Inke Arns

Inke Arns (1968, Duisdorf/Bonn) is a curator and artistic director of Hartware MedienKunstVerein in Dortmund since 2005. 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 (1982–86), graduated from highschool in West-Berlin in 1988, studied Russian literature, Eastern European studies, political science, and art history in Berlin and Amsterdam (1988–96) 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 was a member of Fischbüro, Berlin (1987-88), 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 mikro, association for the advancement of new media cultures (3/1998) as well as a co-founder of Spectre, a mailing list for media culture in Deep Europe (08/2001).

She curated exhibitions at Bauhaus (Dessau), n.b.k. (Berlin), Moderna galerija (Ljubljana), Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin), Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum (Hagen), Museum of Contemporary Art (Belgrade), Hartware MedienKunstVerein (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), Centre for Contemporary Art “Znaki Czasu” (Toruń), Contemporary Art Centre CAC (Vilnius), Muzeum Sztuki (Łodz), La Panacée (Montpellier), Jeu de Paume (Paris), Autocenter (Berlin).

International exhibitions include IRWIN: Retroprinciple 1983-2003 (Berlin 2003, Hagen 2003-2004, Belgrade 2004), What is Modern Art? (Group Show) (Berlin 2006), The Wonderful World of irational.org (Dortmund 2006, Glasgow 2007, Novi Sad 2008, Leuven 2012), History Will Repeat Itself (Dortmund 2007, Berlin 2007-2008, Warsaw 2008, Hong Kong 2008), Anna Kournikova ... Art in the Age of Intellectual Property (Dortmund 2008), “Awake are only the Spirits” – On Ghosts and their Media (Dortmund 2009, Toruń 2010), Building Memory (Vilnius, Lodz, Tel Aviv, Dortmund 2010), Arctic Perspective (Dortmund 2010), Laure Prouvost: Monolog (Bielefeld 2011), Barbara Breitenfellner: Traum einer Ausstellung (Dortmund 2011), The Oil Show (Dortmund 2011-2012), 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) (2012-13), His Master’s Voice: On Voice and Language (Dortmund 2013, Montpellier 2015), INDUSTRIAL (Research) (2013-14), Evil Clowns (Dortmund 2014, Erlangen 2015).

She also co-organised media art exhibitions and conferences like 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), and Readme (2005).

Inke Arns has been teaching at universities and art academies in Berlin, Leipzig, Zurich, and Rotterdam (2000-2011), and has lectured and published internationally.

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, 2002. [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)

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)

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