Inke Arns

Inke Arns (1968, Duisdorf/Bonn) is a curator and director of HMKV (Hartware MedienKunstVerein) in Dortmund, where she worked as artistic director from 2005-2017. She has worked internationally as an independent curator, writer and theorist specializing in media art, net cultures, and Eastern Europe since 1993. She lived in Paris (1982-1986), graduated from high school in West-Berlin in 1988, studied Russian literature, Eastern European studies, political science, and art history in Berlin and Amsterdam (1988-1996) and in 2004 obtained her PhD from the Humboldt University in Berlin, with a thesis focusing on a paradigmatic shift in the way artists reflected the historical avant-garde and the notion of utopia in visual and media art projects of the 1980s and 1990s in (ex-)Yugoslavia and Russia.

She curated exhibitions at home and abroad, a.o. at the Bauhaus (Dessau), Moderna galerija (Ljubljana), Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin), Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum (Hagen), Museum of Contemporary Art (Belgrade), HMKV (Dortmund), Centre for Contemporary Arts – CCA (Glasgow), KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin), Videotage (Hong Kong), Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina (Novi Sad), Centre for Contemporary Art Zamek Ujazdowski (Warsaw), Contemporary Art Centre CAC (Vilnius), La Panacée (Montpellier), Jeu de Paume (Paris), Autocenter (Berlin), Kunsthall Charlottenborg (Kopenhagen), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Muzeum Sztuki (Łodz), NCCA (Yekaterinburg), La Gaîté Lyrique (Paris), BOZAR (Brussels), MU (Eindhoven).

International exhibitions include, e.g. Ostranenie (1993), Medienbiennale Leipzig (1994), V2 East Meeting on Documentation and Archives of Media Art in Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe (1996), Update 2.0 (2000), IRWIN: Retroprinciple 1983-2003 (2003-2004), Readme (2005), What is Modern Art? (Group Show) (2006), The Wonderful World of irational.org (2006-2012), History Will Repeat Itself (2007-2008), Anna Kournikova ... Art in the Age of Intellectual Property (2008), “Awake are only the Spirits” – On Ghosts and their Media (2009), Building Memory (2009-2010), Arctic Perspective (2010), Barbara Breitenfellner: Traum einer Ausstellung (2011), The Oil Show (2011), Artur Zmijewski: Democracies (2012), Suzanne Treister: HEXEN 2.0 (2012), Francis Hunger: History has left the Building (2012), Sounds Like Silence (John Cage – 4’33” – Silence today / 1912 – 1952 – 2012) (2012), His Master’s Voice: On Voice and Language (2013-2015), INDUSTRIAL (Research) (2013), Evil Clowns (2014), Whistleblowers & Vigilantes (2016), The World Without Us (2016), Dan Perjovschi: The Hard/er Drawing (2016), alien matter (transmediale, 2017), The Brutalism Appreciation Society (2017), Afro-Tech and the Future of Re-Invention (2017), The Border (2017-2019), The Storming of the Winter Palace – Forensics of an Image (2017-18), Computer Grrrls (2018-19), The Alt-Right Complex (2019), The 12th Time Zone (2019), Artists & Agents: Performance Art and Secret Services (2019).

Awards: In 2019, together with Igor Chubarov and Sylvia Sasse, Inke Arns was awarded the Justus Bier Award for Curators 2018 for the project The Storming of the Winter Palace. HMKV received the ADKV-ART COLOGNE Award for art associations 2017. In 2017, HMKV was nominated for the sixth time for this Award (after nominations in 2007, 2008, 2011, 2013, and 2014). In 2013 HMKV reveived an Honorable Mention in the framework of this Award. In 2013, HMKV’s exhibition Sounds Like Silence. John Cage – 4’33” – Silence Today was awarded the Exceptional Exhibition of the Year 2012 prize by the German section of AICA (International Art Critics’ Association). In 2011 HMKV received the JUMP Annual Sponsorship Award for Art Organisations funded by the Arts Foundation of North Rhine-Westphalia (Kunststiftung NRW).

Inke Arns taught at universities and art academies in Berlin, Leipzig, Zurich, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam (2000-2017), and has lectured and published internationally. Books include Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK) – eine Analyse ihrer künstlerischen Strategien im Kontext der 1980er Jahre in Jugoslawien (Museum Ostdeutsche Galerie, 2002), Netzkulturen (Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 2002), Objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear! Die Avantgarde im Rückspiegel (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 2004).

Member of the ADKV Board of Directors, Berlin; Advisory Committee of the Net Art Anthology, Rhizome, New York; Board of Trustees of the Kunststiftung NRW, Düsseldorf; Advisory Board of the Jan Van Eyck Academie, Maastricht; Advisory Board (Visual Art) of the Goethe-Institute, Munich; Board of Trustees of the Stiftung Choreographisches Zentrum NRW, Essen; International Editorial Board of Maska, Journal of Performing Arts, Ljubljana. She was also a member of Fischbüro, Berlin (1987-1988), founding member of the Syndicate network (1996-2001), founding member of the Who by Fire? network initiated by the ICA-Dunaujvaros (12/1997), co-founder of the Berlin-based association for the advancement of new media cultures Mikro e.V. (3/1998), and a co-founder of the mailing list for media culture in Deep Europe Spectre (08/2001). (2019)

Publications

Books

• Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK) – eine Analyse ihrer künstlerischen Strategien im Kontext der 1980er Jahre in Jugoslawien, Regensburg: Museum Ostdeutsche Galerie, 2002. (German)

• Netzkulturen, Hamburg: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, Apr 2002. TOC. Review: Franz (MEDIENwiss). [1] (German)

• Objects in the Mirror May Be Closer Than They Appear! Die Avantgarde im Rückspiegel. Zum Paradigmenwechsel der künstlerischen Avantgarderezeption in (Ex-) Jugoslawien und Russland von den 1980er Jahren bis in die Gegenwart, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 2004. PhD Dissertation. (German)
  • Avantgarda v vzvratnem ogledalu, trans. Mojca Dobnikar, Ljubljana: Maska, 2006, 320 pp. (Slovenian)

• Storytellers of the Information Age. On the role of narrative in UBERMORGEN.COM’s work, Ljubljana: Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, 2014, 17 pp. Publisher.

• Tutorials. Altruistische Hilfe und Influencer-Karrieresprungbrett, Berlin: Wagenbach, 2024, 80 pp. "Video tutorials have long been more than just instructions on how to cope with everyday life: they offer entertainment or even calls for political upheaval." Publisher. Book launch. (German)

Editorial work

• list of publications

Essays (selection)

• "Interaction, Participation, Networking: Art and Telecommunication", trans. Tom Morrison, Media Art Net, 2002. (English)
• "Social Technologies. Deconstruction, subversion, and the utopia of democratic communication", trans. Michael Robinson, Media Art Net, 2003. (English)
• more, more

Links

• Website
• Twitter