Experience

Lynn Hershman Leeson’s vampire vigilantes

By Glen Helfand

Vampires are in constant media circulation these days, but in San Francisco auteur Lynn Hershman Leeson’s latest series of short digital works, she invokes the name of the beast in a typically unexpected and restorative form. Curing the Vampire is a group of interview films, commissioned by Tate Intermedia in Great Britain, with very real, vital people who combat “vampiristic irresponsibility” on an international level. The subjects work in science, music, culture, technology, and media activism and include Gilberto Gil, Tropicália musician and Brazil’s Minister for Culture; human rights activist and writer Elena Poniatowska, Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, credited with having identified “the aging gene”; and Lawrence Lessig, the mastermind behind Creative Commons. All engage in forward-thinking, media-savvy approaches to information access and living life to its fullest.

Presented in four short episodes, released on the Tate Modern’s website, the group presents a quartet of vampire-busters, their targets being the energy drain of evil corporate and corrupt governmental agencies—or what the director terms “Greed and selfishness carried to extremes.” Blackburn, however, may tap into the eternal life theme most literally, as her scientific research concerns what makes our bodies grow old.

According to the Tate, Hershman Leeson’s project “tackles questions of appropriation and distribution from a broad cultural and political perspective. Challenging authenticity through the personification of a surreal virtual world character, a discussion around free culture and a radical re-thinking about the essence of our genetic make-up.”

The beauty of Hershman Leeson’s work is her manner of addressing subjects from unexpected angles, often created by cutting edge digital technologies and genre-stretching strategies. Her last film, Strange Culture, which played Sundance and the SF International in 2006, mixes reenactments and actual players in the troublesome legal battle of Steve Kurtz, an artist caught in the freedom-squelching post-9/11 American social climate. For Curing the Vampire, Hershman Leeson collages interviews to make them larger conversations between her own animated Second Life avatar, Gene Ware, and a live-action Tilda Swinton, who poses questions to the admirable interview subjects with a robotic delivery that makes it clear she’s operating on a different wavelength. She’s on one screen and the interviewees are on another in Gene Ware’s virtual Second Life sitting room. Hershman Leeson was at each site for the interviews, but Tilda shot her footage in Italy and sent it to the director.

“Much of this is about remix, both remix of time, genetic remix, remixing forms to create new hybrid forms, reusing materials in new contexts,” Hershman Leeson notes, via e-mail. She also reveals that the project grew out of material she’s generated for part three of a trilogy of films that includes Conceiving Ada (1997) and Teknolust (2002). “It’s tentatively called VAMP and is about a reluctant vampire, who wants to age.” (Effie Brown, who produced Rocket Science, will take that role here.) “Tilda will be in it, of course."

When approached by Tate Intermedia executive producer Kelli Dipple, who commissioned the piece, Hershman Leeson said, “we thought we might do small parts that would be later inserted in the larger feature, yet could stand on their own.” Her selection of subjects most definitely leads to a sense of autonomy, as all are engaged in formidable, inspiring projects, whose mixture of genres offer a telling sampling of the artist’s interests in scientific thought, free culture and brave political action. And with a readily available platform on the web, with episodes released on a staggered schedule, viewing Curing the Vampire could become a nightly ritual that might actually inspire change.

topics: art, avant-garde, bay area, digital filmmaking, directors, documentary

11.05.2008