Interview mit Lynn Hershman Leeson

Moments. Eine Geschichte der Performance in 10 Akten | Artist
Talk


Exhibition 08.03.2012 – 29.04.2012


Since she was created in 1972 by Lynn Hershman Leeson, the figure
Roberta Breitmore moves and reproduces herself much like the
ghostly double of the artist through the various realities and
media formats. One could say Roberta Breitmore, performs media
realities: she appears in films or in reality at vernissages,
meets with men on dates, materializes in three-fold form, wanders
onto the Golden Gate Bridge like on a film still of the American
Independent Cinema, or becomes a victim of exorcist ritual.
Roberta is a comic heroine; it is possible to communicate with
her in cyberspace through the interface of a puppet which has her
features and meet her in the virtual world of the “second life”.
Her dress, her glasses, a wig are traces of this existence.
Roberta owns an insurance card and is congratulated by the
President of America on her virtual birthday. The media
documentation of Roberta’s performance, which will be exhibited
in Moments, are at the same time evidence of the most various
formats in which a performance can represent itself: from Vintage
Print, original photography, exhibition copy, poster or an
advertisement, film, video, eye-witness account and art criticism
etc. through to the copy of a film from the Internet on a
Home-Printer. Lynn Hershman Leeson will develop this process of
media duplication of the documents herself during her stay in
Karlsruhe.


Short Biography
Since Lynn Hershman Leeson (*1941 in Cleveland Ohio, USA) began
her career in the late 1960s as award-winning American media
artist and filmmaker, she has received wide recognition for a
body of work combining art with social commentary, particularly
with regard to the relationship between humans and technology. A
pioneer in New Media, she has been internationally acclaimed for
her use of new technologies and her early investigations of
issues such as identity in a time of consumerism, privacy in an
era of surveillance, interfacing of humans and machines, and the
relationship between real and virtual worlds. Hershman Leeson was
awarded the ZKM Siemens Media Art Price in 1995 and the d.velop
digital art award in 2010. Her work is, among others, in the
collections of the MoMA in New York, the Tate Modern in London,
the ZKM | Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe and the Hess Art
Collection. A major exhibition of her work will be presented at
the Kunsthalle Bremen, in 2012.