Lynn Hershman Leeson

Belonging to Ourselves: Lynn Hershman Leeson and Sophie Calle

Excerpt

“Technology advanced, and so too did Hershman Leeson’s practice. Though the physical embodiment of Roberta was exorcised at the crypt of Lucrezia Borgia in 1978—a performance that symbolically released the artist from the persona—she was later resurrected first as CybeRoberta (1996), then again as Roberta in Second Life (2005), both of which incorporated and probed the latest in digitalization. CybeRoberta’s counterpart Tillie, the Telerobotic Doll (1995), is propped on a plinth in the second gallery. Among the first telerobotic devices linked to the internet, Tillie has a webcam in one eye and a video camera in the other, rendering her an agent of surveillance…”