Johannes Grenzfurthner

Johannes Grenzfurthner
Johannes Grenzfurthner at Museumsquartier, Vienna (2011)
Born	1975 Vienna
Occupation	artist, writer, curator, theatre director, film director
Nationality	Austrian
Citizenship	Austria
Signature
Website
grenzfurthner.com

Johannes Grenzfurthner (German: [joˈhanəs ˈgrɛntsfʊrtnə]; born 1975 in Vienna) is an award-winning Austrian artist, filmmaker, writer, curator and theatre director. He is known as the founder, conceptualist and artistic director of monochrom, an international art and theory group. Most of his artworks are labelled monochrom.

He is one of the most outspoken researchers in the field of sexuality and technology, and one of the founders of 'techno-hedonism' (see also: barbots).

Recurring topics in Grenzfurthner's art and writing are contemporary art, film, activism, performance, humour, philosophy, sex, communism, robotics, postmodernism, media theory, cultural studies, popular culture studies, science fiction, and the debate about copyright.

Boing Boing magazine refers to him as leitnerd,^[1] a wordplay with the German term Leitkultur that ironically hints at Grenzfurthner's role in nerd/hacker/art culture.

Career overview

monochrom

Johannes Grenzfurthner founded monochrom in 1993. He wanted to create an alternative magazine that dealt with art, technology and subversive cultures, and was influenced by US magazines like Mondo 2000. Grenzfurthner's motivation was to react to the emerging conservativism in cyber-cultures of the early 1990s,^[2] and to combine his political background in the Austrian punk movement with discussion of new technologies and the cultures they create.^[3] The magazine featured many interviews and essays, for example by Bruce Sterling, HR Giger, Richard Kadrey, Arthur Kroker, Negativland, Kathy Acker, Michael Marrak, DJ Spooky, Geert Lovink, Lars Gustafsson, Tony Serra, Friedrich Kittler, Jörg Buttgereit, Eric Drexler, Terry Pratchett and Bob Black,^[4] in its specific experimental layout style.^[5] In 1995 the group decided to cover new artistic practices^[6][7][8] and started experimenting with different media: computer games, musical, short films, pranks, online activism, which Grenzfurthner calls 'Urban Hacking'^[9] or more specific: 'Context hacking', a term that Grenzfurthner coined.^[10]

Context hacking transfers the hackers' objectives and methods to the network of social relationships in which artistic production occurs, and upon which it is dependent. In a metaphoric sense, these relationships also have a source code. Programs run in them, and our interaction with them is structured by a user interface. When we know how a space, a niche, a scene, a subculture or a media or political practice functions, we can change it and »recode« it, deconstructing its power relationships and emancipating ourselves from its compulsions and packaging guidelines.^[11]

Grenzfurthner is the group's artistic director.

Conferences and festivals

Grenzfurthner is head of Arse Elektronika^[12][13][14] festival in San Francisco (2007 – ), an annual academic^[15] and artistic^[16] conference and anthology series that focusses on sexuality and technology. The first conference was curated by Grenzfurthner in 2007 to answer questions about the impact of sexuality on technological innovation and adoption.

Grenzfurthner is hosting Roboexotica,^[17] the international Festival for Cocktail-Robotics (2002-) which invites researchers and artists to build machines that serve or mix cocktails. V. Vale calls Roboexotica "an ironic attempt to criticize techno-triumphalism and to dissect technological hypes."^[18]

Johannes Grenzfurthner and Pedobear at ROFLcon 2009

Grenzfurthner is head of Hedonistika,^[19] a "smorgastic Festival for Gastrobots, Culinatronics, Advanced Snackhacks and Nutritional Mayhem", an event dedicated to approaches in gastronomical robots, cooking machines, molecular cuisine and experimental food performances. The first installment was presented in Montréal at the 2014 'Biennale internationale d'art numérique'.

Director

Grenzfurthner wrote and directed a range of theatre plays,^[20][21][22] street theatre performances^[23][24] and short films.
His first feature film was the independent fantasy comedy Die Gstettensaga: The Rise of Echsenfriedl (2014). His first feature documentary is Traceroute (2016). He is working on several feature films (e.g. Sierra Zulu,^[25][26] Tycho!,^[27] Nothing to Hide.^[28]

Academia, writing, lecturing

Grenzfurthner is a lecturer of art theory and practice at the University of Applied Sciences, Graz, Austria and is a lecturer on culture jamming at University of Arts and Industrial Design in Linz, Austria.^[29][30] He has been a guest lecturer at numerous universities in the United States as well.^[31][32]

He has published numerous books, essays and articles on contemporary art, communication processes and philosophy including Mind and Matter: Comparative Approaches Towards Complexity, Do androids sleep with electric sheep?, Of Intercourse and Intracourse: Sexuality, Biomodification and the Techno-Social Sphere and Pr0nnovation?: Pornography and Technological Innovation.^{[33][34][35][36][37]}

Grenzfurthner published the much debated^[38] pamphlet "Hacking the Spaces", that dealt with exclusionist tendencies in the hackerspaces movement.^[39] He extended his critique through lectures at the 2012 and 2014 Hackers on Planet Earth conferences in New York City.

