the livingblog

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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Original Receipt from the Dante Hotel (1973-4)

This Saturday the 14 of November, the School of Visual Arts in New York City is hosting Media Modes, a graduate student conference dedicated to emerging theorists and their scholarship on art and technology. Of course, no event of this kind would be complete without addressing Lynn’s oeuvre, especially one including a session entitled “Body, Identity, and the Virtual Space”! This session is one of two (the other being “Spatial Experience and Social Networking”) which kick off the day, and presenting on Lynn’s work is up-and-coming critical writer and curator Jaime Austin. A 2008 graduate of California College of Art’s School of Curatorial Practice, Austin will act as an assistant curator for the 2010 01SJ Biennial, where Lynn has also, in the past, exhibited innovative work in new media. Her paper is entitled “Space, Identity, and Embodiment—On Lynn Hershman Leeson’s The Dante Hotel and Life Squared”. She is the only presenter from a West-Coast school in attendance, although other presenters hail from prestigious programs on both a national and international scale.

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