243 Luz is proud to present an exhibition of Desire Inc. (1990), a seminal video work by Lynn Hershman Leeson (b. 1941, Ohio).
In Desire Inc. Hershman Leeson subverts the language of advertising to pull apart themes of agency, voyeurism, and the construction of desire in that liminal moment of pre-digital media culture often described as the late-broadcast era.
Originally aired on late-night television without context, Desire Inc. blurs media, performance, and reality—offering a radical critique that anticipated major cultural and technological shifts that would come to define contemporary media, culture, and the social imaginary.
Thirty five years after it was made, the work is now a historical account of the televisual hegemony at the turn of the media system’s shift from top-down transmission to a decentralisation brought about by the internet. Hershman Leeson offers us a record of the mediated self in an age of mass transmission, and reveals how identity was increasingly shaped through televisual representation and advertising, laying the groundwork for later interactive and networked forms of selfhood.
It is through this prescience that Lizzy Deacon, Ruth Angel Edwards, Susanne Oberbeck and Niina Ulfsak have reconsidered the work, at a moment where participatory media, the commodification of intimacy, the collapse of public/private boundaries on digital platforms, and self-surveillance/ self-disclosure are the driving forces in media cultures today.
As one of Hershman Leeson’s most significant works, Desire Inc. reveals the intensely personal and affective connections individuals form with public broadcast space.
Lynn Hershman Leeson Desire Inc. July 12th – August 30th, 2025 243 Luz
All images: Lynn Hershman Leeson Desire Inc Video Grab
