This article may contain an excessive amount of intricate detail that may interest only a particular audience.(November 2022) |
Formation | 1993 |
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Type | International art-technology-philosophy group |
Purpose |
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Headquarters | Museumsquartier, Vienna, Austria |
Staff | 9 |
Website | www |
Monochrom (stylised as monochrom) is an international art-technology-philosophy group, publishing house and film production company. It was founded in 1993, [1] and defines itself as "an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science and political activism". [2] Its main office is located at Museumsquartier/Vienna (at 'Q21'). [3]
The group's members are: Johannes Grenzfurthner, Evelyn Fürlinger, Harald Homolka-List, Anika Kronberger, Franz Ablinger, Frank Apunkt Schneider, Daniel Fabry, Günther Friesinger and Roland Gratzer.
The group is known for working with different media and entertainment formats, although many projects are performative and have a strong focus on a critical and educational narrative. Johannes Grenzfurthner calls this "looking for the best weapon of mass distribution of an idea". [4] Monochrom is openly left-wing and tries to encourage public debate, sometimes using subversive affirmation or over-affirmation as a tactic. [5] The group popularized the concept of "context hacking". [6]
On the occasion of Monochrom's 20th birthday in 2013, several Austrian high-profile media outlets [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] paid tribute to the group's pioneering contributions within the field of contemporary art and discourse.
In the early 1990s, Johannes Grenzfurthner was an active member of several BBS message boards. [13] He used his online connections to create a zine or alternative magazine that dealt with art, technology and subversive cultures, and was influenced by US magazines like Mondo 2000 . [14] [15] Grenzfurthner's motivations were to react to the emerging conservatism in cyber-cultures of the early 1990s [16] and to combine his political background in the Austrian punk and antifa movement with discussion of new technologies and the cultures they create. [17] [18] Franz Ablinger joined Grenzfurthner and they became the publication's core team. [19]
The first issue was released in 1993. Over the years the publication 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, Jack Sargeant and Bob Black, [20] in its specific experimental layout style. [21]
In 1995 the group decided to cover new artistic practices [22] [23] [24] and started experimenting with different media: performances, computer games, robots, puppet theater, musical, short films, pranks, conferences, online activism.
In 1995 we decided that we didn't want to constrain ourselves to just one media format (the "fanzine"). We knew that we wanted to create statements, create viral information. So a quest for the best "Weapon of Mass Distribution" started, a search for the best transportation mode for a certain politics of philosophical ideas. This was the Cambrian Explosion of monochrom. We wanted to experiment, try stuff, find new forms of telling our stories. But, to be clear, it was (and still is) not about keeping the pace, of staying up-to-date, or (even worse) staying "fresh". The emergence of new media (and therefore artistic) formats is certainly interesting. But etching information into copper plates is just as exciting. We think that the perpetual return of 'the new', to cite Walter Benjamin, is nothing to write home about – except perhaps for the slave-drivers in the fashion industry. We've never been interested in the new just in itself, but in the accidental occurrence. In the moment where things don't tally, where productive confusion arises. [18]
All the other core team members joined between 1995 and 2006.
Grenzfurthner is the group's artistic director. He defines Monochrom's artistic and activist approach as 'Context hacking' [25] or 'Urban Hacking'. [26]
The group monochrom refers to its working method as "Context Hacking", thus referencing the hacker culture, which propagates a creative and emancipatory approach to the technologies of the digital age, and in this way turns against the continuation into the digital age of centuries-old technological enslavement perpetrated through knowledge and hierarchies of experts. ... 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. ... One of context hackers' central ambitions is to bring the factions of counterculture, which have veered off along widely diverging trajectories, back together again. [6]
From its very foundation, the group defined itself as a movement, culture [18] (referring to Iain M. Banks's sci-fi series) and "open field of experimentation". [2] Monochrom supported and supports various artists, activists, researchers and communities with an online publishing platform, a print publishing service (edition mono), [27] and organizes in-person meetings, screenings, radio shows, debate circles, conferences, online platforms. [28] It is fundamental for the group's core members to combine artistic and educational endeavors with community work [29] (cf. social practice).
