Sabine Himmelsbach studied art history in Munich, Germany. From 1993 to 1996 she worked for galleries in Munich and Vienna and later became project manager for exhibitions and conferences for the Steirischer Herbst Festival in Graz, Austria. In 1999 she became exhibition director at the ZKM | Centre for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany. Since October 2005 she has been artistic director of the Edith-Russ-Site for Media Art in Oldenburg, Germany. Her exhibition projects include temporal values. From Minimal to Video (2003), Banquet. Metabolism and Communication (2003), Coolhunters (2004), Resonances (2005), Playback – Simulated Realities (2006) as well as SOUND//BYTES. Electronic and Digital Soundscapes (2007), Ecomedia. Ecological Strategies in Art today (2007), Rafael Lozano- Hemmer: Recorders (2008). As a writer, she has contributed to publications such as Future Cinema, Making Things Public and Digitale Transformationen. She lectures internationally on topics related to media art and contemporary culture.
JACOB LILLEMOSE
Jacob Lillemose, PhD Researcher at the Copenhagen Doctoral School, University of Copenhagen, working on the „Software Art and the Aesthetics of Information Tools“ project. He works as a freelance critic and curator specializing in integrating computer-based contemporary art and contemporary art in general to the tradition of conceptual art. Together with Inke Arns he curated the traveling exhibition “Irational.org: Tools, Techniques, and Events 1996-2006.” He has contributed texts to numerous catalogues, magazines and anthologies, including Curating Immateriality (autonomedia, 2006) and Read Me: Software Art and Cultures (University of Aarhus Press, 2005). He is a member of the net culture organization “Artnode,” in conjunction with which he edited We Love Your Computer. An Anthology on Net Art published by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. He is currently based in Copenhagen.
RAHEL PUFFERT
Art historian and art educator; lives in Hamburg. In her doctoral thesis at Leuphana University Lüneburg she examined “educational paths in the art context” with a focus on “social avant-gardes” from art historical, artistic and sociological perspectives.
1996-98 held of the pedagogical department of the Municipal Gallery Nordhorn. Teaching activities at the universities of Lüneburg, Kassel and Vienna as well as the Hamburg School for Adult Education. Member of the artists’ collective “target: autonopop” (www. targetautonopop.org), the “Kultur & Soziale Bewegung” archive (www.archiv.glizz.net) and the “Arbeitsgruppe des Kunstverein in Hamburg.” Co-founder and editor of THE THING Hamburg.
Focus of her publications: Distribution and forms of address as inherent parts of artistic practice, art’s social functions, and the mediality of (art) history.
GERALD RAUNIG
Philosopher, art theoretician, lives in Vienna; works at the eipcp (European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies), Vienna; co-ordinator of the transnational research projects republicart (http://republicart. net) and transform (http://transform.eipcp.net); university lecturer at the Institute for Philosophy, University of Klagenfurt/A; (co-)editor of two series of books at Turia+Kant, Vienna: „republicart. Kunst und Öffentlichkeit“ and „es kommt darauf an. Texte zur Theorie der politischen Praxis“; member of the editorial board of the multilingual webjournal transversal http://transversal.eipcp.net/ and the Austrian journal for radical democratic cultural politics, Kulturrisse (http://www.igkultur.at/kulturrisse).
Recent books: Art and Revolution. Transversal Activism in the Long Twentieth Century, translated by Aileen Derieg, New York/ Los Angeles: Semiotext(e)/MIT Press 2007; Art and Contemporary Critical Practice. Reinventing Institutional Critique, London: mayflybooks 2008 (Ed., with Gene Ray); A Thousand Machines, translated by Aileen Derieg, New York/Los Angeles: Semiotext(e)/MIT Press 2009 (forthcoming).
SILKE WENK
Silke Wenk, Prof. Dr., art historian, teaches art and media as well as “Cultural Gender Studies” (pre-doctoral courses) at Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg.
Studied art history, sociology and philosophy in Freiburg and Berlin; doctorate 1980, habilitation 1992 at Hamburg University. Before her appointment to Oldenburg University, she taught for many years at Berlin Arts College and had lectureships and guest professorships at diverse universities in Germany and abroad.
Numerous publication of public sculpture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, about art and cultural politics during the period of National Socialism, on the struggle to come to terms with the past visually, gender difference and its significance in modernist political iconography and on problems of feminist art history and cultural theory.
VERENA KUNI
Verena Kuni is professor for Visual Culture at Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main (DE). She publishes widely in international print and online media; since 1997 she runs her own art radio show on radio x ffm. From 1995 to 1999 she was curator for Kasseler Dokumentarfilm & Videofest; since 1999 she is ibid. director of interfiction conferenc for art, media and network cultures.
Her research, teaching, lectures, projects & publications are devoted to contemporary arts & media cultures, their histories & futures. Current projects focus on D.I.Y. & prosumer cultures; media of imagination – imagination of media; technologies of transformation; philosophical toys; transfers between media & material cultures; and digital decay. www.kuniver.se