Lynn Hershman (also known as Lynn Hershman-Leeson), currently a member of the San Francisco Film Commission and a professor at U.C. Davis, has been active force in the art world since the early ‘70s. Her work included pioneering efforts into simulated people and spaces that were, in effect, early experiments in virtual reality. This included the persona of Roberta Breitmore, a role assumed by different people as a living performance and simulation. For her groundbreaking "Hotel Room" series, she created environments in real living spaces that were meant to suggest the lives of imagined former tenants. She did some of the first work in computer multimedia, beginning with the very first interactive laser artdisk, Lorna, which she began in 1979 and completed in 1982.

Hershman has made 53 videos since 1984, yet only with her last two projects has she dived into the realm of feature length narratives made for theatrical release; first, with Conceiving Ada in 1997, and now, with her newest feature, Teknolust.

Her recurrent themes center on identity, technology, and the blurring boundaries of our modern, technological society, and the main characters of her art and film are inevitably strong women. Hershman’s lengthy, imaginative portfolio and probing ideas make her one of the more intriguing artists working in the Bay Area today.

I spoke to Hershman at the South of Market offices of her production company, Hotwire, where we talked about her past, her present project, and the future of local filmmaking.

Allen White: I’m here with Lynn Hershman-Leeson -- actually, I’m just calling you Lynn Hershman these days in my articles. Is that okay? You don’t care? Identity’s flexible.

Lynn Hershman: Identity is provisional.

AW: Could you summarize a little bit of what you’ve done before you got into filmmaking for some of the readers who don’t know your work?

LH: I started out as a painter, actually, and then a sculptor, and then I did installations and performance in the ‘70s, usually dealing with behavior, with personality; with personalities that don’t exist, with the idea of the line that blurs between what’s real and what isn’t. Hotel rooms that you could visit and see these remnants of characters in. And then in 1979 I made what is considered the first interactive laser disk, which is the precursor for CD-ROMs used as an artwork, so I did a lot of work that dealt with computer-based installations, but again, about characters that told stories and generally were female characters.

AW: So it’s fair to say that some of those themes that you started with are still being played out in your film work.

LH: Oh, yeah. I only have one idea. (laughs) They just look different if you do it as a photograph or a videodisk or a film.

AW: Can we explore the idea a little more?

LH: Well, it’s all about, again, the blur between reality and fiction, the idea of the dangers, the utopian and dystopian ideas of living in a technological environment dealing with issues such as invasion of privacy, biogenetic engineering -- real possibilities -- losing our sense of identity, as well as the new possibilities that come up from technology, like a kind of cumulative world voice, a different kind of community, a breaking down of previous boundaries, a potential enhancement of life, of living in a ubiquitous world of constant access. So it’s kind of that edge that we’re living in now. And we all have the responsibility to make choices that will enhance the planet in the future living with technology.

AW: You seem to be one of a group of artists that came out of the ‘70s that, in essence, was waiting for the computer, because you really couldn’t fully realize your ideas until the computer came along.

LH: Yeah, sort of -- I didn’t know it at the time. John Cage remade a piece by Marcel Duchamp, because the technological access wasn’t available at the time that Duchamp thought of it. And Duchamp said that it took 50 years for his work to be seen. A lot of the ideas -- about storage, about hard drives, about interactivity -- really came out of the early performances of going through hotel rooms, and kind of veering from oneself, and the whole idea of a user-friendly voyeur were things that I wrote early on in the‘70s in describing virtual environments -- these hotel rooms that I was making. So I kind of maybe had some sort of sense that it was going to develop this way -- so, yes. (laughs)

AW: "Teknolust," seems to really thematically feel like a sequel, almost, to "Conceiving Ada." In what ways are they similar and in what ways are they different?

LH: How ["Teknolust"] was shot was different, using this 24-frame camera, using sets, shooting for 20 days, not six. The difference is instead of virtual sets, essentially they’re virtual actors, because of the same actor being in the set three or four times simultaneously. So, in that sense, the actor is the special effect, and the idea of this, like it was in Ada, was for the effects to be seamless, so that you think there are multiple actors rather than just one single one. Thematically I think it’s more about the future than recalling the past.

AW: So what is it about Tilda Swinton that fascinates you, since you continue to use her?

