It is an uncanny foreshadowing, or perhaps a savvy prediction, that the subjects in Lynn Hershman Leeson’s works were addicted to their screens long before we were. Embracing a multitude of mediums, Hershman Leeson touched on immersive videos and artificial intelligence before they became an all-consuming, unsettling presence in our daily reality.
The blurred lines between these new medias fascinate Hershman Leeson, who drew on the shady borders between wanting and needing in 1990’s video work, ‘Desire Inc.,’ now on show at Margate’s 243 Luz gallery.
Aired originally on late night television, purposefully eschewing any context, the work is part reality, part fiction, putting the focus on an attractive woman who looks straight into the camera, asking viewers to call her. Both these adverts, and the response to them, were combined into a video which pulls the viewer into the artwork in a play on consumer relationships…