Inke Arns

1968 in Duisdorf/Bonn, lives in Dortmund and Berlin (Germany). Having worked since 1993 as an independent curator and author focussing on media art, net cultures and Eastern Europe, Inke Arns (Dr. phil./ PhD) since 2005 is artistic director of Hartware MedienKunstVerein in Dortmund, Germany (www.hmkv.de).

University studies
After spending four years in Paris (1982-86) she studied Eastern European cultural studies, Slavistics, Political Science, and Art History at the Free University Berlin and the University of Amsterdam (Erasmus scholarship 1992); 1996 M.A. thesis "Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK) - analysis of their artistic strategies in the context of Yugoslavia in the 1980s" (published 2002). 1998-2000 PhD grant of the Berlin Senate (NaFöG). In 2004 she completed her PhD degree at the Institute of Slavistics of the Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany. Her dissertation, entitled Objects in the Mirror may be Closer Than They Appear: The Avant-Garde in the Rear View Mirror, researches a paradigmatic shift in the way artists reflect 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.

Academic teaching
2000-2001 lecturer at the Institute of Slavistics at the Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany; 2002-2004 guest-lecturer at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst (HGB) Leipzig; 2005 external diploma advisor, Studienbereich Neue Medien, Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst (HGK) Zürich; 2007 External Examiner at Piet Zwart Institut (Media Design), Willem de Kooning Academy Rotterdam. From 2007/2008 professorship MA Contemporary Art Studies (Maska, Ljubljana; University of Nova Gorica; Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Ljubljana).

Juries
Member of various juries, advisory expert groups and scientific commissions (currently: Maska International Editorial Board, Ljubljana; transmediale.07, Berlin; Re:place. International Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology, Berlin 2007; Kunststiftung NRW / Nachwuchsförderung; Hauptstadtkulturfonds)

Projects
Her curatorial work includes media art exhibitions and conferences like
- OSTranenie 93: Shattered Myths, New Realities. Video Focus on Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, Bauhaus Dessau 1993;
- Minima Media. Medienbiennale Leipzig 94, Buntgarnwerke Leipzig-Plagwitz 1994;
- V2_East Meeting on Documentation and Archives of Media Art in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, conference of the V2_Organisation, Rotterdam 1996;
- discord. sabotage of realities, Kunstverein & Kunsthaus, Hamburg 1996/97;
- body of the message, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, 1998;
- Body and the East: Performance and Body Art in Eastern Europe 1960 - today, Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana, 1998;
- update 2.0, Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM) Karlsruhe, curated for the Goethe-Institute, 2000;
- Kinetographien, interdisciplinary conference of the Institute of Slavistics at the European Academy Berlin, 2001;
- Social Technologies, exhibition on net activism at Kokerei Zollverein, Essen, 2003;
- IRWIN: Retroprincip 1983-2003, exhibition of the Slovenian artists' collective at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Sep-Oct 2003; Karl Ernst Osthaus-Museum, Hagen, Nov 2003-Jan 2004; Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade, April-May 2004;
- Public Library, exhibition during the Wizards of OS conference, Berlin, June 10-12, 2004;
- Where am I (and who are all these people)?, exhibition at EXIT Contemporary Art Institute, Peja, Kosovo, July-Aug 2004;
- Dispersed Moments of Concentration. Urban and Digital Spaces, HMKV at PHOENIX Halle Dortmund, May-July, 2005
- On Disappearance. Loss of World and Escaping from the World, HMKV at PHOENIX Halle Dortmund, Aug-Oct 2005
- Readme100: Temporary Software Art Factory, 4th international Readme festival on software art and culture, HMKV at the State and City Library Dortmund, Nov 2005;
- Glamour and Globalisation, HMKV at PHOENIX Halle Dortmund, May- July 2006;
- mit allem rechnen. Media Art from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Museum am Ostwall & PHOENIX Halle Dortmund, May-July 2006;
- The Wonderful World of irational.org. Tools, Techniques and Events 1996-2006, HMKV at PHOENIX Halle Dortmund, Aug-Oct 2006;
- What is Modern Art? (Group Show), Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Sep-Oct 2006.

Initiatives
Member of Fischbüro, Berlin (1987-88), founding member of the translocal Syndicate network (1996-2001), founding member of the Who by Fire? network initiated by the ICA-Dunaujvaros (12/97), co-founder of the Berlin-based mikro, association for the advancement of new media cultures (03/98) as well as a co-founder of Spectre, a mailing list for media culture in Deep Europe (08/01).

Publications
Books include Netzkulturen (2002), Neue Slowenische Kunst (2002), "Objects in the Mirror may be closer than they appear": The Avant-Garde in the Rear-View Mirrror (forthcoming in Slovenian in 2006 by Maska, Ljubljana); numerous articles on media art and net culture. Recently she contributed to Media Art Net 1: Survey of Media Art (Vienna/New York 2004); Media Art Net 2: Key Topics (Vienna/New York 2005); aRt&D. Research and Development in Art (Rotterdam 2005); East Art Map. Art and Eastern Europe (London 2006).
She is also the editor of several exhibition catalogues, e.g. Irwin: Retroprincip 1983-2003 (2003); Dispersed Moments of Concentration, On Disappearance (2005); mit allem rechnen, What is Modern Art? (Group Show), The Hartware Guide to irational (2006).

Lectures
transmediale.06 (Berlin 2006), Tate Modern (London, 2005), plug.in (Basel 2005), Neue Kunst Halle (St. Gallen 2005), Akademie der bildenden Künste (Vienna 2004), Slovenian Society of Aesthetics (Ljubljana 2004), Ars Electronica (Linz 2004), University of Aarhus (Aarhus 2004), Laboratory for Visual Arts (Prishtina 2004), Museum für zeitgenössische Kunst (Belgrad 2004), kuda (Novi Sad 2004), Sorbonne (Paris 2004), Kunstverein (Cuxhaven 2004), Humboldt-Universität, u.a. (Berlin), Landesbibliothek (Stuttgart 2004), Max Mueller Bhavan / Goethe Institut (Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore 2001), sarai (New Delhi 2001), Goethe Institut (Auckland, Wellington 2000), The Physics Room (Christchurch 2000), Goethe Institut (Hong Kong 2000), Humanistische Universität (Moscow 2000), Galerija Skuc, Moderna galerija (Ljubljana 1999), Institute of Contemporary Art (London 1997), depot (Wien 1997), a.o.

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