Lynn Hershman Leeson, director of "Teknolust" and "Borderline Fractures," a documentary on Guillermo Gomez-Peña, is one of this year's Forum for Contemporary Thought Visiting Artists. Internationally renowned for her work as a multimedia artist, Hershman Leeson experiments with all forms of media, especially photography, film, performances and installations, to expose and confront issues of contemporary, technology-infused identity.
Cavalier Daily: In looking through some of your work, what's most impressive is its innovation. Where do you get your ideas? What are your influences?
Lynn Hershman Leeson: Ideas just happen when you work. Some influences are Akira Kurasawa, Billy Wilder, Yves Klein, Cezanne, Emma Goldman and Tina Modotti.
CD: Where did the idea for "Teknolust" come from?
LHL: I was trying to do a film called "The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein." I just updated it to contemporary times, changed the genders and dealt with contemporary issues.
CD: Why did you decide to use 24P digital video?
LHL: It gave it a hyper real comic book look I was after.
CD: Much of your work deals with the dehumanization inherent in technology, while at the same time embracing the benefits technology offers. How do you deal with this paradox in your life as opposed to your art?
LHL: It is a paradox. I suppose we have to become friendly and embrace technology and not fear it.
CD: What made you decide to do a documentary on Guillermo Gomez-Peña?
LHL: He's an interesting person, what more do you need?
CD: A lot of your work, as well as that of Gomez-Peña's, deals with issues of identity. Gomez-Peña's work seems to deal more with a nationalistic schizophrenia, whereas yours, at least in "Teknolust" and some of your "Phantom Limb" photographs, seems more concerned with a technological schizophrenia. Gomez-Peña offers a kind of solution or prophecy -- hybridization -- at the end of "Borderline Fractures." Where do you see our "technological schizophrenia" (for lack of a better term) leading us in the near future?
LHL: I'm not sure. I do think there is a split both in the borders of humanity and technology. We are at a critical point in evolution, where we have to consider what the next level of human is.
CD: What kind of stuff are you working on now?
LHL: I'm still trying to do the Frankenstein project, and a few more weird projects.
For more information on Hershman Leeson, visit her Web site at www.lynnhershman.com. Her lecture, "Pandora's Bots and Reproductive Rights in an Age of Digital and Human Sampling," on Web design and the bot that lives on her Web site, will take place Friday at 1 p.m. in Clemons 201. She will be present at Friday's 7 p.m. screening of "Teknolust" at Regal Cinema, and also for Saturday's 10 p.m. screening of "Borderline Fractures" at Vinegar Hill Theater.
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