He writes for various online/print magazines and radio stations (e.g. ORF,^[40] Telepolis, Boing Boing^[41]).

Entertainment

Grenzfurthner is a comedian and performs at various venues, e.g. Vienna's Rabenhof Theater.^[42] Parts of his comedy show "Schicksalsjahre eines Nerds" form the basis of his documentary film Traceroute (2016).

Community work

Grenzfurthner sees monochrom as a community and social incubator of critical and subversive thinkers.^[43] An example is Bre Pettis of MakerBot Industries, who got inspired to create 3d printers during an art residency with Grenzfurthner at monochrom in 2007. Pettis wanted to create a robot that could print shot glasses for the event Roboexotica and did research about the RepRap project at the Vienna hackerspace Metalab.^[44] Shot glasses remained a theme throughout the history of MakerBot.^[45]

Grenzfurthner was one of the core team members in the development process of netznetz, a new kind of community-based funding system for net culture and net art together with the culture department of the city government of Vienna.

He started the "Hackbus" community,^[46][47][48] a platform and movement for mobile hackerspaces.

Commercial work

Grenzfurthner is a professional creative consultant and offers coaching sessions for individuals and companies.^[49]
He was behind an acclaimed series of viral marketing videos for Boing Boing Video, dealing with a mysterious packages full of Cheetos. The series is set in the alternative universe of Soviet Unterzoegersdorf.^{[50][51][52][53][54]}
He conceptualized and co-built a robot installation to promote the products of sex toy company Bad Dragon.^[55]

Personal life

Johannes Grenzfurthner lives and works in Vienna and Durango, Colorado. He grew up in Stockerau in rural Lower Austria and talks about it in his stand-up comedy "Schicksalsjahre eines Nerds" (2014) and his semi-autobiographical documentary film Traceroute (2016).

If I had not grown up in Stockerau, in the boonies of Lower Austria, than I would not be what I am now. The germ cell of burgeoning nerdism is difference. The yearning to be understood, to find opportunities to share experiences, to not be left alone with one's bizarre interest. At the same time one derives an almost perverse pleasure from wallowing in this deficit. Nerds love deficiency: that of the other, but also their own. Nerds are eager explorers, who enjoy measuring themselves against one another and also compete aggressively. And yet the nerd's existence also comprises an element of the occult, of mystery. The way in which this power is expressed or focused is very important.^[56]

He identifies as a leftist and atheist. He is engaged to filmmaker Anna Kirst.^[57]

Awards

• As the director of Udo 77 he won the 2004 'Nestroy Theatre Prize' (Vienna) 2005 (together with 'The Great Television Swindle' by maschek and 'Freundschaft' by Steinhauer and Henning).^[58]
• Won a special mention at the 2006 Videomedeja Awards (Novi Sad, Serbia) for Net/Software Category for monochrom's "Soviet Unterzoegersdorf/Sector 1/The Adventure Game",^[59] and an honorary mention at the 2007 aniMOTION Awards (Sibiu, Romania) for Interactive Tales for monochrom's "Soviet Unterzoegersdorf/Sector 1/The Adventure Game".^[60]
• His short film "The Void's Foaming Ebb" got a special jury mention at the 2008 MEDIA FORUM/Moscow International Film Festival.^[61]
• Honoree at the 13th Annual Webby Awards.^[62]
• Won (as the artistic director of monochrom) the Art Award of the FWF Austrian Science Fund (2013).^[63]
• His feature film Die Gstettensaga: The Rise of Echsenfriedl won Best Foreign Horror Feature at the 2014 Indie Gathering International Film Festival,^[64] won Best Hacker Feature at the 2014 PhutureCon Festival,^[65] won Best Foreign Cult Movie at the 2014 Fright Night Film Fest,^[66] won Best Narrative Feature at the Maker Film Festival.^[67] The film was nominated for Best Feature at Colortape International Film Festival^[68] and Best Foreign Language Feature Film, Best Director of a Foreign Language Film and Best Soundtrack at the 2015 International Filmmaker Festival of World Cinema (London).^[69] Microfilmmaker Magazine awarded the movie an Award of Superiority (9.5/10).^[70] The Indie Fest awarded the movie an Award of Merit.^[71] The 2015 'DIY Film Festival' in Los Angeles awarded the film a 'honorable mention'.^[72]
• His feature documentary Traceroute won Best Documentary Feature at the 2016 Phuture Con Festival (Denver, USA/Sapporo, Japan)^[73] and the Award of Merit for Documentary Feature at the 2016 Accolade Global Film Competition.^[74] It is nominated for the 2016 Austrian Documentary Award (ADA).^[75]

