Film screening: Teknolust (2002) by Lynn Hershman Leeson

with an introduction by Elsa Himmer (Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst) and Tim Klauser (ETH Zurich)

free admission

79 minutes

in English

In cooperation with the event series “Don 18—Gespräche zur Kunst und Architektur” organized by the Chair for the History of Art and Architecture, Prof. Dr. Philip Ursprung, ETH Zürich, conception and organization: Dr. Nina Zschocke, Tim Klauser, Berit Seidel

In conjunction with the exhibition “Producing Futures – An Exhibition on Post-Cyber-Feminisms,” the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst presents a screening of the American artist Lynn Hershman Leeson’s (b. Cleveland, Ohio, 1941) feature film “Teknolust.” Additional works by the artist are included in the exhibition. The film’s leading actress, Tilda Swinton, stars in no fewer than four different parts.

Unbeknownst to her colleagues, the biogeneticist Dr. Rosetta Stone has developed a formula at home that allows her to transfer her own DNA into a computer. She names the resulting cloned replicants Ruby, Olive, and Marianne. “Working” as “all-knowing” online “portals,” they help users make their dreams come true. Meanwhile, they also have to perform household chores for Rosetta. To make matters more complicated, Ruby, the most courageous of the “triplets,” is dependent on regular infusions of male Y chromosomes. Taking inspiration from love movies, she seduces men to harvest their semen, which she then shares with her “sisters.” Lynn Hershman Leeson’s cyberpunk film is a bizarre, intelligent, witty, and romantic work about the loss of innocence and the quest for self-realization.