WEBVTT

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♪  ♪

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In the mid 1970s, maybe a little earlier,

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I had done a sculptural
painting of a man,

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and a collector went to
a gallery and bought the work.

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♪  ♪

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I wanted to meet him,

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but the gallery didn't
want me to meet him

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'cause Lynn could
be either male or female.

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Somehow, he found out
I was female

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and he returned the work
because he said that women

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weren't good investments.

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Women artists
didn't make a good investment.

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Um, he was wrong.
[laughs]

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[calm electronic music]

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I did start out doing
painting and drawing.

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And then moved into sculpture.

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Then sculpture with sound.

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- ...Trying to remember
who we are.

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Video,

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 film, 

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artificial intelligence, 

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and computer-based work.

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To me, they're all the same.

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You know, you take a number of
things and put them together.

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♪  ♪

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I do work that confronts where we are in society.

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[sculpture whirs]

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I came to the Bay Area

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to go to graduate school
at Berkeley.

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[rock 'n' roll music]

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It was the era of the hippies, Allen Ginsberg, and that

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kind of radical thought.

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And being a girl from Orthodox Jewish family in Cleveland,

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it was just really
opening your mind

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to the fact that you don't
have to do what you're told.

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[calm jazz music]

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I think that
the early challenges

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were getting
somebody to show my work.

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I remember walking the streets of Berkeley during that time,

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and I thought, "Well, who needs
a museum to tell you whether you're doing art?"

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So with my friend Eleanor Coppola,

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we opened up rooms in a hotel,

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and people could check-in at the desk, get a key

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Eleanor staged in her room
a man who lived there.

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I created fictional characters
who might've lived there,

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and bought props from around that
neighborhood to redefine who those

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characters could have been.

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And it was a way of creating art
in the world

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that went beyond the walls that
existed

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It lasted nearly a year,

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and finally somebody,
went at two in the morning.

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And I had wax body parts
in there, 

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and people thought that it could have 
been a murder, and called the police.

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The police came in
and took everything.

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And that was the end of that.

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Glasses from the '70s.

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- [laughs]
- Big lenses.

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- Here we go.

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When I was in the room
at the Dante Hotel,

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I had artifacts of somebody who
could have lived there

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I thought,
Well, what if this woman,

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this fictional character,
could be liberated,

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live in real time
and real space?

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And that was the beginning
of creating Roberta Breitmore.

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So I would go out
and dress as Roberta,

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with different kinds of makeup as a
blonde

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and with a lot of things about her that
were very different from myself

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[ambient music]

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Roberta did things broke that any single broke woman would do.

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And she came to San Francisco,
she needed a roommate to afford her rent,

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so she put
ads in the local newspapers.

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♪  ♪

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Roberta went to a psychiatrist.

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She had a particular walk.
She had particular gestures.

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She had a language.

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Roberta was able to get a bank account.

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♪  ♪

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She was able to get credit
cards, which I couldn't.

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♪  ♪

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She was much more real, had more of 
a verifiable history than I did.

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♪  ♪

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I didn't think that Roberta would be a 
long-term performance.

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I don't even think performance
was a word in those days.

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I don't know what she was.

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She was an intervention
in real life, in society.

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And she lasted almost ten years, 
from 1972 to 1979.

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♪  ♪

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[film projector whirring]

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I think if I had moved to New York

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to become an artist as many people did,

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I would not do the work I do now.

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But because I live in the Bay Area, 
where you breathe technology,

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the digital landscape here
has changed the entire world.

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And it's not insignificant 
that television was invented here.

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♪  ♪

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I think that we've become kind of a society of--of screens,

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of different layers that keep
us from knowing the truth,

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as if the truth is, uh,
almost unbearable,

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too much for us to, uh
to deal with,

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just like our feelings.

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So we deal with things
through replication,

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and through copying,

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through screens, through simulation 

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through facsimiles and through, uh,  fiction

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and through faction.

