Johannes Grenzfurthner
Encyclopedia
Johannes Grenzfurthner (born 1975, Vienna
) is an Austrian artist
, writer
, curator
, director.
He has published numerous books, essays and articles on contemporary art, science and philosophy.
He writes for various online/print magazines and radio stations (e.g. ORF
, Telepolis
, Boing Boing
). Grenzfurthner has served on a number of art juries (e.g. Steirischer Herbst, Graz
). He holds a professorship for art theory and art practice at the University of Applied Sciences, Graz
, Austria
and is a lecturer at University of Arts and Industrial Design in Linz
, Austria
.
Grenzfurthner is founder and artistic director
of monochrom
, an internationally acting art
and theory
group. He is collaborating with groups such as ubermorgen
, Billboard Liberation Front
, Esel
and Mego (label)
.
He was one of the core team members in the development process of netznetz
, a new kind of community-based funding system for net culture and net art together with the culture department of the city government of Vienna.
He is head of Arse Elektronika
festival in San Francisco (2007-) and co-hosting Roboexotica
(Festival for Cocktail-Robotics) (2002-).
He is co-organizing the DIY project "Hackbus", a community platform for mobile hackerspaces.
He wrote and directed a couple of theatre plays, for example at Volkstheater, Vienna
.
Grenzfurthner has been selected as an Official Honoree for The 13th Annual Webby Awards.
Recurring topics in Johannes Grenzfurthner's artistic and textual work are: contemporary art
, activism
, performance
, humour
, philosophy
, sex
, communism
, postmodernism
, media theory
, cultural studies
, popular culture studies
, science fiction
, and the debate
about copyright
.
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
) is an Austrian artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
, writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
, curator
Curator
A curator is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a cultural heritage institution is a content specialist responsible for an institution's collections and involved with the interpretation of heritage material...
, director.
He has published numerous books, essays and articles on contemporary art, science and philosophy.
He writes for various online/print magazines and radio stations (e.g. ORF
ORF
ORF may refer to:* ORF , the Austrian public service broadcaster.* Open reading frame, a portion of the genome.* The IATA airport code for Norfolk International Airport in Norfolk, Virginia.* ORF format , Olympus raw image file format....
, Telepolis
Telepolis
Telepolis is the name of a German Internet magazine, published by the Heinz Heise Verlag since the beginning of 1996. It was founded by journalists Armin Medosch and Florian Rötzer and deals with privacy, science, culture, internet-related and general politics and media.Telepolis received the...
, Boing Boing
Boing Boing
Boing Boing is a publishing entity, first established as a magazine, later becoming a group blog.-History:...
). Grenzfurthner has served on a number of art juries (e.g. Steirischer Herbst, Graz
Graz
The more recent population figures do not give the whole picture as only people with principal residence status are counted and people with secondary residence status are not. Most of the people with secondary residence status in Graz are students...
). He holds a professorship for art theory and art practice at the University of Applied Sciences, Graz
Graz
The more recent population figures do not give the whole picture as only people with principal residence status are counted and people with secondary residence status are not. Most of the people with secondary residence status in Graz are students...
, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
and is a lecturer at University of Arts and Industrial Design in Linz
Linz
Linz is the third-largest city of Austria and capital of the state of Upper Austria . It is located in the north centre of Austria, approximately south of the Czech border, on both sides of the river Danube. The population of the city is , and that of the Greater Linz conurbation is about...
, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
.
Grenzfurthner is founder and artistic director
Artistic director
An artistic director is the executive of an arts organization, particularly in a theatre company, that handles the organization's artistic direction. He or she is generally a producer and director, but not in the sense of a mogul, since the organization is generally a non-profit organization...
of monochrom
Monochrom
monochrom is an international art-technology-philosophy group, founded in 1993. Its offices are located at Museumsquartier/Vienna ....
, an internationally acting art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
and theory
Theory
The English word theory was derived from a technical term in Ancient Greek philosophy. The word theoria, , meant "a looking at, viewing, beholding", and referring to contemplation or speculation, as opposed to action...
group. He is collaborating with groups such as ubermorgen
Ubermorgen
UBERMORGEN.COM is a swiss-austrian-american artist duo founded in 1995 by lizvlx and Hans Bernhard. They live and work in Vienna, Basel and S-Chanf near St...
, Billboard Liberation Front
Billboard Liberation Front
The Billboard Liberation Front practices culture jamming by altering billboards by changing key words to radically alter the message, often to an anti-corporate message. It started in San Francisco in 1977.-External links:* * * at Bombing science***...
, Esel
ESeL
eSeL.at is an Art-Platform in Vienna, Austria. Founded 1998 by Lorenz Seidler, it provides a weekly newsletter "eSeL Mehl", various mailing lists, a photo-archive and an event-database...
and Mego (label)
Mego (label)
Mego was an experimental electronic music independent record label based in Vienna, Austria. The word 'Mego' is an acronym referring to "My Eyes Glaze Over", an expression attributed to futurologist Herman Kahn .-History:Founded in 1994 by Ramon Bauer, Andreas Pieper and Peter Meininger, before...
.
He was one of the core team members in the development process of netznetz
Netznetz
netznetz is a social platform for individuals and groups associated with net art and net culture in Vienna, Austria. The platform was dissolved around 2011 because of internal problems and loss of funding from the Viennese city....
, a new kind of community-based funding system for net culture and net art together with the culture department of the city government of Vienna.
