Her time capsule provides a glimpse into the process of creating this monumental film project and contains organizational timelines that chart how the film was realized, the timing of getting the footage and acquiring images, the projected completion and distribution schedules, the sound and video timelines, and graphic timelines from 1970-2009 that define histories. Additionally, Now & When offers local audiences a chance to view clips of !Women Art Revolution before it premieres at MOMA in New York.

The Guerilla Girls are in the revolution- are you?

The entire exhibition is based on the idea of “Time Capsules” as a way to capture history and memory, and is housed in both the Main and Grove Street SFAC galleries. Fellow contributors include The San Francisco Bureau of Urban Secrets, Taro Hattori, and Margaret Tedesco and Matt Borruso, among many others. The Main Gallery on Van Ness, where the !WAR installationis housed,  is open Wednesday-Saturday from 12-5, and the Window Installation Site at 155 Grove Street is available for viewing 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

!WAR IS GOING TO TORONTO!

The livingblog is bursting at its virtual seams with excitement! Pregnant for forty years, !Women Art Revolution’s journey has just begun. Be sure to follow the film on Twitter and Facebook as well as over here to get updates and news as it unfolds and access to allll kinds of content that we have in the works. And if you’ll be in Canada on September 12, come and witness the revolution!

The newest recipient of the d.velop digital art award!

When you read the statement by the [ddaa] jury, which this year included Kelli Dipple, curator for Intermedia art at the Tate Modern, Dr. Norbert Nobis, associate director of the Sprengel Museum in Hannover, Stephen Kovats, artistic director, Transmediale, Berlin, Germany, Prof. Dr. Wulf Herzogenrath, director of the Kunsthalle Bremen, and Wolf Lieser, gallery owner and director of the Digital Art Museum in Berlin, you can see why this award is so well-deserved:

Lynn Hershman Leeson has been at the forefront of new media art since the 70s, developing fluency in digital technologies as they evolved. A pivotal artist in the context of feminist discourse and a pioneer in interactive, computer and net-based media arts, Hershman Leeson has worked prolifically in mixed-media, photography, performance, digital art, video, film and interactive media.

Over the last four decades, Hershman Leeson has drawn on the fields of visual art, film and popular culture, making use of digital tools and cinematic metaphors to mirror society’s shifting ideas on identity, memory and history, as mediated through technology. Using social contexts and media platforms to rigorously examine issues related to consumerism, privacy, surveillance and the process by which personal power emerges.

You can read the rest of the jury’s statement, which includes a fantastic breakdown of the trajectory of Lynn’s innovations, accomplishments, and accolades, at the  [ddaa] website. Congratulations, Lynn!

This group show has special significance because, according to the SFAC press release,

2010 marks the 40th anniversary of the SFAC Gallery, and this exhibition draws its
inspiration from a time capsule project produced by the Gallery in 1990. This previous
capsule contained small works by artists such as the Gorilla Girls and Karen Finley that
responded to the actions of Senator Jesse Helms, the NEA, and issues surrounding
censorship. The capsule was transported by protestors down Van Ness Street in front of
City Hall, and ceremoniously buried in the empty lot next to the Gallery’s then home at
155 Grove Street. As originally intended, it was exhumed five years later and the
contents were exhibited as a reminder of recent cultural and political struggles.

Along with work by Guillermo Gomez Pena, Gay Outlaw, and many others, Lynn’s !WAR timeline is a multimedia collection tracing the trajectory of the filmmaking process since Lynn began 42 years ago. There will also be an opportunity to view a few clips from the film before its premiere, which makes this an event not to be missed! The show runs through September 4th, be sure to schedule it into your summer vacation.

Enjoy!

