Tilda Swinton Sees Herselves in Teknolust

On the occasion of our film series Lynn Hershman Leeson: Moving-Image Innovator, frequent Hershman Leeson collaborator Tilda Swinton sat down in one of MoMA’s theaters to revisit their 2002 project Teknolust. Swinton, who plays four different roles in this “sexual biogenetic comedy,” notes just how prescient the film is about now-commonplace topics like online dating, cloning, and AI—and how rare it is to encounter these themes without a dystopian edge. “It’s very, very unusual for anybody to talk with such a sense of optimism about the relationship between AI and human energies.”

The film series Lynn Hershman Leeson: Moving-Image Innovator was on view in MoMA’s theaters June 7–20, 2024.