Published by New Museum. Edited with interview by Margot Norton. Foreword by Lisa Phillips. Text by Karen Archey, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Martine Syms.
For over 50 years, Lynn Hershman Leeson (born 1941) has created an innovative and prescient body of work that mines intersections between technology and the self. Known for her pioneering contributions to media art, Hershman Leeson has consistently worked in tandem with the latest technological developments from Artificial Intelligence to DNA programming, often anticipating many of the issues affecting society today. Twisted brings together a selection of the artist’s work in drawing, sculpture, video, photography, and interactive and net-based art, focusing on themes of transmutation, identity construction and the evolution of the cyborg. It includes some of Hershman Leeson’s most important projects, including the Breathing Machine sculptures; early drawings from the 1960s, many of which have never been shown; works from the Roberta Breitmore series (1970–79), perhaps her best-known project, in which she transformed her own identity into a fictional persona; selections from her Water Women series (1976–2010); and many more.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Edited by Sabine Himmelsbach. Text by Rudolf Frieling, Thomas Huber.
A New York Times critics' pick | Best Art Books 2019
At the center of this publication is artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson‘s (born 1941) installation The Infinity Engine, modeled after a genetics laboratory. Hershman Leeson, who divides her time between New York and San Francisco, has been examining the interplay of technology, media and identity since the 1960s, through the mediums of photography, film, video, objects and installations, computer-based art, software and performance.
Here, she shows how the boundaries between natural and artificial life are dissolving at an increasingly rapid pace in the age of synthetic biology, and explores how life itself can now be artificially shaped—from DNA manipulation, artificial human organs manufactured via 3D-bioprinting and antibody research to the use of DNA as a biological storage medium. Documenting these works through installation photographs of the artist’s exhibition at the HeK Basel, this volume also contains essays that offer both scientific context and insight into this trailblazing artist’s oeuvre and her current focus on biotechnology.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Edited by Peter Weibel. Text by Andreas Beitin, Pamela Lee, Peggy Phelan, Ruby Rich, Jeffrey Schnapp, Kyle Stephan, Kristine Stiles, Tilda Swinton, Peter Weibel. Interview by Hou Hanru, Laura Poitras.
American artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson (born 1941) is among the first and most influential of media artists. During the past five decades she has achieved pioneering work in the fields of photography, video, film, performance, installation, and interactive and net-based media art. Her works have been shown in over 200 large-scale exhibitions, and constitute parts of noteworthy museum and private collections. First working in drawing and sculpture, 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 character that she, and then three subsequent female personas, enacted in real time and space, using various artifacts of the period. Roberta Breitmore’s conceptual idea of fractured identity and multiplicity of contemporary life anticipated the exploration of surrogate identities that flourished in the digital and virtual worlds several decades later. Hershman Leeson’s investigation of identity and various modes of surveillance 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. In her most recent works, Hershman Leeson includes robots, mass communication media such as smart-phones, as well as the latest scientific developments in the fields of genetics and regenerative medicine, including 3D bioprinters that create human body parts. This first comprehensive monograph on Hershman Leeson’s work is compiled in close collaboration with the artist.
Lynn Hershman Leeson: Antibodies
Lynn Hershman Leeson: Civic Radar