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[experimental 
electronic music]

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I think that there is not a central
answer to whether technology is utopian

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or dystopian I think it depends on
humans and how they use it.

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[echoing chatter]

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A lot of my work
is interactive 

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in that it implicates viewers
into making choices.

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Interactivity in these pieces meant
dealing with the possibilities in

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technology that existed at the time.

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So when "Lorna" was made, I
used an interactive LaserDisc.

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[water bubbling]

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- I was afraid of everything.

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- So you think
you know her story.

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Well, good luck.
'Cause you're all wrong.

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Lorna's agoraphobic, she's afraid to go out

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The reason she's afraid is because 
media projects all kinds of images of fear.

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And all she does
is watch television.

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♪  ♪

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And you control what you see,

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and in doing so, you 
become implicated in

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Lorna's life and control her future

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[foreboding music]

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Do you wanna put
the hat down by the side?

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Yeah, good.

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- Do you want me leaning
in any way, or just

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- No.
Just watching.

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- In terms of drama, I'll just shoot something 
- Okay

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This work, "VertiGhost,"
uses, in fact,

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much of my history.

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- That looks beautiful.
- It looks more like it.

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The premise was to do something that had
to do with the Fine Arts Museum

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and I I remember that Alfred Hitchcock
shot a major scene from "Vertigo" there.

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In the original film, the character
Madeleine would go to the museum and

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look at the portrait of Carlotta who was
a distant relative of hers, 

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who had died and who 
suffered from mental illness

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♪  ♪

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- Okay, Yuli, you can come.

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♪  ♪

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You know, they're both
stories of compulsion

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about identity,

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and copies,
and copies of copies,

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and not knowing who you are.

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♪  ♪

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Now I'm gonna have you walk
around the bench

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and sit exactly opposite
than you are now.

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♪  ♪

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And in mine, it tells
kind of the haunting story

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of that history.

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And telling
the history releases

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the ghost that we keep hidden.

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- Camera, please.
And action.

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Putting the exhibition
together for "VertiGhost"

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was a total act of trust,

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and improvising
what we would do

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- Three and four.

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I like to collaborate.

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I have this joke in my studio that I'm
kind of like the idiot savant, 

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'cause I can't do anything.

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So I come with an idea,

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and then everybody else knows
how to do certain parts of it.

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And eventually it gets done.

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- [laughs]

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- So, um,
this has been printed

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on the back of this,
and it's Plexiglas.

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And we took the original image
of Carlotta 

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and we're gonna put the camera
on the wall

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in back of the eyes

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so that it picks up anybody
walking through the room.

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[Claudia] I'm sure it's gonna
be quite startling.

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- It's so bizarre.
- It really is.

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[laughs]

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- [laughs]
But are you happy with it?

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- I am. Thank God.
- Oh, good.

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That's the most
important thing.

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- You know, you never know
if these things are gonna work.

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[chuckles]

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♪  ♪

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This is the way it works. Somebody sits on the bench.

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There's a bouquet of flowers that has sensors in it.

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That turns the camera on in the painting

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The painting captures the
image of the person who's looking at the painting

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puts them in the 3D box to the de Young Museum which is at a different location

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which is at
a different location.

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it's in Golden Gate Park and inserts the
viewer there.

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So it kind of ties all of them together, almost like a double helix

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between the two buildings.

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♪  ♪

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I think that I'm asking
viewers to consider

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what it real, what isn't real

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why we need to imitate something,

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and the credibility of the things around us.

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♪  ♪

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I think it's great that finally my work
has become part of a cultural history.

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That finally I'm not in debt.
[laughs]

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For the first time ever.

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I think I'm really lucky. I got a lot of
freedom from being unknown,

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where I could do anything
I wanted to.

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And now it's too late
to change.

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[laughs]

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To learn more about Art21 and our

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educational resources please visit us
online at pbs.org/art21

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[Music]
art in the 21st century season 9 is

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available on DVD
to order visit

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shop.tbs.org or call 1-800 play PBS
this program is also available for

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download on iTunes
[Music]