Lynn Hershman Leeson's Electronic Diaries and AI Works Highlight Decades of Technological Art

Lynn Hershman Leeson's landmark work The Electronic Diaries of Lynn Hershman Leeson 1984–2019, initiated 40 years ago, anticipated art's engagement with technology-mediated identity and personal-political trauma. This multimedia piece was central to a survey of her five-decade career at the Julia Stoschek Foundation in Düsseldorf, encompassing performance, photography, video, interactive net-based media, and robotic art. In June, a film retrospective at MoMA, New York, also featured The Electronic Diaries. At eighty-three, Hershman Leeson continues to innovate, with BAMPFA honoring her as a 'creative visionary' exploring feminism and technology. Her recent U.S. exhibition included the four-part 'Cyborg Series', such as Cyborgian Rhapsody – Immortality (2023), created by an AI chatbot. An earlier New York show at Bridget Donahue presented Eternally Yours (2023), a sculpture containing a refrigerated antiaging vaccine. The artist, a techno-optimist, reassured Artnet that there is no need to fear new tools.