Iman Rezai (born 1981 in Shiraz, Iran) is an artist currently living and working in Berlin, Germany.
In March 2012, Rezai attracted international attention for his conceptual artwork "Die Guillotine" (German for: The Guillotine)
Rezai began his artistic career at art school in Tehran, studying in Tokyo and London before moving to Berlin where he became a masters student at the University of Arts in the class of Leiko Ikemura from 2006 to 2012. [1] In January 2015, his brother Ardavan Rezai published the autobiographical book "We are all mouses" (original German title "Wir sind alle Mäuse" and a translation mistake in the word 'mouses' was kept) that releases insights of the childhood of the two brothers and their migration to Berlin. [2]
In 2012, Iman Rezai and Rouven Materne, who were at this time master students at the Berlin University of Arts, have built an execution instrument and started a public vote concerning the killing of a sheep to assess and represent the current state of democracy. The construction of the machine and the literature surrounding the life or death of the sheep was already met with resistance at the University whilst still in its planning stage. In a democratic vote, with rules established by the artists, the public could decide whether a sheep will be executed by a colourful instrument of death devised by him. Over a period of four weeks 4.2 million people voted from all over the globe and over 500 different international media reported on the uproar. [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] The artists announced the controversial project was sold for $2.3 Million. [13] This was later revealed as fake news. [14]
Using the email address of the New National Gallery Berlin, Iman Rezai invited guests to the fictional exhibition named "The performative post-modern as an expression of modern austerity in the age of precarity." [15]
With "BundesInvest", Rezai demonstrated how easy it is to establish a company that appears to specialise in the sale of nuclear waste. [16]
With his performance "Waterboarding" as part of an exhibition, Rezai invited volunteers who could be subjected to the procedure in a rack created by him – to find out for themselves whether Waterboarding should be judged as a painful experience or merely a harmless shower. [17] [18] [19]
The Universität der Künste Berlin, situated in Berlin, Germany, is the largest art school in Europe. It is a public art and design school, and one of the four research universities in the city.
eSeL is an art platform in Vienna, Austria. Founded 1998 by Lorenz Seidler, it provides a weekly newsletter "eSeL Mehl", various mailing lists, a photo-archive and an event-database. The label "eSeL" is also serving as a nickname for the artist Lorenz Seidler, who also is initiating, curating and conducting various art projects. eSeL's offices are located at Museumsquartier in Vienna.
Norbert Walter Peters in Stolberg (Rhld.) / district of Aachen is a German composer, sound artist and author for Radio Art.
Georg Klein is a German sound, video, and media artist, and a composer. Based in Berlin, he also lived in Rome, Los Angeles and Istanbul.
Oliver Grau is a German art historian and media theoretician with a focus on image science, modernity and media art as well as culture of the 19th century and Italian art of the Renaissance. Main Areas of Research are: Digital Art, Media Art History, immersion, digital humanities, documentation and conservation strategies of born-digital media art. He is founder and director of the Archive for Digital Art (1998) and founder and head of the Society for MediaArtHistories and its biennial conference series. His monograph "Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion" is highly cited and with translations of his texts in 15 languages to date and over 300 invited lectures in 44 countries, he is one of the most internationally renowned contemporary art and media scholars.
Danja Akulin rose to prominence by creating large format pencil drawings that reinstate this genre's autonomous value.
Manfred "KILI" Kielnhofer is an Austrian painter, sculptor, designer and photographer. Due to his antisemitic statements in connection with the planned vaccination to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous of his works of art were removed from public space.
Charlotte Klonk is a German art historian. Klonk is most notable for her work on English landscape art in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, as well as for her work on museum interiors, particularly the white cube. She is currently a professor of art history at the Humboldt University of Berlin.
Roland Stelter is a German author, visual artist and designer.
Christian Saehrendt is a German Art Historian.
Meike Hoffmann is a German art historian and provenance researcher.
Unique Copy Album is the name of a unique copy release of an album by the Swiss band The Bianca Story. 2009 sold through an art auction for 10'000 Swiss francs. The 500 kg heavy sculpture was equipped with high fidelity speakers and a sensor system, which controlled the volume, depending on the position of the sculpture's wing doors. If those were opened all the way, the album should be able to listened to in concert level. To skip to the next song, the sensors needed to be contacted.
Yana Milev is a German cultural theorist, sociologist, ethnographer, and curator.
Karsten Konrad is a German abstract sculptor.
3Steps is a German-based contemporary artist collective between the twins Kai Harald Krieger and Uwe Harald Krieger and Joachim Pitt.
Thomas Girst is a German author and cultural manager.
Detmar Jobst Wilhelm Westhoff is a German art historian and curator. He is very committed to artistic projects that build a bridge between Asia and Europe, to young experimental artists, local cultural policy and monument protection.
The “Prize of the Böttcherstraße in Bremen” is a German award in the field of contemporary art that was first presented in 1954, making it one of the oldest awards of its kind. According to the Prize's rules, the award is “intended to honour visual artists living in the German speaking area who have not yet received a public distinction of a kind corresponding to the quality of their work”. From 1985 to 1991, the award was called "Bremer Kunstpreis".
Christine Streuli is a Swiss-born contemporary artist who lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
Nils Seethaler is a German cultural anthropologist. He researches historical collections of ethnological objects and human remains.