Filmography

• Die Gstettensaga: The Rise of Echsenfriedl (2014) – director, writer
• Traceroute (2016) – director, writer

Publications

• Editor of magazine/yearbook series "monochrom" (1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2010)
• Editor of "Stadt der Klage" (Michael Marrak, 1997)
• Editor of "Weg der Engel" (Michael Marrak and Agus Chuadar, 1998)
• Editor of "Who shot Immanence?" (together with Thomas Edlinger and Fritz Ostermayer, 2002)
• Editor of "Leutezeichnungen" (together with Elffriede, 2003)
• Editor of "Quo Vadis, Logo?!" (together with Günther Friesinger, 2006)
• Editor of "Spektakel – Kunst – Gesellschaft" (together with Stephan Grigat and Günther Friesinger, 2006)
• Editor of "pr0nnotivation? Arse Elektronika Anthology" (together with Günther Friesinger and Daniel Fabry, 2008)
• Editor of "Roboexotica" (together with Günther Friesinger, Magnus Wurzer, Franz Ablinger and Chris Veigl, 2008)
• Editor of "Do Androids Sleep with Electric Sheep?" (together with Günther Friesinger, Daniel Fabry and Thomas Ballhausen, 2009)
• Editor of "Schutzverletzungen/Legitimation of Mediatic Violence" (together with Günther Friesinger and Thomas Ballhausen, 2010)
• Editor of "Urban Hacking" (together with Günther Friesinger and Thomas Ballhausen, 2010)
• Editor of "Geist in der Maschine. Medien, Prozesse und Räume der Kybernetik" (together with Günther Friesinger, Thomas Ballhausen, Verena Bauer, 2010)
• Editor of "The Wonderful World of Absence" (together with Günther Friesinger and Daniel Fabry, 2011)
• Editor of "Of Intercourse and Intracourse – Sexuality, Biomodification and the Techno-Social Sphere" (together with Günther Friesinger and Daniel Fabry, 2011)
• Editor of "Context Hacking: How to Mess with Art, Media, Law and the Market" (together with Günther Friesinger and Frank Apunkt Schneider, 2013)
• Editor of "Screw The System – Explorations of Spaces, Games and Politics through Sexuality and Technology" (together with Günther Friesinger and Daniel Fabry, 2013)

