Cornelia Sollfrank
Cornelia Sollfrank is an artist, researcher and writer. In the 1990s she was one of the pioneers of net art and an important representative of cyberfeminism; her work focuses on gender and technologies as well as copyright, digital commons, and the performativity of data. She lives in Berlin, Germany.
Cornelia Sollfrank studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich (1987-1990) and Fine Art at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg (1990-1994). Since 1998 she has taught at various universities and art schools and wrote on issues in the nexus of media, art and (gender)politics. In 2011 Sollfrank completed her practice-led research at the University of Dundee (UK) and published her PhD thesis with the title Performing the Paradoxes of Intellectual Property. In addition to her work in the artistic and academic field, Sollfrank gathered experience in the private sector by working as product manager for Philips Media for two years (1995-1996).
Since the mid-1990s, Sollfrank has investigated the worldwide communication networks and transferred artistic strategies of the classical avant-gardes into the digital medium. Her special interest lies in experimenting with new models of authorship, in continuing various forms of artistic appropriation and in deconstructing myths around geniality and originality. In the core of this strand of works is the concept of her net.art generator (since 1998), a computer programme, which re-combines and collages material from the Internet. This project has directly influenced her practice-led research into the field of intellectual property. Related art projects are copyright © 2004 cornelia sollfrank (2004), Legal Perspective (2004), I Don't Know – A conversation between Cornelia Sollfrank and Andy Warhol (2006), MuseumShop (2007) and DÉJÁVU® (2009).
Against the backdrop of gender-specific and institution-critical approaches, a further thematic priority of Sollfrank’s work lies in the creation of forms of organisation (collective, network, collaboration) and communication structures as artistic practices. She was founding member of the collectives frauen-und-technik (Women and Technology, 1992) and -Innen (1994) and initiated and run the world-wide cyberfeminist network Old Boys Network (1997-2001), including the co-organisation of three international conferences on Cyberfeminism (1997, 1999, and 2001). In 2017 Sollfrank launched the project Commons Lab at Studio xx in Montréal, an open usable structure that provided various formats for a collective research process in the overlapping area between +feminism+digital+art+commons+. In 2018 she initiated the technofeminist research group #purplenoise.
Sollfrank also co-edited the readers First Cyberfeminist International (1998) and Next Cyberfeminist International (1999). In her project Female Extension (1997), the hack of the first competition on net.art run by a museum, Sollfrank flooded the museum with 300 virtual, female net.artists. In 1999/2000 Sollfrank produced a series of works on the topic of Women Hackers. Since 2006, Sollfrank re-enacts early feminist performance art in her series Revisiting Feminist Art. With her conceptual music piece Improved Tele-vision (2001/2011) she immodestly inscribed herself in the genealogy of avant-garde artists such as Arnold Schönberg, Nam June Paik and Dieter Roth.
Whilst Sollfrank maintains an active international practice, she also works to support the development of critical Internet culture in Germany. She founded echo, a mailing list for art, criticism and cultural politics in Hamburg (2003) and was co-founder and editor of the online magazine for art and criticism The Thing Hamburg (2006). In 2005/06, she conceived the culture-political intervention Tamm-Tamm–Artists Informing Politicians involving more than 100 artists, based on a dialogical principle.
Since 2012 Sollfrank conducts research in the field of art and commons. Her project Giving What You Don't Have is a series of filmed interviews which introduce relevant projects. This led to the SNF-funded research project Creating Commons, which she conducted together with Felix Stalder and Shusha Niederberger at Zürich University of the Arts.
In 2017 Sollfrank developed a technofeminist comment on the case of Wikileaks and Julian Assange. The lecture performance with the title À la recherche de l'information perdue was presented at the Chaos Communication Conference in Leipzig (2018), Kunsthalle Bergen (2017), ICA in London (2018), Kling&Bang in Reykjavik (2018), and Frauenmuseum Bonn (2024).
Works (selection)[edit]
- Female Extension, 1997. [1] [2]
- Net.Art Generator, since 1998. [3] [4]
- Women Hackers, 1999/2000.
- Improved Tele-vision, 2001/2011.
- Revisiting Feminist Art, since 2006.
- Giving What You Don't Have, since 2012.
- Commons Lab, 2017.
- #purplenoise, since 2018.
