the livingblog

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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In 1909, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti published his Futurist Manifesto, ushering in an interdisciplinary, revolutionary art movement that spanned painting, sculpture, architecture, literature, film, and music. A century later, Lynn has created Customized Marinetti, a new video debuting in the Futurist Film Festival at Performa 09 this November.

Performa is a performance-centered biennial which acts, like Portland, Oregon’s annual Time Based Art Festival, as a state-of-the-union laboratory for the many iterations of performance. Transforming the city through the collaboration of a multitude of curators, institutions, mediums, and disciplines, this year’s Performa uses Futurism as a jumping-off point, which according to the event’s website,

will re-imagine the past, with historical reconstructions such as the legendary “Intonarumori” and also look to the future, with its focus on new media and the infinite possibilities of generating new directions for the visual and performing arts of the new century, as imagined by today’s artists.

Lynn certainly has no hesitation when it comes to re-imagining the past. From reframing past performances and installations to creating and recording narratives of historical figures, her process is akin to a gathering trajectory, where past fuels present and future with a speed and boldness that would make any Futurist proud. As she quotes, “Time has a way of revising truth, particularly when one has unlimited perceptions of an experience.”

The schedule for the Futurist Film Festival is not yet available, but check back for updates- New Yorkers and those who will be in New York in November, don’t miss it!

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