References

1. "The story of Traceroute, about a Leitnerd's quest", Boing Boing magazine; April 14, 2016
2. "CRE062 Monochrom"
3. Marc Da Costa, "Interview with Johannes Grenzfurthner of monochrom, Part 3", Furtherfield.
4. "monochrom print".
5. "monochrom #26-34 Ye Olde Self-Referentiality", Neural, 15 June 2010.
6. Simulacrum Fisticuffs (interview with Johannes Grenzfurthner), Rhysophocles, March 16, 2011
7. Erin Kobayashi, "How to be buried alive", Toronto Star, February 6, 2007
8. Marie Lechner, "", Libération, March 4, 2008.
9. "OtherZine".
10. Context Hacking: Some Examples of How to Mess with Art, the Media System, Law and the Market, at O'Reilly ETech 2008, San Diego
11. "monochrom: CONTEXT HACKING – Essay".
12. Silverberg, David (4 October 2007). "Sex Meets Tech at Kinky Conference in San Francisco" Digital Journal. Retrieved 19 February 2012.
13. Violet Blue, Special to SF Gate (4 October 2007). "Arse Elektronika 2007: Porn and Tech Conference / Violet Blue holds hope for the future of sex, despite the musical condoms". SFGate.
14. Interview with Arse Elektronika curator Johannes Grenzfurthner in Kill Screen Magazine: "Stories about orcs and rape: the man behind Arse Elektronika"
15. "Prosthetic Fetishes and Fan Erotica: Sci-Fi Predicts Future of Sex". WIRED. 24 September 2008.
16. 'Dirty Deeds Done Six Feet Deep', in Rue Morgue, January 2011
17. Jenna Wortham (12 June 2008). "Bot Bartenders Sling Drinks at Roboexotica USA". WIRED.
18. Justin Page. "Sputnikfest 2012 Event Schedule". Laughing Squid.
19. Hedonistika; information on BIAN homepage
20. "Kritik Theater: Die Außerirdischen in Dir wollen nur Deinen Körper!". DiePresse.com.
21. "Improv Reality 'Sitcom' Gets Spacy". DNews.
22. Peter Mühlbauer (24 June 2011). "Kotze, Sperma und Inventur im Weltraum". Telepolis.
23. ""Protestors" call games industry a "temple of sin," demand repentance". Ars Technica.
24. "BBtv: Monochrom's Nazi Petting Zoo". Boing Boing.
25. "Sierra Zulu".
26. 'Earthmoving', A Sierra Zulu prequel, in Film.at, February 2012
27. Tycho!, official homepage
28. "Nothing to Hide (2016)". IMDb.
29. FH JOANNEUM Gesellschaft mbH. "Studium "Informationsdesign" - FH JOANNEUM Gesellschaft mbH: University of applied sciences".
30. Faculty Page at University of Arts and Industrial Design
31. 'Carnegie Mellon Event Calendar – Johannes Grenzfurthner'
32. Karin Hodgin Jones. "Visiting Artist".
33. "Guerrilla Comm?". 21 April 2009.
34. Ingo Vavra. "Kroeger u.a. (Hg.) – Geistiges Eigentum und Originalität".
35. A Short History Of A Collaborative Conspiracy, In: AC:Collaborative
36. "Every Five Seconds an Inkjet Printer Dies Somewhere".
37. "inauthor:"Johannes Grenzfurthner" - Google Search".
38. "Hacking the Spaces".
39. Hacking the Spaces by Grenzfurthner/Schneider, 2009; in Textfiles.com
40. "Johannes Grenzfurthner – fm4.ORF.at".
41. "Monochrom: 20 years' worth of Viennese art-weirdness". Boing Boing.
42. Dorian Waller. "Pornos und tote Hühner". derStandard.at.
43. "CONTEXT HACKING: How to Mess with Art, Media, Law and the Market".
44. "MADE IN MY BACKYARD / BRE PETTIS".
45. Brandon Griggs, CNN (9 March 2013). "Startup unveils 3-D scanner at SXSW". CNN.
46. "Site Offline".
47. "Sur la route des hackers évangélistes".
48. "Mozilla Bildung: Jeder ist ein Lehrer – brand eins online".
49. "Johannes Grenzfurthner / Coaching".
50. Michael Learmonth. (11 February 2009). "Frito-Lay Puts Cheetos Brand in Bloggers' Hands".
51. "Cheetos and Boing-Boing: The Orange, Cheesy-Smelling Future of Advertising?". i C P G.
52. "Media As Creative Agency: Boing Boing Does Cheetos". PSFK. 9 February 2009.
53. "Cheetos Arrives in Soviet Unterzoegersdorf".
54. so2/rhizomatic architecture, 2009
55. Philip Steffan (27 November 2014). "Wenn Roboter einschenken: 16. Roboexotica in Wien". Make.
56. Interview with Johannes Grenzfurthner about Traceroute, Boing Boing magazine; April 14, 2016
57. Johannes Grenzfurthner. "Johannes Grenzfurthner – about.me". about.me.
58. Nestroy Theatre Prize 2005; German Wikipedia
59. "VIDEOMEDEJA".
60. "aniMOTION". AltArt.
61. "MEDIA FORUM 2008 >>> We Are The Users - МЕДИА ФОРУМ 2008 >>> Мы Пользователи".
62. "The Webby Awards".
63. Press release: Art Award of the FWF Austrian Science Fund (2013)
64. "20th Indie Gathering International Film Festival & more! - 2014 Winners".
65. "Die Gstettensaga: Best Hacker Feature 2014 at "PhutureCon Festival" - monochrom".
66. "Home".
67. Maker Film Festival, Durango, official homepage
68. Awards listing for Johannes Grenzfurthner on IMDb
69. "Hacked By AnonCoders".
70. "Die Gstettensaga: The Rise of Echsenfriedl (Straight Shooter Review)".
71. "Deadline April 22, 2016".
72. ""Die Gstettensaga": We got a honorable mention at 'The DIY Film Festival 2015' in Los Angeles – monochrom".
73. Phuture Con Festival 2016
74. Accolade Global Film Competition, Awards of Merit 2016
75. Austrian Documentary Award (ADA) nominee list 2016

External links

• TEDx talk by Johannes Grenzfurthner on art and subversion
• Interview with Marc Da Costa/Furtherfield: part 1, part 2 and part 3
• Interview with V. Vale in Pranks! 2
• Johannes Grenzfurthner at the Internet Movie Database