Lynn with Whitworth Gallery Director Maria Balshaw (And Roberta)

Lynn with Roberta: Graph to Early Signs of Stress #7 (1978)

Dr. Alison Rowley of Liverpool John Moores University at Lynn's Touched Talk. Lynn showed a rough cut of !WAR

Roberta's Multiples

While Eyjafjallajokull has been belching fire and smoke across the European continent, stopping planes in their tracks, Lynn has necessarily had to make some changes to her agenda. Both of her upcoming events in England have been rescheduled to accommodate the angry volcano. Here are the details:

First, her “Touched Talk”, which was scheduled for today as part of the ramp-up to the Liverpool Biennial, has been moved to May 12. If you haven’t bought tickets yet, they aren’t available on the “Touched Talk” website at this moment, but we’ll make sure to let you know if they’ve sold out and when any remaining tickets are available! This will be an unprecedented chance to see !Women Art Revolution! a (formerly) secret history, in progress.

Next up: “The Complete Roberta Breitmore Symposium”, which was previously scheduled for April 24 at the  University of Manchester Whitworth Art Gallery, will now occur on May 15. This is the exhibition tour and panel discussion featuring Lynn, Jackie Stacey, and Maria Balshaw, and it is FREE. Again, space is at a premium, so if you’d like to attend, contact the gallery immediately. No really, this second. Email events.whitworth@manchester.ac.uk or call 0161 275 7450.

Anxious to use artificial intelligent robots to improve the world, Rosetta Stone (Tilda Swinton), a bio-geneticist, devises a recipe through which she can download her own DNA into a “live” brew she is growing in her computer.

The Cover of Jackie Stacey's The Cinematic Life of the Gene: A Still From Teknolust

So begins the synopsis of Teknolust, Lynn’s independent science fiction film about love in the age of cloning. It is the subject, along with other classic films like Alien: Resurrection and Gattaca, of feminist theorist Jackie Stacey’s new book The Cinematic Life of the Gene.

Published just this year by Duke University Press, The Cinematic Life of the Gene combines cinematic, scientific, and cultural theory through a feminist lens and

argues that as a cultural technology of imitation, cinema is uniquely situated to help us theorize “the genetic imaginary,” the constellation of fantasies that genetic engineering provokes.

In Teknolust, Tilda Swinton plays virtual-cyborg clones that dance, watch films, seduce men, and drive Smart Cars. That sounds like a “constellation of fantasies”, all right.

Ruby, Marine and Olive in Teknolust

Jackie Stacey will be participating with Lynn in The Complete Roberta Breitmore Symposium, chaired by Maria Balshaw at Manchester University’s Whitworth Gallery this April 24. Teknolust and Conceiving Ada , Lynn’s other film about early programmer Ada Lovelace, are available for purchase on Amazon and will be re-released this fall through Microcinema International.

Roberta's Physical Stance

Roberta Breitmore may have been exorcised in 1978, but she abides, in both physical and virtual form. We here at the livingblog are ecstatic to announce two upcoming opportunities to further explore the worlds of Roberta Breitmore. The best part? Lynn herself will be present for both!

Roberta's Camouflage

Roberta's Interim Driver's License

The first takes place tomorrow, March 27, at SF Camerawork in San Francisco. As part of the exhibition “The Future Lasts Forever”, the gallery is premiering “24-Hour Roberta”, a brand new performance in real time featuring Lynn’s avatar Roberta Ware. From 12-5Pm PST, gallery visitors can actually drive the avatar as she travels through the virtual world of Second Life. Can’t be there? Fear not! That’s only five hours, and that means there are nineteen more to catch. You can follow Roberta Ware through her Second Life derive by searching for her avatar, or find her at the Dante Hotel (in Second Life, of course), beginning at 5pm PST and every two hours thereafter.

For those livingblog followers residing across the pond, the Whitworth Gallery at the University of Manchester will be hosting “The Complete Roberta Breitmore Symposium” on April 24.  Featuring Lynn, feminist cultural theorist Jackie Stacey, and Whitworth director Maria Balshaw, this event will be held in conjunction with the gallery’s ongoing exhibition “The Complete Roberta Breitmore”, recently purchased by the gallery in its final edition. It begins at 2PM with a tour of the exhibition led by Lynn, and continues from 3-5PM with the symposium. Amazingly, this event is free, and as such is bound to fill up quickly. Act now to reserve space! Email events.whitworth@manchester.ac.uk or call 0161 275 7450 to make sure you don’t miss out.