Some collaborations have been rather short-lived (for example the publication of a 1993 fringe science paper [30] by Jakob Segal, projects with the Billboard Liberation Front and Ubermorgen or the administration of Dorkbot Vienna [31] ), some have been going for many years and decades (for example with Michael Marrak, Cory Doctorow, Jon Lebkowsky, Fritz Ostermayer, V. Vale, eSeL, Scott Beale/Laughing Squid, Machine Project, Emmanuel Goldstein, Jason Scott, Jonathan Mann, Jasmin Hagendorfer and the Porn Film Festival Vienna), Michael Zeltner, Anouk Wipprecht, VSL Lindabrunn).
Monochrom supports initiatives like the Radius Festival, [32] Play:Vienna, [33] the Buckminster Fuller Institute Austria, [27] RE/Search , the Semantic Web Company [34] and the Vienna hackerspace Metalab . For a couple of years, Monochrom ran the DIY project "Hackbus" in cooperation with David "Daddy D" Dempsey (of FM4) [35]
Since 2007, Monochrom is the European correspondent for Boing Boing Video. [36]
Monochrom offers a collaborative art residency in Vienna. Since 2003 the group has invited and created projects with artists, researchers, and activists like Suhrkamp's Johannes Ullmaier, pop theorist Stefan Tiron, performance artist Angela Dorrer, DIY blogger (and later: entrepreneur) Bre Pettis, photographer and activist Audrey Penven, digital artist Eddie Codel, sex work activist Maggie Mayhem, glitch artist Phil Stearns, illustrator Josh Ellingson, DIY artist Ryan Finnigan, digital artist Jane Tingley, digital rights activist Jacob Appelbaum, sex tech expert Kyle Machulis, hacker Nick Farr, filmmakers Sophia Cacciola and Michael J. Epstein, writer Jack Sargeant, and others.
All former resident artists are considered ambassadors. [37]
Johannes Grenzfurthner sees Monochrom as a community and social incubator of critical and subversive thinkers. [6] An example is Bre Pettis of MakerBot Industries, who got inspired to create 3d printers during his art residency with Monochrom in 2007. [38] Pettis wanted to create a robot that could print shot glasses for Monochrom's cocktail-robot event Roboexotica and did research about the RepRap project at Metalab. [39] Shot glasses remained a theme throughout the history of MakerBot. [40]
Boing Boing is a website, first established as a zine in 1988, later becoming a group blog. Common topics and themes include technology, futurism, science fiction, gadgets, intellectual property, Disney, and left-wing politics. It twice won the Bloggies for Weblog of the Year, in 2004 and 2005. The editors are Mark Frauenfelder, David Pescovitz, Carla Sinclair, and Rob Beschizza, and the publisher is Jason Weisberger.
Johannes Grenzfurthner is an Austrian artist, filmmaker, writer, actor, curator, theatre director, performer and lecturer. Grenzfurthner is the founder, conceiver and artistic director of monochrom, an international art and theory group and film production company. Most of his artworks are labeled monochrom.
Georg Paul Thomann was purported to be a renowned Austrian conceptual artist of the late 20th century. In reality, he was the fictitious creation of the Austrian art group monochrom who started working on his biography in the summer of 2000.
Buried Alive is an art and lecture performance series by art-tech group monochrom. The basic concept is to offer willing participants the opportunity of being buried alive in a real coffin underground for fifteen to twenty minutes. As a framework program, monochrom offers lectures about the history of the science of determining death and the medical cultural history of premature burial. To date, they have buried around 600 people. The series has created controversy in some places it has been staged.
Roboexotica is an annual festival and conference where scientists, researchers, computer experts and artists from all over the world build cocktail robots and discuss technological innovation, futurology and science fiction. Roboexotica is also an ironic attempt to criticize techno-triumphalism and to dissect technological hypes.
Soviet Unterzoegersdorf is a fictitious country created by the art/technology/theory group monochrom. It is the "last existing appanage republic of the USSR", located inside the Republic of Austria.
Michael Marrak is a German science fiction and horror writer. He is also an illustrator and from 1993 to 1996 he edited the magazine Zimmerit. His first novel Stadt der Klage was published by the Austrian art group and publishing collective monochrom.
Arse Elektronika is an annual conference organized by the Austrian arts and philosophy collective monochrom, focused on sex and technology. The festival presents talks, workshops, machines, presentations and films. The festival's curator is Johannes Grenzfurthner. Between 2007 and 2015, the event was held in San Francisco, but is now a traveling event in different countries.
