The Julia Stoschek Foundation in Düsseldorf, Germany is currently presenting Lynn Hershman Leeson: Are Our Eyes Targets?, the new media art pioneer’s first solo exhibition in the city. The centrepiece of the show is her magnum opus, The Electronic Diaries of Lynn Hershman Leeson 1984–2019 — which celebrates its 40th anniversary in 2024. Beyond this, the art exhibition features other video pieces, collage art, and interactive installation works, exploring Hershman Leeson’s groundbreaking practice at the intersection of art and technology in depth. The show extends from April 11, 2024 – February 2, 2025, and is curated by Lisa Long, artistic director of the Julia Stoschek Foundation. Long joins STIR in an interview to discuss Hershman Leeson’s work.
The American artist is an important name in new media art and video art in particular. Her Electronic Diaries, originally begun on a whim in 1984, is a deeply affecting work that grew in length and scope, and presents her as a complex individual experiencing the joys, sorrows, and challenges of life. Some may find Hershman Leeson’s raw honesty unpalatable, but as she points out in an early section of the work, the truth is often harder to digest than any fantasy. Long tells STIR, “The Electronic Diaries of Lynn Hershman Leeson 1984-2019 is one of the artist’s most important works, even if the series is technologically not her most advanced. What is so impressive about the series is that it tells the story of a simple power switch: a woman who picks up a camera and begins to speak about her life, confessing some of her innermost feelings and experiences. In doing so she regains control over her narrative and is able to emancipate herself from the preconceived notions others might have of her.”
When the curator mentions that Hershman Leeson’s Electronic Diaries is not among her most technologically advanced multimedia art pieces, she is likely alluding to works such as Infinity Engine (2018), which is explored towards the end of the artist’s diaries. This installation, partially commissioned by the Zentrum für Kunst und Medien (ZKM), Karlsruhe in Germany saw the multimedia artist build a functional genetics laboratory, complete with lab reports on the latest developments in the world of genetic engineering. There was even a ‘capture room’, in which facial recognition software was deployed to capture images of users, revealing the particulars of their DNA and adding it to an evolving repository.
Returning to Hershman Leeson’s diaries, her pathbreaking digital art features sections where the new media artist reflects on how the evolution of media and technology shapes our existence. Among other highly prescient ruminations, she also highlights the disturbing tryst between consuming and endorsing violence in media (particularly the news) and causing violence in one’s surroundings.
It is fair to claim that Hershman Leeson was several decades ahead of her time, for she saw the potential of media to subvert itself. This can be evidenced clearly through the conscious manner in which she deployed digital technologies. For example, in her diaries, Hershman Leeson’s portraiture of herself and the other women her camera encounters is consciously tailored to defy one-dimensional narratives, as they are told by a primarily masculine media engine in the United States. To quote Long, “The (Electronic Diaries) enable us to grasp how these tools and structures shape the understanding of ourselves and each other, and how we create and circulate images of ourselves in the world.” The art exhibition at the Julia Stoschek Foundation explores the oeuvre of one of the most important women artists in new media art, and a name that carries great weight in contemporary American art.