Lynn Hershman Leeson on Art, Identity, and Responsibility

In an interview with Artribune, artist Lynn Hershman Leeson (born 1941 in Cleveland) discusses her six-decade career exploring identity, technology, and responsibility. She created the fictional persona Roberta Breitmore in the 1970s to investigate how identity is constructed within sociocultural fabric; Roberta obtained credit cards and permits that were denied to the artist herself. After a collector rejected her sculpture because she was a woman, she chose to bypass traditional circuits and create self-managed spaces like The Dante Hotel. In the 1980s, she pioneered interactive art with Lorna, though audiences initially did not know how to engage with interfaces. She considers her Electronic Diaries the first chatbot, created before the term existed. Her film Conceiving Ada aimed to recover a forgotten chapter in computing history, while Strange Culture helped free artist Steve Kurtz. At the 2022 Venice Biennale (Il latte dei sogni), her work was celebrated, but she notes the high costs and lack of funding. Hershman remains optimistic about technology's potential for inclusion and genetic engineering, but insists human responsibility is key: 'We can pull the plug; machines cannot.' She observes that more women are now artists, curators, and gallerists, and technology has been legitimized as an artistic language, yet full equality has not been achieved. Her motivation today is hope combined with a sense of responsibility.