the livingblog

This evening, March 2, join us at Intersection for the Arts for “Clips and Conversation”, part of their Open Process series and an unprecedented opportunity presented by Bay Area Women in Film and Media! Not only will participants get a sneak peek of clips from TWO forthcoming documentaries about feminist art- Lynn’s !Women Art Revolution: a (formerly!) secret history, and Joan Braderman’s The Heretics- but they’ll also participate in a post-screening forum with Lynn, The Heretics producer Crescent Diamond,  BAWIFM President Simone Nelson, and other exciting academic and artistic voices. Considering !WAR won’t be released until Fall 2010, this will truly be an evening to remember and a chance to get in on the ground floor of the dialogue this project will generate across the art world. Here at the livingblog, we hope to collect and disseminate this dialogue as much as we can. In the meantime, take yourself here for more details.  Of course, for BAWIFM members, the event is free.

In an era of digital and biological sampling, life – especially artificial intelligence based life is self replicating and autonomous, and utilizes sophisticated apparatus to proclaim the erasure the death itself.

So reads an excerpt from Lynn’s essay “Evolutionary Suicide”, commissioned for the current, ongoing Guggenheim Forum, Beyond Material Worth. The essay, along with the writings of other respected intellectuals from a wide range of fields, will be included in the “Declarations” portion of the Forum, concerning the notion of progress and how it applies to their investigations and bodies of work.

Agent Ruby (2002-), an artifical intelligence agent with the capacity to develop her memory and knowledge base by interacting with users.

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As you may or may not have noticed, there have been a few changes to the digital face of the livingblog lately. In anticipation (and celebration!) of Lynn’s new documentary project, !Women Art Revolution: a (formerly!) secret history, we’ve been doing some renovations!

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Lynn was recently spotted at Tosca Cafe in North Beach, San Francisco, with legendary filmmaker, author, and artist John Waters. Along with legendary cartoonist Spain Rodriguez and Barbie Nation filmmaker Susan Stern, they were there celebrating the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s seventy-fifth birthday. For more details, read all about it in Catherine Bigelow’s column in the San Francisco Chronicle. And how was YOUR weekend?

Microcinema International has announced its catalog of releases for 2010, which will offer not one, not two, but THREE ways to get your paws on a piece of Lynn’s cinematic oeuvre!

Lynn Hershman Leeson in stills from Binge (l), and First Person Plural (r), both from The Electronic Diaries Series

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Lynn’s work defies categorization. Starting tonight, January 7, and running through April 17, an installation of Lynn’s pioneering Second Life environment and 2006 re-creation of Roberta Breitmore as an avatar will be on view as part of S.F. Camerawork’s 35th anniversary exhibition, An Autobiography of the San Francisco Bay Area Part 2: The Future Lasts Forever.

Roberta Breitmore's avatar in Life Squared: Life to the Power of N

According to the gallery,

The Future Lasts Forever utilizes the notion of autobiography as a way to explore the work of contemporary artists who are using archival material, exploring persistent subject matter, and examining their own personal histories and the practical ways and means that surround art practice and preserve works for the future beyond the ephemeral exhibition model. To emphasize the exhibition’s autobiographical focus in egalitarian terms, accompanying text panels feature an articulation by each artist of their work. The cumulative effect of these projects serves to exemplify the evolution of a multifaceted and multicultural major American metropolitan region.

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As you might have heard, Lynn is currently in post-production on the documentary film !WOMEN ART REVOLUTION a (formerly) secret history, to be completed in Spring of 2010. The livingblog is thrilled to reveal the brand new trailer, hot off the Final Cut timeline!
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As you might recall from a previous livingblog post, Lynn was featured in this year’s futurist-inspired Performa biennial of new and time-based media. Her piece Customized Marinetti (2009), which features en-masse, in-place jogging, moaning, and matching t-shirts emblazoned with the phrase IO NON SONO MARINETTI (I am not Marinetti), among other things, was commissioned specifically for the festival as part of Futurist Life Redux. According to the Performa website,

Inspired by the lost Futurist film Vita Futurista (Futurist Life, 1916), Futurist Life Redux is a new film featuring contributions by an incredible group of contemporary film and video artists—Trisha Baga, chameckilerner, Martha Colburn, Ben Coonley, George Kuchar, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Shana Moulton, Shannon Plumb, Aida Ruilova, Matthew Silver and Shoval Zohar (The Future), and Michael Smith—re-imagining the eleven segments of the original Futurist Life for the twenty-first century.

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Jeanne-Claude taught me about tenacity and courage, risk and scale. In the years that I worked with her, we often traveled to see farmers in Petaluma at 5:30 am, before they milked the cows. She  convinced them, with charm and humor, of the value of ephemeral art.

I remember a spiritual power in her generosity, humanaity,  inspiration and wit.

She passed away from a brain aneurism on Nov. 18, at the age of seventy-four.

The light in the air is a bit dimmer these days.

I will always miss her.

Well, for starters, the Houston Cinema Arts Society hosted its annual Cinema Arts Festival, a five-day celebration of innovative and inspiring media. Sounds like a place where Lynn might be found, no?

Lynn and husband George at an event honoring screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, part of the 2009 Houston Cinema Arts Festival

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