Florian Cramer

Born	Berlin, West Germany (now Germany)
Lives in	Rotterdam, Netherlands
Website	Home page, Mastodon, Diaspora, Vimeo, Twitter, Zotero
Web	Aaaaarg

Florian Cramer (1969) is a writer, photographer, filmmaker and theorist. He is a reader in 21st Century Visual Culture at Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam, an art and design school which is part of Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences (Hogeschool Rotterdam).

Florian Cramer studied literature and art history at FU Berlin, Universität Konstanz and University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He received an MA in comparative literature, art history and modern German philology from Freie Universität Berlin (1998), and PhD in comparative literature from the same university (2006). Afterwards, he worked as lecturer in Comparative Literature, FU Berlin (1999-2004). He administrated rohrpost mailing list (with Tilman Baumgärtel, 2002-2004), and co-edited Unstable Digest of code poetry on nettime list (with Alan Sondheim, 2002-2003). He also created the combinatory poetry site Permutations, was involved in Neoism as fictioneered on Neoism.org, and collaborated on the Runme.org software art repository (2002-2003). He has published on arts, modernism, literature, information technology and (sub)culture.

In 2004, Cramer visited Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam, as a Media Design research fellow, wrote the essay Words Made Flesh, Code, Culture, Imagination and worked with students in workshops and tutorials. In summer 2006, he returned as the new course director of the Media Design master program, and later served as the director of the Institute (2010-2011). Since 2008 he has been a reader at the Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam, an art and design school which is part of Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences (Hogeschool Rotterdam). He teaches, on a project basis, in different departments of his school, both on the B.A. level and in the different Masters programs of the Piet Zwart Institute (which is part of Willem de Kooning Academy). From 2011-2015 he also served as director of Creating 010, Hogeschool Rotterdam, a centre focusing on two areas of research: Communication in the Digital Age and Cultural Diversity.

Cramer is a board member of De Player, a space for sound/performance art, PrintRoom, a space for artists’ books and DIY publishing and Herman, a venue for experimental pop music. He is a member/tenant of the self-organized artists' studio building Kunst en Complex, and a member of the artist-run analog filmmaking lab filmwerkplaats. He is an activist in the political party BIJ1 and a member of its Rotterdam core team. He was also a part-time program developer at WORM, the Rotterdam-based Institute of Avantgardistic Recreation (2011-2015).

He is on the academic advisory board for the arts magazine Neural and of APRJA, a peer-reviewed Open Access journal published by the media studies department of Aarhus University, Denmark.

Since 2006, he lives in Rotterdam.

Words Made Flesh, 2005, Log, PDF, HTML.

Exe.cut(up)able statements, 2011, Log, PDF, TeX.

Works

Books

• with Stewart Home, The House of Nine Squares: Letters on Neoism, Psychogeography and Epistemological Trepidation, 1997.

• Words Made Flesh: Code, Culture, Imagination, Rotterdam: Media Design Research, Piet Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academy Hogeschool Rotterdam, 2005, 140 pp. [1]

• Exe.cut(up)able statements: Poetische Kalküle und Phantasmen des selbstausführenden Texts, Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2011. (German)

• Anti-Media: Ephemera on Speculative Arts, Rotterdam: nai010 publishers, and Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2013, 260 pp.

• with Clemens Apprich, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, and Hito Steyerl, Pattern Discrimination, Lüneburg: meson press & University of Minnesota Press, 2018, xii+123 pp.

• editor, with Janneke Wesseling, Making Matters. A Vocabulary for Collective Arts, Amsterdam: Valiz, 2022, 336 pp, ARG. Publisher. [2]

• Het Andrea Behr Pamflet 41: "BFFS", Rotterdam, 2023, [32] pp, ARG. Artist book. Toot.

• with Simon Kentgens, Lumbung, Commons and Community Art: A Conversation on the Behind-the-Scenes of documenta fifteen, Rotterdam: HumDrumPress, 2023, 136 pp. Toot. Toot. Publisher.

Book chapters, papers, articles

• "Autonomy and Space: Hans Haacke’s Systems Aesthetics", Dec 1992.

• "Gegen Medientheorie", Rohrpost, 7 Feb 2001. [3] (German)

• with Ulrike Gabriel, "Software Art", 15 Aug 2001, PDF; repr. in DIY Media: Kunst und digitale Medien: Software, Partizipation, Distribution. Transmediale.01, eds. Andreas Broeckmann and Susanne Jaschko, Berlin: Berliner Kulturveranstaltungs, 2001, pp 29-33 [4], repr. as "Software Art and Writing", American Book Review 22:6, Sep-Oct 2001 [5]; repr. as "On Software Art", in Rhizome, 20 Sep 2001. Written 15 Aug 2001.

• "Der selbstausführende Entwurf: Software und Softwarekunst", 24 Jan 2002. (German)
  • "Concepts, Notations, Software, Art", 23 Mar 2002, PDF.

• "Contextualizing Software Art", [18 May] 2002.

• "Zehn Thesen zur Softwarekunst", 23 Sep 2003, PDF; repr. in SoftwareArt: eine Reportage über den Code, ed. Gerrit Gohlke, Berlin, 2003, pp 6-14. (German)
  • "Ten Theses about Software Art", 23 Sep 2003, PDF.
  • "Dix hypothèses au sujet de l'art logiciel", in Art ++, ed. David-Olivier Lartigaud, Orléans: HYX, 2011, pp 102-111. (French)

• "Post-Digital Writing", Electronic Book Review, 12 Dec 2012. Originally given as the keynote lecture at the Electronic Literature Organization conference, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, 22 Jun 2012.
  • "Postdigitales Schreiben", in Code und Koncept. Literatur und das Digitale, ed. Hannes Bajohr, Berlin: Frohmann, 2016, pp 27-43. [6] (German)

• "Post-Digital Aesthetics", Jeu de Paume, May 2013.