Publications[edit]
- Co-editor, with Old Boys Network, First Cyberfeminist International: Old Boys Network Reader 1, obn, 1998, 88 pp. Documentation of September 1997 conference held as part of Hybrid Workspace at Documenta X, Kassel. (English)
- Co-editor, with Old Boys Network, Next Cyberfeminist International: Old Boys Network Reader 2, obn, 1999, 104 pp. Extended documentation of the March 1999 conference in Rotterdam. (English)
- Cornelia Sollfrank: net.art generator, ed. & forew. Annette Schindler. intro. Ute Vorkoeper, Nürnberg: Verlag für Moderne Kunst, 2004, 196 pp. With essays by Cornelia Sollfrank, Florian Cramer, Sarah Cook, Verena Kuni, interview by Richard Leopold. [5] (German)/(English)
- Expanded Original, ed. Sabine Himmelsbach, Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2009, 144 pp. With texts by Jacob Lillemose, Silke Wenk, Gerald Raunig, Rahel Puffert. [6] [7] (German)/(English)
- "Revisiting the Future: Cyberfeminism in the Twenty-First Century", across & beyond: A transmediale Reader on Post-digital Practices, Concepts, and Institutions, eds. Ryan Bishop, et al., Berlin: Sternberg Press, and transmediale e.V., Jan 2017, pp 230-249, HTML; repr., transmediale journal 0, Nov 2017.
- Editor, Die schönen Kriegerinnen. Technofeministische Praxis im 21. Jahrhundert, Vienna: transversal texts, 2018, 225 pp. (German)
- The Beautiful Warriors: Technofeminist Praxis in the 21st Century, Colchester: Minor Compositions, 2019, 151 pp. Introduction. (English)
- "Im Schatten der öffentlichen Bibliothek. Künstlerische Auseinandersetzungen mit den digitalen Commons", in Sich mit Sammlungen anlegen. Gemeinsame Dinge und alternative Archive, eds. Martina Griesser-Stermscheg, Nora Sternfeld, and Luisa Ziaja, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020, pp 85-94. (German)
- Editor, with Felix Stalder and Shusha Niederberger, Aesthetics of the Commons, Zurich: diaphanes, 2021, 275 pp. (English)
- Author with Winnie Soon, Fix My Code, Berlin: Eeclectic, 2021, 180 pp, EPUB. Book launch. (English)
- "The Art of Getting Organized. A Different Approach to Old Boys Network", in Computer Grrrls, eds. Inke Arns and Marie Lechner, Dortmund: Kettler, and HMKV, May 2021, pp 36-41; repr., OnCurating 52: "Instituting Feminism", eds. Helena Reckitt and Dorothee Richter, 2021, pp 120–125. (English)
- "Die Kunst, sich zu organisieren - Old Boys Network - aus einer anderen Perspektive", in Computer Grrrls, eds. Inke Arns and Marie Lechner, Dortmund: Kettler, and HMKV, May 2021, pp 42-45. (German)
- "obn_a – A Situated Archive of the Old Boys Network", in Networks of Care: Politiken des (Er)haltens und (Ent)sorgens, eds. Anna Schäffler, Friederike Schäfer, and Nanne Buurman, Berlin: neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK), 2022, pp 72-80. (English)
- "obn_a – ein situiertes Archiv des Old Boys Network", in Networks of Care: Politiken des (Er)haltens und (Ent)sorgens, eds. Anna Schäffler, Friederike Schäfer, and Nanne Buurman, Berlin: neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK), 2022, pp 157-166. (German)
- Articles on Telepolis, 1997-2001. (German)
- more
Interviews[edit]
- Josephine Bosma, "Interview with Cornelia Sollfrank", Nettime, 1997.
- "Cornelia Sollfrank Interviewed by Sakrowski for Berlin Zentrum der Netzkunst. 1990s Berlin Net Art: A Critical Evaluation", curatingyoutube, 2016, 97 min. Video.
- "Interview zur Transmediale: 'Ich wäre gerne ein richtig guter Troll'", taz, 31 Jan 2019. (German)
- Maria Cynkier, "Interview with Cornelia Sollfrank: 'In the studio'", Museum of Contemporary Digital Art, 21 Dec 2020.
- WPCC Editorial Board (University of Westminster), "Interview with Cornelia Sollfrank and Felix Stalder: 'Aesthetics, Commons and the Production of the Subject'", Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 16:1, 2021.
- Anna Ramos, "Son(i)a #384: Cornelia Sollfrank", Radio Web MACBA, 25 Oct 2023, 100 min. Audio. Toot.