Video Art and Social Intervention: The Identities, Avatars, and Algorithms of Lynn Hershman Leeson

Video Art and Social Intervention: The Identities, Avatars, and Algorithms of Lynn Hershman Leeson
Recorded at BAMPFA on Thursday, April 6, 2023
For over fifty years, Bay Area-based feminist artist Lynn Hershman Leeson has repurposed a range of media-from comic books to photographs to film, from Second Life to artificial intelligence to virtual reality-exploring the dynamics of self-making and self-surveillance. Here she shares some of her most recent work on the politics of algorithmic life, including her recent award-winning installation at the 2022 Venice Biennale.
Over the last five decades, artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson has been internationally acclaimed for her art and films. Cited as one of the most influential media artists, Hershman Leeson is widely recognized for her innovative work investigating 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. Artwork by Hershman Leeson is featured in the public collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Zentrum fur Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe, Germany; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Tate Modern, London; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; in addition to many celebrated private collections.
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Arts + Design Thursdays: Video Art in Context
How have artists made use of the screen? What are the opportunities and hazards of using the screen as a vehicle for connection?
A stunning roster of artists, curators, designers, and critics consider these questions and more. Developed from mixed media experiments of the 1960s through to new digital and virtual aesthetics of our current moment, video and media artists cross-pollinate amongst many art forms-including cinema, photography, painting, sculpture, dance, theater, performance art, design, and even in literature. In addition to experimenting artistically, video artists have also intervened politically, often addressing pressing issues such as climate change, racial equity, gendered power, and the ethics of technology itself. Join us every Thursday noon to hear from cross-disciplinary speakers. For more information, visit bampfa.org/pro...
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This public course and lecture series is funded entirely by a generous grant from the Kramlich Art Foundation, including funds for event programming and the tuition and salaries of Graduate Student Instructors.
Arts + Design Thursdays is made possible thanks to support from the Big Ideas Courses Program in the College of Letters & Science at UC Berkeley. In-kind technical support and presentation offered by BAMPFA and the UC Berkeley College of Letters & Science, Division of Arts & Humanities.