biography/Biographien

Marie-Luise Angerer
(Köln, D) is professor of Gender and Media Studies at the Kunsthochschule für Medien, Cologne. Her specialist subjects in teaching and research are the body, sexuality and feminist and psychoanalytic theory, film, TV, new technologies and art.
Her publications include: body options. Körper. Spuren. Medien. Bilder, Vienna 199, 2nd Edition 2000; The Body of Gender (Editor) Vienna 1995; Life as Screen? Or how to grasp the Virtuality of the body, in: Filozofski Vestnik, vol. 2, Lubljana 1999, p. 153-164; Space does Matter. On cyberbodies and other bodies, in: European Journal of Cultural Studies 1999, vol 2(2), p. 202-229 (Sage); Medien und Miediales Überlegungen zu _medialen Verfassung des Subjekts_(Media and Media Matters, Thoughts on _The Media Concept of the Subject_) in: metis. Zeitschrift für historische Frauenforschung und feministische Praxis, 1998, 7th year, vol. 13, p. 64-79. Medienkörper/Körper-Medien Erinnerungsspuren im Zeitalter der _digitalen Evolution_, in: Körper-Gedächtnis-Schrift. Der Körper als Medium kultureller Erinnerung, Berlin, 1997, p. 277-292, alt. feminism/alt. sex/alt. identity/alt. theory/alt. art. Anmerkungen zur theoretischen und medialen Zelebrierung virtueller Geschlechter und ihrer Körper in: springerin, Hefte für Gegenwartskunst, 1st Year/Volume 2/3, p.32-41.

Irina Aristarkhova
(Moskau, Singapore) (uspia@nus.edu.sg) has been writing and teaching on Feminist Theory & Aesthetics, Cyberart and Cyberculture, and Russian national identity, among other topics. Currently she is working on Cyberarts Database at the National University of Singapore (www.cyberartsweb.org), and on the Russian translation of Luce Irigaray's 'L'Ethique de la difference sexuelle' to be published in Moscow.

Caroline Bassett
Bassett (Sussex, UK) is a lecturer in media and culture at the University of Sussex and a writer specialising in new media. She is author of Virtually Gendered and With a Little Help from Her (New) Friends amongst other things cyber-feministic. Her current work is focussed on narrative, gendered identity, and technology.

Ulrike Bergermann
Studied german literature and other in Heidelberg and Hamburg, participated in feminist projects (Bildwechsel, HFZ), teaching assignments at the University of Hamburg and the Art Academy Braunschweig, Workshops at the Informatica Feminale Bremen and the International Women’s University (section body). PhD 1999 in Hamburg on theories of the visual and textual and the notations of sign language, since 1999 scientific assistent at the media theory study course at the University of Paderborn. Many publications on questions of media theory, gender studies, etc. – cf. www.uni-paderborn.de/~bergerma.
When Thealit first moved into the Frauenkulturhaus in 1991, Andrea Sick invited me to help plan its first program, "Künstliche Führungen. Konzept Art von Frauen" (Artificial tours. Conceptual art by women). Since then we have organized, in different constellations and with sometimes more, sometimes less participation on my part, a series of laboratories, published the documentation ÜberSchriften, and much more. Our most recent event was the symposium "Hand. Medium¬Körper¬Technik" (Hand. Medium¬Body¬Technology) which I conceptualized and which was organized with the help of Claudia Reiche, Andrea Klier, Silke Rotermund, the Cinema 46, the Künstlerhaus, Lola Castro Ruiz, Anna Postmeyer and others, a publication is in planning).

Marina Grzinic
(Ljubljana, Slov) received her Ph.D in Philosophy on the topic of Philosphical Aspects of Virtual Reality and Changed Time and Space Paradigms in the 1990's at the University of Ljubljana. She works as a reasercher at the Institute of Philosophy at The Scientific and Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Science and Art. During the 1997-98 academic year, she held the Postdoctoral Fellowship for Research of the Japan Society for the Advancement of Science in Tokyo. She is based at the Tokyo Institute of Polytechnics (host professor, Machiko Kusahara). Grzinic works as a freelance curator, writer and lecturer. She has published three books, the most recent being New Media, Video Art and the Retro Avant-garde Movement in Post-Socialism (Essays on Theory, Politics and Aesthetics) (Ljubljana 1997), and her numerous essays are published internationally. She has been involved in video art, interactive media projects and media art since 1982. In collaboration with video artist Aina Smid, also of Ljubljana, they have produced 30 video works, films, and numerous media installations. A CD-ROM project entitled Troubles with Sex, Theory & History by Grzinic/Smid has been published as part of the CD-ROMagazine "artintact 4" by the ZKM/Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, 1997. Grzinic and S_mid have received several major international awards for their video works, including Videonale, Bonn 1992; San Francisco International Film Festival, 1994 and 1995; Deutscher Videokunst Preis/Multimediale 3, ZKM, Karlsruhe 1993; FIV Buenos Aires.