• "Interventions, Experimentation, Markets: Art Education and Cross-Disciplinary Creative Practice", in Reinventing the Art School, 21st Century, Rotterdam: Willem de Kooning Academy & Creating 010/Hogeschool Rotterdam, 2013, pp 27-44.

• "What is 'Post-digital'?", A Peer-Reviewed Journal About "Post-Digital Research" 3:1, Aarhus: Digital Aesthetics Research Center, with Berlin: transmediale, 2014.

• "Post-Digital Literary Studies", Materialities of Literature 4:1 (2016), TXT.

• "Depression: Post-Melancholia, Post-Fluxus, Post-Communist, Post-Capitalist, Post-Digital, Post-Prozac", in A Solid Injury to the Knees, ed. Maya Tonuta, Vilnius: Rupert, 2016, pp 60-107.

• "Crapularity Hermeneutics", 2016.

• with Alissa Dinallo, "Introduction to Mez Breeze’s Attn: Solitude", Cordite Poetry Review, 3 Jan 2017.

• "When Claire Bishop Woke Up in the Drone Wars: Art and Technology, the Nth Time", in across & beyond: A transmediale Reader on Post-digital Practices, Concepts, and Institutions, eds. Ryan Bishop, Kristoffer Gansing, Jussi Parikka, and Elvia Wilk, Berlin: Sternberg & Transmediale, 2017.

• "GAS and the Crapularity of Things: Notes on Crapularity Design", Jul 2017.

• "Does the Tragedy of the Commons Repeat Itself as a Tragedy of the Public Domain?", in Being Public: How Art Creates the Public Domain, eds. Jeroen Boomgaard and Rogier Brom, Amsterdam: Valiz, with LAPS / Gerrit Rietveld Academie, 2017, HTML.

• with Clara Lobregat Balaguer, The Moral of The Xerox: Missalette, Cologne, 2017. Zine. Excerpt, Excerpt.

• "Open Source as a Test Case for a Post-Humanist Commons", in ODD 1 Privately, ed. Cristina Bogdan, Bucharest: ODD, 2017, pp 27-62.

• "Häuser aus Staub. Das Unfertige und seine Entromantisierung in Projektkunst und Digitalwirtschaft, von Fluxus bis Liquidity Inc.", 2018. (German)

• "Crapularity Aesthetics", Feb 2018; repr. in Making & Breaking 1, 2019, PDF.

• "Rosa Einhörner", Jun 2018. (German)

• "What Is Autonomy?", The Autonomous Fabric, Rotterdam: Willem de Kooning Academy, 11 Apr 2018, HTML.

• "Does DIY Mean Anything? - a DIY Attempt (= Essay)", Anrikningsverket Journal 1: "Convulsion", Jul 2019, pp 52-72, PDF.

• "Conspiracy theories and mythologies, and the grey areas in between them", May 2021.

• "On Compressions", Erase!, Sep 2021.

• "On Erasure: The Unerasable Series", Erase!, Sep 2021.

• "What Is Urgent Publishing?", APRIA, Arnhem: ARTEZ, Oct 2021.

• "Artistic Research - Dead on Arrival? Research practices of self-organized collectives versus managerial visions of artistic research", in The Postresearch Condition, ed. Henk Slager, Utrecht: Metropolis M Books, 2021, pp 19-25, PDF.

• "The Kaleidoscope Constraint: The automation of arts, seen from its dead ends", May 2023. Toot.

• with Elaine W. Ho, "A Near-sighted Falling into Technology — Through the Looking Glass of Art Practice as Human Self-Experimentation‚ Accidents and Coincidence", in Technological Accidents, Accidental Technologies, eds. Joke Brouwer and Sjoerd van Tuinen, Rotterdam: V2_ Publishing, 2023, pp 60-80, ARG.

More writings

• Essays archived at pleintekst.nl
• Posts on Nettime.
• Posts on Rohrpost. (German)
• Posts on Filmkorn.
• List of printed publications, 1991-2001

Interviews

• "Cornelia Sollfrank in conversation with Florian Cramer", in Cross-wired: Communication, Interface, Locality, eds. Kerstin Mey and Simon Yuill, 2001, pp 58-67. [7] (English)

• Interview with Florian Cramer, Neural 44: Special issue on Post-Digital Print (2013), pp 38-42. (English)

• Chiara Moioli, Cloning Aura: Neoism Now & Then. In Conversation with Florian Cramer, Brescia: Link Editions, 2016, [33] pp. (English)/(Italian)

• Johannes Grenzfurthner, "Affect and Effect: On Eco-Guilt and Systemic Masochism. A conversation with Florian Cramer", Free Lunch Commission, 11 Jan 2021. (English)

• with Petar Jandrić, "Postdigital: A Term That Sucks but Is Useful", Postdigital Science and Education, Mar 2021, PDF. (English)

• Martina Leeker, about Art and Research - Interview with Florian Cramer, Kunst & Kunsttheorie Uni Köln, Sep 2023, 17 min. Video. Transcript. (English)

• Nynke Schaaf, "ISCHNNK Goes Meine Goethe Februari 2024: Florian Cramer", Radio WORM, Feb 2024, 93 min. Audio. (Dutch)

See also

• Piet Zwart Institute
• Postdigital

Links

• Bio
• Films
• https://post.lurk.org/@fcr, https://tldr.nettime.org/@fcr (Mastodon)
• Pod on diaspora, previous
• Works and writings, [8]
• Profile on Creating 010
• Profile on V2_
• Florian Cramer, a neoist
• Wikipedia-DE (archived 2012)