ARTSpeak: Lynn Hershman Leeson — CANCELLED

!Women Art Revolution, graphic for the 2012 film.

Phantom Limb, Reach, 1986, photograph, 101.6 x 76.2 cm.

Giggling Machine, Self Portrait as Blonde, 1968, wax, wig, makeup, feathers, plexiglass, wood, 41.9 x 41.9 x 33 cm.

In 1972, Leeson installed several of her Machines alongside more conventional drawings in an exhibition at the Berkeley Museum of Art. The sculptures of female heads were rigged to play recordings of the artist breathing, talking, and laughing when a hidden motion sensor was triggered. When she returned to her installation a few days later, she discovered the curators had removed the sculptures.

Home Front, Cycles of Contention,

Breathing Machine,1967, wax, wig, glass eye, makeup, plexiglass, wood, sensors, sound, 32 x 42 x 42 cm.

Lynn Hershman Leeson. Photo by Lisa K. Blatt.

THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED.

ARTSpeak 2016-2017 is an interdisciplinary program presented by the departments of Fine Arts and History of Art that consists of lectures and a panel discussion on the theme of The Presence of Art History in the Mind of the Artist. The theme explores the impact of art history on the contemporary artist’s studio practice.

On April 6, ARTSpeak presents filmmaker and artist Lynn Hershman Leeson lecturing on her work, which has received international acclaim over the last five decades. Her innovative investigates issues that are now recognized as key to the workings of society: the relationship between humans and technology, identity, surveillance, and the use of media as a tool of empowerment against censorship and political repression. Leeson is considered among the most influential contemporary media artists and has made pioneering contributions in photography, video, film, performance, installation, and interactive as well as net-based media art.

Her activist films on injustice within the art world and society at large have been praised worldwide. Women Art Revolution! won first prize in the Montreal Festival for Films on Art and hailed by the Museum of Modern Art as one of the three best documentaries of 2012. Holland Cotter of The New York Times called it “the most comprehensive documentary ever made on the feminist art movement.” Her 2007 film Strange Culture, a documentary that examined the case of an artist suspected of bioterrorism, was deemed “the perfect balance of form and content” by the Times and called “a brilliant and moving examination of fear and its manipulation” by The Nation.

The ARTSpeak event is made possible in part through funding by the FIT Student-Faculty Corporation, the School of Art and Design, and the School of Liberal Arts.

Leeson’s film Teknolust is also being screened as part of the Film and Media Screening Series on Tuesday, April 4, at 6:30 pm. Click here for details.