He is head of Arse Elektronika
Arse Elektronika
Arse Elektronika is an annual conference organized by the Austrian arts/philosophy collective monochrom, focused on sex and technology. Speakers at past conferences have included Mark Dery, Violet Blue, Annalee Newitz, Rudy Rucker, Carol Queen, and Richard Kadrey with demonstrations by Kyle...
festival in San Francisco (2007-) and co-hosting Roboexotica
Roboexotica
Roboexotica is an annual festival where scientists, researchers, computer experts and artists from all over the world build cocktail robots and discuss technological innovation, futurology and science fiction....
(Festival for Cocktail-Robotics) (2002-).
He is co-organizing the DIY project "Hackbus", a community platform for mobile hackerspaces.
He wrote and directed a couple of theatre plays, for example at Volkstheater, Vienna
Volkstheater, Vienna
The Volkstheater in Vienna was founded in 1889 by request of the citizens of Vienna, amongst them the dramatist Ludwig Anzengruber and the furniture manufacturer Thonet, in order to offer a popular counter weight to the Hofburgtheater...
.
Grenzfurthner has been selected as an Official Honoree for The 13th Annual Webby Awards.
Recurring topics in Johannes Grenzfurthner's artistic and textual work are: contemporary art
Contemporary art
Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...
, activism
Activism
Activism consists of intentional efforts to bring about social, political, economic, or environmental change. Activism can take a wide range of forms from writing letters to newspapers or politicians, political campaigning, economic activism such as boycotts or preferentially patronizing...
, performance
Performance
A performance, in performing arts, generally comprises an event in which a performer or group of performers behave in a particular way for another group of people, the audience. Choral music and ballet are examples. Usually the performers participate in rehearsals beforehand. Afterwards audience...
, humour
Humour
Humour or humor is the tendency of particular cognitive experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement...
, philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
, sex
Sex
In biology, sex is a process of combining and mixing genetic traits, often resulting in the specialization of organisms into a male or female variety . Sexual reproduction involves combining specialized cells to form offspring that inherit traits from both parents...
, communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
, postmodernism
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
, media theory
Media influence
Media influence or media effects are used in media studies, psychology, communication theory and sociology to refer to the theories about the ways in which mass media affect how their audiences think and behave....
, cultural studies
Cultural studies
Cultural studies is an academic field grounded in critical theory and literary criticism. It generally concerns the political nature of contemporary culture, as well as its historical foundations, conflicts, and defining traits. It is, to this extent, largely distinguished from cultural...
, popular culture studies
Popular culture studies
Popular culture studies is the academic discipline studying popular culture from a critical theory perspective. It is generally considered as a combination of communication studies and cultural studies....
, science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
, and the debate
Debate
Debate or debating is a method of interactive and representational argument. Debate is a broader form of argument than logical argument, which only examines consistency from axiom, and factual argument, which only examines what is or isn't the case or rhetoric which is a technique of persuasion...
about copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
.
Publications
- Editor of magazine/yearbook series "monochromMonochrommonochrom is an international art-technology-philosophy group, founded in 1993. Its offices are located at Museumsquartier/Vienna ....
" (1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2010) - Editor of "Stadt der Klage" (Michael MarrakMichael MarrakMichael Marrak is a German science fiction and horror writer. He is also an illustrator and from 1993 to 1996 he edited the magazine Zimmerit...
, 1997) - Editor of "Weg der Engel" (Michael Marrak and Agus Chuadar, 1998)
- Editor of "Who shot Immanence?" (together with Thomas Edlinger and Fritz OstermayerFritz OstermayerFritz Ostermayer , lives and works in Vienna as popular radio broadcaster , author, DJ and musician.Ostermayer compiled a highly acclaimed CD about funeral marches: "Dead & Gone"...
, 2002) - Editor of "Leutezeichnungen" (together with Elffriede, 2003)
- Editor of "Quo Vadis, Logo?!" (together with Günther Friesinger, 2006)
- Editor of "Spektakel - Kunst - Gesellschaft" (together with Stephan Grigat and Günther Friesinger, 2006)
- Editor of "pr0nnotivation? Arse Elektronika Anthology" (together with Günther Friesinger and Daniel Fabry, 2008)
- Editor of "Roboexotica" (together with Günther Friesinger, Magnus Wurzer, Franz Ablinger and Chris Veigl, 2008)
- Editor of "Do Androids Sleep with Electric Sheep?" (together with Günther Friesinger, Daniel Fabry and Thomas Ballhausen, 2009)
- Editor of "Schutzverletzungen/Legitimation of Mediatic Violence" (together with Günther Friesinger and Thomas Ballhausen, 2010)
- Editor of "Urban Hacking" (together with Günther Friesinger and Thomas Ballhausen, 2010)
- Editor of "Geist in der Maschine. Medien, Prozesse und Räume der Kybernetik" (together with Günther Friesinger, Thomas Ballhausen, Verena Bauer, 2010)
- Editor of "The Wonderful World of Absence" (together with Günther Friesinger and Daniel Fabry, 2011)
- Editor of "Of Intercourse and Intracourse – Sexuality, Biomodification and the Techno-Social Sphere" (together with Günther Friesinger and Daniel Fabry, 2011)
External links
- TEDx talk by Johannes Grenzfurthner on art and subversion
- Interview with Marc Da Costa/FurtherfieldFurtherfieldFurtherfield.org is an artist-led online community and arts organization. It creates and supports global participatory projects with networks of artists, theorists and activists and offers "a chance for the public to present its own views and enter or alter various art discourses".Furtherfield...
: part 1, part 2 and part 3 - Interview with V. Vale in Pranks! 2