Verena Kuni
(Frankfurt, D) <verena@kuni.org> art historian and media theorist (m.a.). currently working as assistant at the dept. of art history at the university of trier, where she is also coordinator for the interdisciplinary & intercultural gender studies programme [http://www.uni-trier.de/zig]. from 1996 to 2001 she was assistant at the dept. of art theory/academy of fine arts at the johannes gutenberg-university of mainz, and co-organized a special lecture & teaching programme for women artists [http://www.kuni.org/v/frau24 ]. teaching assignments at several universities and art academies since 1997, a.o. at the hochschule fuer gestaltung/offenbach [http://www.hfg-offenbach.de ], where she is currently involved in the funding process of a center for gender studies in the arts (<zentrum fuer genderforschung in den kuensten>, together with the hochschule fuer musik und darstellende kunst/frankfurt>) and the research project <gender / medien / kunst>. ph.d. project on the (self) staging of the artist's persona and the creation of artist's myths in contemporary art. besides working as a free lance curator organizing exhibitions, video screenings, webspaces and conferences [http://www.kuni.org/v/curat.htm ]; as well as a free lance author and critic for several art magazines [http://www.kuni.org/v/public.htm ] ; a. o. kunst-bulletin/zurich [http://www.kunstbulletin.ch ], frieze/london [http://www.frieze.com ], camera austria/graz [http://www.camera-austria.at ], eikon/vienna [http://www.eikon.or.at ]. as miss.gunst <miss.gunst@gmx.net>, she runs her own radio show focussing on contemporary art and media, GUNST, on radioX/frankfurt [http://www.radioX.de ], and regulary spreads the GUNSTagenda newsletter [http://www.kuni.org/v/gunst ]. since 1995 co-curator of video programmes for the <kasseler dokumentarfilm und videofest> [http://www.filmladen.de/dokfest ]; where since 1999 she is also organising the <interfiction> workhop meetings for art & media networkers [http://www.interfiction.net ]. co-founder and webmistress of the <filiale zeitgenössische kunst gender vermittlung> [http://www.thing.de/filiale ]. member of the <old boys network (OBN)> [http://www.obn.org ]. research, teaching, lectures and writings in the field of contemporary arts, (electronic) media and gender related issues. home@ http://www.kuni.org/v/ - mailto:verena@kuni.org

Margaret Morse
(Santa Cruz, USA) is a Professor of Film and Digital Media at the University of California at Santa Cruz. She is the author of _Virtualities: Television, Media Art and Cyberculture_ (Indiana UP 1998) and principle author of _Hardware, Software, Artware_ (Cantz Verlag and ZKM 1997). She has published numerous articles of theory and criticism on varied subjects from aerobics and sport to smell and "home" and the erotics of email.

Helene von Oldenburg
lives in Rastede and Hamburg, Germany. She holds a doctor's degree of Agricultural Science and a Diploma in Visual Arts. Her work - presented in lectures, performances and installations - centers on research of appearances and effects digital media forces on perception, society and future. She is member of the Old Boys Network. Curator of “UFO-Strategies3, Edith-Ruß-Haus für Medienkunst, Oldenburg, 2000 <http://www.edith-russ-haus.de> and with Claudia Reiche founder of the first interplanetarien exhibition site on Mars THE MARS PATENT, <http://www.mars-patent.org>. She is curating with Rosanne Altstatt "Cyberfem Spirit - Spirit of Data" 2001 in the Edith-Russ Site for Media Art Oldenburg.

Catherine Pelachaud
Pelachaud (I, Rom)has been involved in the study of human-like agent since more than ten years. She has been working on a system which automatically generates and animates conversations between multiple human-like agents with appropriate and synchronized speech, intonation, facial expressions, and hand gestures. She is currently working on a 3-years European project MagiCster involving the creation of embodied agents. Her research interest includes embodied conversational agent, human gender and culture behaviour simulation and multimedia systems.