Heather Kelley is a media artist, writer and video game designer. She is a co-founder of the Kokoromi experimental game collective, with whom she produces and curates the annual Gamma game event promoting experimental games as creative expression in a social context. She regularly appears as a jury member for several computer gaming festivals. She is also a frequent public speaker at technology events.
Die Gstettensaga: The Rise of Echsenfriedl is a 2014 Austrian science fiction and fantasy film directed by Johannes Grenzfurthner and starring Sophia Grabner, Lukas Tagwerker and Jeff Ricketts.
The absurdist comedy deals with the politics and hype behind media technology and nerd culture. Grenzfurthner calls his film a contemporary way to talk about the critique of the spectacle and commodity fetishism. The film was co-produced by art group monochrom and the media collective Traum & Wahnsinn, and created for the Austrian television channel ORF III. It features music by Kasson Crooker, Starpause, and many others.
Traceroute is a 2016 Austrian-American documentary film directed by Johannes Grenzfurthner. The autobiographical documentary and road movie deals with the history, politics and impact of nerd culture. Grenzfurthner calls his film a "personal journey into the uncharted depths of nerd culture, a realm full of dangers, creatures and more or less precarious working conditions", an attempt to "chase the ghosts of nerddom's past, present and future." The film was co-produced by art group monochrom and Reisenbauer Film. It features music by Kasson Crooker, Hans Nieswandt, and many others.
Glossary of Broken Dreams is a 2018 Austrian/American documentary film directed by Johannes Grenzfurthner. The essayistic feature film tries to present an overview of political concepts such as freedom, privacy, identity, resistance, etc.
Jasmin Hagendorfer is a Vienna-based contemporary artist, writer, filmmaker, curator, producer and festival organizer. She is one of the founders and creative director of the Porn Film Festival Vienna. From 2019 to 2022 she was the creative director of Transition International Queer & Minorities Film Festival. Her main artistic interest is in installation, sculpture and performance, and her work has been exhibited in Austria, Germany, Turkey, Serbia and Greece. As an artist she is concerned with social and political discourses and questions about gender identity with an emphasis on post-porn political works. Her studio is based in Stockerau near Vienna.
Je Suis Auto is a 2024 Austrian social science fiction indie comedy film directed by Juliana Neuhuber and written by Johannes Grenzfurthner. Chase Masterson is voicing the title character "Auto", a self-driving taxi,. Johannes Grenzfurthner plays Herbie Fuchsel, an unemployed nerd critical of artificial intelligence. The film is a farcical comedy that deals with issues such as artificial intelligence, politics of labor, and tech culture.
Juliana Neuhuber is a director, screenwriter, and artist from Austria. She is based in Vienna.
Eignblunzn is a 2003 performance by Austrian art theory group monochrom and is considered an important work in the group's history and Austrian art history in the 2000s. The group's members Johannes Grenzfurthner, Evelyn Fürlinger and Harald Homolka-List staged a classic Austrian Heuriger in a room at Museumsquartier Vienna, and consumed Austrian-style blood sausage made out of their own blood. Volunteers were invited to take part. German author Johannes Ullmaier and Austrian journalist Gerlinde Lang of radio station FM4 joined the procedure and reported about it. The performance was accompanied by political essays about the 'auto-cannibalistic' tendencies of the global economy. The event also can be interpreted as a critical statement about art, art history, the art market, and martialism in performance art.
Wir kaufen Seelen is a 1998 performance by Austrian art theory group monochrom and is considered a significant work in the group's history and Austrian art history in the 1990s.
Carefully Selected Moments is a compilation album by Austrian art and theory group monochrom that was released on 10 June 2008 in Austria. The album was intended to be a best-of collection of the group's musical output. The album is being distributed by Trost Records.
Razzennest is a 2022 Austrian supernatural, satirical horror film written and directed by Johannes Grenzfurthner. The film was produced by art group monochrom.
Hacking at Leaves is a 2024 Austrian documentary film directed and written by Johannes Grenzfurthner. It explores various themes including the United States' colonial past, Navajo tribal history, and the hacker movement, through the lens of the story of a hackerspace in Durango, Colorado, during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. The film was produced by monochrom.