SecondLife: art and archive; thoughts about Lynn Hershman Leeson

Symposium:

• ISEA2009: 15th International Symposium on Electronic Art

• Interactive storytelling and memory building

• SecondLife: art and archive; thoughts about Lynn Hershman Leeson

• Cyril Thomas
• Paris X Nanterre

Venue(s):

• Waterfront Hall, Belfast, Ireland

• Abstract

  Can Lynn Hershman Leeson’s ‘Life Squared’, displayed in Montreal in 2007 as part of an exhibition entitled “Les vases communicants-e-art’, be interpreted as the reenactment, in the context of SecondLife, of a performance dating back to 1973-74 in which the artist staged moments in the life of her imaginary alter ego, ‘Roberta Breitmore’, at San Francisco’s Dante Hotel?

  Rewriting the history of a performance                                                                                                The dialectical interaction of ‘self’ and ‘play’ play-acting and performance, has been central to Hershman’s artistic development since the 1970s. All through her career, she has devised imaginary characters based on real-life experiences of hers; she has also used various pseudonyms such as Prudence Juris, Herbert Goode and Gay Abandon. Aliases have featured prominently in her work as a visual artist since her student years; for instance, a sculpture entitled Self-Portrait as Another Person, dated 1969, has repeatedly been used as a prop in later performances involving Roberta Breitmore.

Category:

• Paper