Educational Media Reviews Online

Seducing Time is a collection of video works by the pioneering multimedia artist Lynn Hershman Lesson. Hershman spent most of the 60’s and 70’s working primarily in performance and installation art and photographic series. By the late 70’s, advances in new media technology provided the tools and themes Hershman would employ to create the film and multimedia works for which she is best known. This collection primarily looks at Hershman’s videotape work from the early 1990s.

Each of the six videos presented deals with identity and the impact technology has on the gray area between fact and fiction (referred to as “faction” in The Electronic Diaries). In these works, the camera is both a tool to record the piece and a pivotal player in the story. This collection, which covers select videotapes created between 1984 and 2008, includes works that build and reflect on each other. Many of the element and themes found in Longshot (‘89) and Desire, Inc (‘90) seem to culminate in Virtual Love (‘93). As a whole, the collection shows the conceptual refinement of Hershman’s ideas on virtual realities, voyeurism and the existence of truth within a world of simulations.

Seducing Time is highly recommended for art and film programs that cover New Media Arts. The ideas presented in this collection are also appropriate for the areas of philosophy and women’s studies