Lynn Hershman Leeson on her work for the Venice Biennale
THE TERM CYBORG turned sixty in 2020. I spotted this simply final yr, so my mission, Logic Paralyzes the Coronary heart, is a few sixty-one-year-old cyborg, performed by the actress and filmmaker Joan Chen, who’s reconsidering the trajectory of her life. She was made by NASA, and since her start robotic units have populated the world. The distinction is that new applied sciences of surveillance are directed not at an enemy on the market however at folks in our personal nation. The cyborg goes on a retreat, which evokes her to fulfill her human avatar and clarify what she’s found. She needs to search out methods she may be extra human. The movie will likely be put in in a room wallpapered with a whole lot of AI-generated faces of people that don’t exist.
I don’t suppose I’d be doing this work if I lived some place else. In Los Angeles, everybody talks about scripts; however within the Bay Space, everybody talks about code. You both discover out what’s being invented or begin questioning why one thing hasn’t been. I believe the Bay Space is driving the entire world proper now . . . minus the artwork world.
Logic Paralyzes the Coronary heart offers with existence in a world the place predictions are being made for us. We’d like to concentrate on what’s taking place, just like the big-data software program firm Palantir partnering with Amazon, which companions with ICE [US Immigration and Customs Enforcement]. I don’t suppose folks perceive the diploma to which our choices are being taken over. Nonetheless, Logic is a constructive piece. It talks about our dreaded dilemmas, however it reminds us that different futures are attainable: We have now, as a species, modified earlier than. We have to determine what we are able to do to dwell and cohabit. People and cyborgs are companions—one doesn’t need to be a grasp and the opposite the slave. I wished the movie to finish with the human avatar educating the cyborg the best way to dream. It’s a type of plea for survival.
—As informed to Canada Choate
