview to Lynn Hershman on Strange Culture on YouTube [link]
Follow this link to find out more about Lynn Hershman's work: Gabriella Giannachi introduces Lynn Hershman Leeson
See also a feature article about her in The New York Times [link]
Recently cited as being one of the most influential media artists of our times, Lynn's output ranges from early conceptual works and performance, to photo collages and videotapes, from tv and film to interactive installations.
She received The Alfred P. Sloan award given to a writer/ director of a film that breaks traditional stereotypes and has recently received the Siemens Media Arts Award (shared with Peter Greenaway), the Flintridge Foundation Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts and an Independent Spirit Award nomination.
She received the prestigious Golden Nica Prix Ars Electronica, known as the Oscar of Cyberspace.
She was named by the World Technology Network as one of the top five technological innovators in the arts.
In Germany, ZDF commissioned eight feature length films, the ZKM Mediammuseum, owns five digital installations, The Wilhelm Lehmbruch Museum, and the DG Bank in Frankfurt own installations and photographs. Japan gave her the “Outstanding Drama” prize.
Her art work is collected internationally and is owned by The Museum of Modern Art (N.Y.), The National Gallery of Canada, The Walker Art Center , The University Art Museum, The Seattle Art Museum, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Hess Collection (Bern/Napa) as well as other private collections.
Lynn and friends
The Henry Art Gallery of Seattle has mounted a major international museum retrospective of her work which will tour nationally and internationally in 2006-2008, and recently received major grant from The Getty Foundation and The Warhol Foundation to support the exhibition. She is on the International Advisory Board for Leonardo, and a Film Commisioner for the city of San Francisco. See the exhibition website [link].
The University of California Press has released a monograph and DVD Rom Secret Agents/Private I’s, The Art and Film of Lynn Hershman Leeson [link].
She was awarded the Cornell University A.D. White Professor at Large, the highest honor of the university. Past recipients include Antonioni, Eudora Welty, Toni Morrison, among others. She is Professor Emeritus at UC Davis and Chair of the Cinema Dept., San Francisco Art Institute.
Images by kind permission of Lynn Hershman
Lynn Hershman's webpage is here - [link]