LH: We’re both immature. (laughs) We have a lot of fun together, and we have a good line of communication where she’ll do things without my saying anything that I would have wanted her to do, so I can relax a lot when she’s around. But I do think she’s a phenomenal actress, and I think I’m very lucky to get to work with her. I can’t imagine these particular parts that anybody else could do, and I can’t imagine anybody in the world that would be able to play the parts in Teknolust with the differentiation and subtlety that Tilda did.

AW: How much of your other casting do you do locally?

LH: All the other actors except for Jeremy Davies, James Urbaniak, and Thomas Jay Ryan, are local.

AW: Talk about your work on the SF Film Commission.

LH: We try to promote a better sense of film community. I’d like to figure out a way that we could bring more funding for local independent artists and filmmakers. We help support the festivals as they come through. So it’s really, for me, a kind of vehicle and tool to, wherever I can, give funding to people that I know to help to create more of a lively environment here. We’re just trying to figure out right now if it is at all possible to give commissions or to give individual grants, but certainly, we do give money to all the festivals here, and people need only apply. That’s something I didn’t know before I was on it. We try to really help local filmmakers, and I want to change the [Commission’s] name to "Film and Digital Arts," and also try to create parties and openings and events for local events filmmakers that open their films here -- just give more perks to people who live here who are working here in this field.

AW: Can the San Francisco and the Bay Area really be its own viable stand-alone feature film community outside of LA?

LH: You can find people to work with here. It’s not a matter of talent, ‘cause there is the talent here. The studio system tends to dominate a lot of this industry and production, but I think that people with obsession and masochistic tendencies can always find a way to do a film here. (laughs) I don’t think they should try to compete with Hollywood: Hollywood is its thing, independent filmmaking is its thing. It’s like, you don’t want to take a digital camera and try to make it look like film; you want to have things do what they do. And I think the way to be successful in this business is to follow your own dreams, insure your own visions, and change the world in your way -- not try to adapt to a preset standard of someone else.

AW: What is it that you’re planning on working on after this?

LH: I’ve got a couple of projects. One is about Hedy Lamarr, who invented the cell phone, one is about Tina Madotti, a photographer, and another one, which I’ll probably do next, is the memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein, which is a larger film, and it’s the whole story told from the female perspective. It’s a different story than you know; she runs away with him [the Monster] -- they fall in love. (laughs)

AW: What kind of technical challenges do you think you’re going to have to overcome to make these next projects?

LH: I have a partner in Paris, which is why I’m going there -- Ex Machina -- and they’re one of the largest effects houses in the world, and we’ll be creating a lot of these effects with specifically designed software that will enhance the characters and do all kinds of unusual things. Teknolust will have an AI [artificial intelligence] agent that comes up on the Web, and a whole Web portal that goes along with the film. I almost made the film so that I could do the AI thing on the Web to make it make sense, and I imagine that we’ll go even deeper with "Frankenstein," using the Web and other kinds of technologies in order to enhance it.

AW: Does your creative process, then, start with, "Oh, wouldn’t it be cool if we could do this"?

LH: I don’t know. Usually....um...uh...I don’t know! (laughs) It just pops up every now and then, and then they sort of strangle you, and you have to get rid of them by doing it; and then there are more that take their place.

AW: For people who might want to learn under your expert tutelage, you’re a professor at U.C. Davis. Can you talk a little about that?

LH: Well, we’re starting something called Technoculture Institute up there. Up to now, I’ve been the only person in this field, and we’ve got a pretty good lab there, but it will expand, and there’ll be many more professors, and more access to good labs in the future. And we hope they have a center that will try to investigate broadband filmmaking and new dimensions of films that deal with the technology of our time.

AW: Where is this kind of filmmaking -- broadband filmmaking, as you say, or digital filmmaking -- where’s it going to be in five years, where’s it going to be in ten years? Do you have any idea?

LH: I don’t, but I’m sure it’s going to be in a place we don’t expect. Progress never happens linearly. Who knows what’s going to be invented or who’s going to do something, but it’s going to, I think, open up the access to making films to a huge, broad number of people; directors, cast, crew, and audience. It’s going to be more accessible. You need to have a good story -- you can’t forget that!

For more information about Lynn Hershman’s work go to http://www.lynnhershman.com/

interview menu