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The artist’s far-seeing experiments with digital avatars and viral antibodies help us better understand ourselves I first met Lynn Hershman Leeson at a restaurant in North Beach, San Francisco, four years ago to the day as I write this. My mom was dying then; death rips a hole in time, cutting through the calendar. That afternoon, the sky was an aching blue. The artist’s hair was a buoyant, red-brown bouffant and a ring of keys encircled her wrist. A handbag lay at our feet and, from it, wrist jingling, she retrieved a painting by Yves Klein. The size of a postage stamp, it glowed in the artist’s trademark royal blue. Hershman Leeson spoke of Klein’s quest for the sky and the sea, for something boundless, as well as of utopian values, the internet and the online virtual world Second Life, which hosts an archive of her work (Life Squared, 2007). Players of Second Life can tour a re-creation of Hershman Leeson’s installation The Dante Hotel (1972–73), which ran for nearly ten months in Room 47 of the titular inn. Visitors could ask for the key at the front desk and, upon entering the room, would find two women in bed: wax figures, whose faces were both modelled on Hershman Leeson’s. Elton John played on the radio and a recording of Molly Bloom’s softly moaned dialogue from James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) could be heard in the background. With its undertones of sex, voyeurism and violence, the work was eventually impounded after a startled visitor called the police. Decades later, a team of engineers at Stanford University reconstructed the installation for two exhibitions in which Life Squared was accessible to both gallery visitors and players of Second Life. These virtual viewers could visit a room containing documentation of the original installation, wander through the hotel’s floor plan and enter galleries archiving Hershman Leeson’s other work. They might also encounter the artist, who would spend time in the virtual installation as an avatar named Ssofft Ware. Yet, even in its original incarnation, as an immersive staged environment, The Dante Hotel operated as a virtual space before the term was ever applied to the digital realm. Lynn Hershman Leeson, Roberta Construction Chart [#2](/culture/new/2) , 1975, chromogenic print, 41 × 51 cm During the 1970s, Hershman Leeson and many other women artists worked outside of traditional galleries and museums, in part because the art world sidelined them. However, unconventional spaces also allowed Hershman Leeson to explore new media and new themes. In 1975, for instance, she staged a work in a casino, Lady Luck: A Double Portrait of Las Vegas, in which a circus performer and an identically dressed wax model took to the craps tables. The human woman, betting on intuition, lost all her money; the wax figure used randomly generated numbers and won. For ‘Roberta Breitmore’ (1973–78), her longest-running project, Hershman Leeson inhabited an alter ego for several years. Breitmore had her own driving licence, address and therapist, and sought roommates and boyfriends in newspaper classifieds. Documentation of the series includes a photograph detailing the paint-by-numbers guide to Breitmore’s make-up, alongside instructions on how to act like a woman. Long before LARPing, Breitmore was a vehicle for Hershman Leeson – and, eventually, the other women who performed the role – to pose questions about female identity and the performance of gender. Doubles recur throughout her work: as avatars, alter egos, role re-enactments and restagings. The artist even added to Life Squared an avatar of Breitmore, who talks to visitors in the game. The day we met in San Francisco, Hershman Leeson told me that Second Life had begun as a virtual collectivist society, but had become gradually more sinister, populated by avatars of prostitutes and murderers, mirroring the internet’s descent into capitalist exploitation. Now that, in the midst of a pandemic, our lives have contracted to our screens – a contradictory conflu
The artist’s far-seeing experiments with digital avatars and viral antibodies help us better understand ourselves I first met Lynn Hershman Leeson at a restaurant in North Beach, San Francisco, four years ago to the day as I write this. My mom was dying then; death rips a hole in time, cutting through the calendar. That afternoon, the sky was an aching blue. The artist’s hair was a buoyant, red-brown bouffant and a ring of keys encircled her wrist. A handbag lay at our feet and, from it, wrist jingling, she retrieved a painting by Yves Klein. The size of a postage stamp, it glowed in the artist’s trademark royal blue. Hershman Leeson spoke of Klein’s quest for the sky and the sea, for something boundless, as well as of utopian values, the internet and the online virtual world Second Life, which hosts an archive of her work (Life Squared, 2007). Players of Second Life can tour a re-creation of Hershman Leeson’s installation The Dante Hotel (1972–73), which ran for nearly ten months in Room 47 of the titular inn. Visitors could ask for the key at the front desk and, upon entering the room, would find two women in bed: wax figures, whose faces were both modelled on Hershman Leeson’s. Elton John played on the radio and a recording of Molly Bloom’s softly moaned dialogue from James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) could be heard in the background. With its undertones of sex, voyeurism and violence, the work was eventually impounded after a startled visitor called the police. Decades later, a team of engineers at Stanford University reconstructed the installation for two exhibitions in which Life Squared was accessible to both gallery visitors and players of Second Life. These virtual viewers could visit a room containing documentation of the original installation, wander through the hotel’s floor plan and enter galleries archiving Hershman Leeson’s other work. They might also encounter the artist, who would spend time in the virtual installation as an avatar named Ssofft Ware. Yet, even in its original incarnation, as an immersive staged environment, The Dante Hotel operated as a virtual space before the term was ever applied to the digital realm. Lynn Hershman Leeson, Roberta Construction Chart [#2](/culture/new/2) , 1975, chromogenic print, 41 × 51 cm During the 1970s, Hershman Leeson and many other women artists worked outside of traditional galleries and museums, in part because the art world sidelined them. However, unconventional spaces also allowed Hershman Leeson to explore new media and new themes. In 1975, for instance, she staged a work in a casino, Lady Luck: A Double Portrait of Las Vegas, in which a circus performer and an identically dressed wax model took to the craps tables. The human woman, betting on intuition, lost all her money; the wax figure used randomly generated numbers and won. For ‘Roberta Breitmore’ (1973–78), her longest-running project, Hershman Leeson inhabited an alter ego for several years. Breitmore had her own driving licence, address and therapist, and sought roommates and boyfriends in newspaper classifieds. Documentation of the series includes a photograph detailing the paint-by-numbers guide to Breitmore’s make-up, alongside instructions on how to act like a woman. Long before LARPing, Breitmore was a vehicle for Hershman Leeson – and, eventually, the other women who performed the role – to pose questions about female identity and the performance of gender. Doubles recur throughout her work: as avatars, alter egos, role re-enactments and restagings. The artist even added to Life Squared an avatar of Breitmore, who talks to visitors in the game. The day we met in San Francisco, Hershman Leeson told me that Second Life had begun as a virtual collectivist society, but had become gradually more sinister, populated by avatars of prostitutes and murderers, mirroring the internet’s descent into capitalist exploitation. Now that, in the midst of a pandemic, our lives have contracted to our screens – a contradictory conflu
This thesis focuses on Lynn Hershman Leeson’s performance, Roberta Breitmore (1974–1978), and examines how, through the steps of the performance, the piece’s fictitious title character became a living resident of San Francisco. It will explore how Roberta Breitmore mirrored her lived society to become both a “real” woman and a case study in defining female identity. In this research, Roberta Breitmore the character finds her place not only in the culture of her time, but in the history of art, feminism, and feminist art.
This thesis focuses on Lynn Hershman Leeson’s performance, Roberta Breitmore (1974–1978), and examines how, through the steps of the performance, the piece’s fictitious title character became a living resident of San Francisco. It will explore how Roberta Breitmore mirrored her lived society to become both a “real” woman and a case study in defining female identity. In this research, Roberta Breitmore the character finds her place not only in the culture of her time, but in the history of art, feminism, and feminist art.
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