Lynn Hershman Leeson

Romancing the Anti-body: Lust and Longing in (Cyber)space
Category
LHL As Author
Date
Jan 1, 1985
Source
n/a
Author
Lynn Hershman Leeson
Excerpt

In 1972, I created my first non-body work in an actual hotel room in The Dante Hotel. The objects that surrounded her taste and background defined the identity of the occupant. In painting, it would be called negative space. Books, glasses, cosmetics and clothing were selected to reflect the education, personality and socioeconomic background of the provisional identities. Pink and yellow light bulbs cast shadows and audiotapes of breathing emitted a persistent counterpoint to the local news playing on the radio. Thus my path to interactivity began, not with technology, but with installations and performances. Visitors entered the hotel, signed in at the desk, and received keys to the rooms. Residents of the transient hotel became “curators” and cared for the exhibition. I intended to keep the room permanently accessible, gathering dust and being naturally changed through the shifting flow of viewers. But “real life” intervened. Nine months after the opening, a man named Owen Moore came to see the room at 3 a.m. and phoned the police.

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