Claudia Reiche
(D, Hamburg) literary and media scientist, artist, with a longtime and completely unavoidable relationship to the Women’s Culture House Thealit Bremen, since 1992 approximately, (see for instance: concept and organisation of "Künstliches Leben:// Mediengeschichten"(Artificial Life://Mediastories), laboratory on media art and theory: http://www.thealit.dsn.de/LIFE/labor.htm). Member of the first cyberfeminist alliance 'Old Boys Network': http://www.obn.org. Editing with Verena Kuni "Cyberfeminism. Next Protocols", published by auonomedia. Curating with Helene von Oldenburg "The Mars Patent", the first international and interplanetarian exhibition site on Mars: http://www.mars-patent.org Has been member a research project at the University of Hamburg "Körperbilder. Mediale Verwandlungen des Menschen in der Medizin" (Bodyimages. Transformations of the Human Being in Media and Medicine) directed by Prof. Marianne Schuller, still focussing on "Living pictures. Medical visualization, artificial life and electronic entertainment", especially the Visible Human Project. http://www.rrz.uni-hamburg.de/koerperbilder

Anne-Marie Schleiner
(SF, USA) is engaged in gaming and net culture in a variety of roles as a writer, critic, curator, and gaming artist/designer . Her work investigates avatar gender construction, computer gaming culture, and hacker art. She has curated online exhibits of game mods and add-ons including the exhibits "Cracking the Maze: Game Patches and Plug-ins as Hacker Art", "Mutation.fem", and "Snow Blossom House." She runs a site focused on game hacks and open source digital art forms called "opensorcery.net". She is also co-founder of playskins.com, a game development house for innovative and sexy games and toys.

Andrea Sick
(general and conceptual manager Thealit)
German literature and cultural science studies in Heidelberg, Bremen and Hamburg.
Teaching assignments in art theory and cultural science on pictoral theories and psychoanalysis at the University of Bremen. PHD with a grant from the Heinrich Böll Stiftung at the University of Hamburg on "Kartenmuster. Bilder und Wissenschaft in der Kartographie" (Map patterns. Pictures and science in cartography).
Main study and research topics in the area of psychoanalysis, media and cultural theory and cartography. Especially interested in the interface between scientific, artistic and curatorial work.
1990 I founded the Thealit together with Anna Postmeyer. Since then, I have been responsible for management in the area of art and culture (today, the Frauen.Kultur.Labor). For me, it has always been and still is important to be able to combine conceptual work with the presentation of my own material – which has lead to the corresponding guidelines in the Thealit Program. In the last ten years, the Thealit team and I have organized, planned and designed a large series of laboratories.
Publications at Thealit:
ÜberSchriften. Aus Bildern und Büchern, ed: Andrea Sick, Ulrike
Bergermann, Friederike Janshen, Claudia Reiche, Bremen (thealit) 1994.
Serialität: Reihen und Netze, ed. Elke Bippus und Andrea Sick, Bremen
(thealit) 2000, CD-ROM.
Hand. Medium¬Körper¬Technik, ed. Ulrike Bergermann und Andrea Sick,
Bremen (thealit) 2001.

Cornelia Sollfrank
(Hamburg/Berlin/Celle, D) is an artist whose central concerns are the changing role of the artist in the information age, new forms of dissemination of art, the gender-specific handling of technology and communication and networking as art. She was a member of the collectives "Frauen-und-Technik" and "-Innen," and she initiated the Cyberfemininist alliance known as "Old Boys Network" (http://www.obn.org). Her project "Female Extension" (1997) (http://www.obn.org/femext) was a hack of the first net.art competition initiated by a museum, in which she flooded the museum's network with submissions by 300 virtual female net artists. Her net.art generator (http://www.obn.org/generator) automatically produces art on demand. She published the readers "First Cyberfeminist International" (1988) and "Next Cyberfeminist International" (1999) (http://www.obn.org/reader). Sollfrank is currently producing work on the subject of female hackers. (http://www.obn.org/hackers)

Yvonne Volkart
(Zürich, CH) is curator, art critic, and writer. She lectures German and New Media at the Hochschule of Art and Design in Zurich, and at several European art schools and universities. As a member of OBN she was one of the organizers of »Next Cyberfeminist International«, Rotterdam, March 1999. The latest exhibition projects were »Tenacity. Cultural Practices in the Age of Bio- and Informationtechnologies«, Swiss Institute New York/Shedhalle Zurich, 2000, »Body as Byte. The Body as information flow« (Kunstmuseum Luzern, spring 2001), and the internet and CD-ROM part of »Double Life. Identity and Transformation in Contemporary Arts«, Generali Foundation Vienna, April 2001. She is currently writing a PhD about gender and cyborg fantasies in new media art in Oldenburg. http://www.xcult.org/volkart

Faith Wilding
(Pittsburgh, USA) merges her biography with that of subRosa) subRosa is a reproducible (cyber)feminist cell of cultural researchers committed to combining art, activism, and politics to explore and critique the effects of the intersections of the new information and biotechnologies on women~s bodies, lives, and work.