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.

The Guggenheim Forum will host a live chat tomorrow (Thursday), from 2-3PM EST. You also can join the ongoing discussion, which covers subjects like sustainability, materiality, and the new economies of art, at any time this week! Just subscribe to the Guggenheim Forum’s RSS feed and get a heavy-hitting dose of  intellectual inspiration, right in your inbox.

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!

An inspiring film about freedom of expression and the influence of the feminist art movement on American culture, this groundbreaking documentary film combines forty years of stunning interviews with archival footage and a searing Riot-Grrrl-steeped soundtrack to tell the story of feminism and art:

!Women Art Revolution elaborates the relationship of the Feminist Art Movement to the 1960s anti-war and civil rights movements and explains how historical events, such as the all-male protest exhibition against the invasion of Cambodia, sparked the first of many feminist actions against major cultural institutions. The film details major developments in women’s art of the 1970s, including the first feminist art education programs, political organizations and protests, alternative art spaces such as the A.I.R. Gallery and Franklin Furnace in New York and the Los Angeles Women’s Building, publications such as Chrysalis and Heresies, and landmark exhibitions, performances, and installations of public art that changed the entire direction of art.

We here at the livingblog are proud to announce the official launch of the !WAR home page, as well as a plethora of ways to connect to the film, which has an anticipated release date of Fall 2010. The top sidebar on the right side of this page can direct you on how to get involved, and in the meantime, here’s a clip to tide you over, featuring Suzanne Lacy and Leslie Labowitz discussing their collaboration In Mourning and In Rage, and Judy Chicago discussing the first feminist art class at Fresno State University in 1970:

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

Tilda Swinton in stills from Conceiving Ada (l), and Teknolust (r)

Along with a program of Lynn’s groundbreaking experimental videos, re-releases of Conceiving Ada (1997) and Teknolust (2002), will also be available for purchase through Microcinema International’s online store. As Microcinema International’s newsletter has quoted,

For almost fifty years, Lynn Hershman Leeson has created work that has challenged and inspired audiences.

What better way to whet your appetite for !Women Art Revolution, Lynn’s new and highly anticipated documentary, then by taking a journey through her projects past?

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.

With a missive like that, it’s unsurprising that  you will be able to find Roberta Breitmore, in some of her many iterations, alongside works by other Bay Area talents. This past fall, An Autobiography of the San Francisco Bay Area Part 1: San Francisco Plays Itself showcased works by Annie Liebowitz, Catherine Opie, and Katy Grannan. The opening of Part 2 runs from 5-8 PM tonight.

Despite this seeming coup, and the fact that these contemporary art centers are investing in even more female artists than ever, there is a persistent ambivalence: Jerry Saltz has recently criticized the MoMA’s lack of female artists in the painting and sculpture galleries, which he believes is a clear falsification of the story of Modernism.

!WOMEN ART REVOLUTION a (formerly) secret history is slated for completion in Fall of 2010. The launch of the film’s official website is imminent!

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.

Futurist Life Redux was programmed by film archivist Andrew Lampert from the Anthology Film Archives and Performa curator Lana Wilson and acts as a coda to the Anthology Film Archives’ special futurist film program, “The Polyexpressive Symphony”. Film had a very specific role in the Futurist movement, according to an artforum.com article from November 2:

Seeking to liberate film from those narrative set pieces still beholden to the theater, the Futurists clamored for a cinema indebted solely to its own visual and aesthetic qualities. Those qualities—violent jumps of time and space, flux and dynamic mobility, conflations of different senses in one aesthetic idiom—already reflected, even epitomized, profoundly Futurist imperatives. In theory, film constituted the “ideal” art with which the Futurists would slay the musty conventions of “passéiste” culture.

Between this commission and the Media Modes Conference where a recent MA presented her thesis on Lynn, mid-November was a cornucopia of Lynn’s work in New York City. But wait- there’s more! Now showing at PS 1 as of November 1, 100 Years (version #2, ps1, nov 2009) features seven, that’s right, seven, images of Roberta Breitmore (1974-78), Which makes sense, because the exhibition represents ” influential moments in the past century of performance art history”. The exhibition is on view until April 2010, so you can’t use holiday chaos as an excuse not to see it. Make it a New Year’s resolution, if you must.

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.

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

Indeed, Lynn was there for a Sunday screening of her scifi cult film Teknolust (2002), and was joined by the film’s star, the incredible Tilda Swinton, who was honored with an entire program of the festival, “The Worlds of Tilda Swinton”, dedicated to her work. She and Lynn have a truly beautiful collaborative relationship, leading to several significant art and film projects including Conceiving Ada (1997), Curing the Vampire (2008), and Strange Culture (2008). Swinton, with her characteristic and articulate grace and charm, has said of this collaboration,

“Lynn Hershman Leeson’s universe is the super-radical and unstoppably empowered kindergarten of all our wildest dreams: where no limit exists to our optimism and our curiosity, where even our intellects can bask in glee and play…Working alongside her is one of the true delights of my life.”

If you missed this event, don’t despair! Read an interview with Tilda in the Houston Chronicle about the many pots she’s stirring in the world of independent cinema, and check out this clip from Teknolust. If it doesn’t put a smile on your face, I don’t know what will.