Cornelia Sollfrank

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Cornelia Sollfrank

Cornelia Sollfrank (* 1960 in Feilershammer , municipality of Trabitz ) is a German net artist and was an important representative of cyberfeminism in the 1990s ; meanwhile she researches and publishes on technofeminism . She is also active as a commons researcher and author and publishes works on art theory. She lives in Berlin , Germany.

Life

From 1987 to 1994 Sollfrank studied painting at the art academy in Munich (with Professor Helmut Sturm ) and fine art at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg (with Professor Bernhard Johannes Blume ). She graduated with honors. During her studies, she was the founder and member of two groups of women artists: in 1990, the group women and technology was created in Hamburg with nine other artists . Frauen-und-technik was less concerned with the gender issue - as the title suggests - than with marketing and advertising strategies. The development of clear signs (logos) or appearances ( corporate identity ) at the end of the 1980s, which represent the philosophy of a company, was no longer only used for the product of a commercial enterprise, but with the simultaneous development of cultural sponsorship also for art. This resulted in advertising effects that women-and-technology used and exposed at the same time. Sollfrank took with Frauen-und-technik u. a. 1992 participated in the television project Piazza Virtuale during documenta IX . In 1993 a new group emerged from Frauen-und-technik. - Inside it was about the creation of a common identity and thus the collectivization of authorship. Questions about copyright, originality and authorship on the internet became central topics. In the artistic research, the performances and interventions, a media-critical examination took place, especially with television. - internally produced u. a. 1996 a game show for the Hamburg Open Channel and intervened at the CeBIT computer fair in Hanover. The group disbanded in 1996, and ever since Sollfrank has been working as a freelance artist, journalist and theorist in the field of net culture and net art .

Sollfrank's interest in collective work led to the founding of the OBN (Old Boys Network) network in Berlin in 1997, together with some former members of -innen (Ellen Nonnenmacher and Susanne Ackers) and members of the Australian artist group VNS Matrix ( Julianne Pierce and Josephine Starrs ). This alliance of scientists, artists and activists has been practicing an experimental approach to network structures to this day in order not only to thematize or theorize cyberfeminism , but to realize it in a structure-building manner: "The Mode is the Message - The Code is the Collective." In 1997, Sollfrank also helped organize gave the colleagues of the Old Boys Network the first international cyberfeminism conference, which drafted the hundred anti-theses on the question of what cyberfeminism is: “Cyberfeminism is not an ism. Cyber ​​feminism is not an excuse. Cyberfeminisme n'est pas une pipe… “This international meeting of media artists and media theorists (first Cyberfeminist International), which took place in the HybridWorkspace media laboratory at documenta X in Kassel, focused on women in net art and net culture. Two further conferences followed in 1999 and 2001. For Sollfrank, the focus of the work on the subject of cyber feminism is the research of artistic strategies with regard to their political potential.

From 1999 to 2004 Sollfrank lectured at various colleges and universities, including the University of Fine Arts Hamburg , the University of Lüneburg , the University of Oldenburg and the Bauhaus University Weimar . In 2004, Sollfrank was traded as a promising candidate for the artistic director of Ars Electronica in Linz, succeeding Gerfried Stocker, remaining after the hearings as Stocker's only alternative and was then not appointed. In the magazine Kulturrisse she stated a wish “for a change of course, for a renewal”.
From 2006 to 2011 Sollfrank worked as an artistic researcher at the University of Dundee, Scotland, and received her PhD in 2012 with the thesis "Performing the Paradoxes of Intellectual Property. A practice-led Investigation into the Conflicting Relationship between Copyright and Art."

From 2009 to 2012 Sollfrank worked for Creating Worlds , a research project of the eipcp (european institute for progressive cultural policies), which explored the relationship between art production and knowledge production in the context of the transformation and crisis of contemporary capitalism.

Cornelia Sollfrank was a member of the German Association of Artists , in whose monthly magazine Kunstreport she wrote the self- deprecating contribution to Success Strategy and Self-Boycott in 2001. How do I escape the art market and become a successful artist at the same time? wrote.

Current work

Sollfrank is the operator of the artwarez.org website . Here she provides information about her own work, publishes interviews and maintains a blog.

From 2012 to 2015 Sollfrank was "Lecturer for Contemporary Art Practices, Art & Theory, and Artistic Research in the Context of New Media" at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design at Dundee University in Scotland, UK.

In August 2018 Sollfrank published the book The Beautiful Warriors. Technofeminist Practice in the 21st Century published by transversal texts Vienna.

She is currently working as a Research Associate at the Zurich University of the Arts for the Creating Commons project .

Artistic strategies

Sollfrank has been deconstructing traditional terms and concepts such as the work, the originality, the ingenuity or the authorship that still determine the art business or the current copyright law since the mid-1990s. Using artistic-subversive, in some cases gender-specific strategies, she tries out new forms of performative, collaborative and networked authorship in the digital medium. What is characteristic of Sollfrank's work is the playful nature of her interventions in social systems and their fluctuations between freedom from purpose and political intention.

Based on social engineering and social hacking, Florian Cramer defines Sollfrank's art as a hack of the social with digital and non-digital means. In doing so, the artist concentrates on the art business and computer culture on two sub-systems that deal with the playful manipulation of systems in general and of themselves in particular.

Sollfrank herself describes her work as situational, ie it cuts into social systems of which she is a part. In doing so, she wants to uncover non-visible, but definitely influential relationships and power structures that would otherwise remain hidden. Sollfrank, for example, criticizes the use of net art in museums (femal extension). It disrupts and subverts the museum system and makes use of the structures of this institution to highlight the problems that these structures cause, especially for net art: “For me, net art had nothing to do with galleries and museums, with judging and prizes because that contradicts the 'nature' of the network. Net art is simply online, and you don't need a museum or a juror to decide what the best net art is. "

Selected Works

Female extension

The work Female Extension is a hack, the aim of which was to open the Hamburger Kunsthalle's invitation to tender on the subject of “Extension. The Internet as a Material and Object ”in 1997. Sollfrank anticipated the shortage of authors who took part in this competition, especially the shortage of women authors, and created 289 fictional artists with international identities, full addresses, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses. Next, with the help of a net.art generator , she created seemingly individual works that she assigned to her artists. Sollfrank got a password for every single net artist, i. H. all artists were admitted to the competition by the Kunsthalle. She then transferred 127 works by the artists to the museum server. Within the art context, i.e. the museum's invitation to tender, the net artists were uncritically recognized as artists. The infiltration of the competition was not noticed even after the entry deadline. Only with the announcement of the winners, two days before the award ceremony, did Sollfrank issue a press release in which she exposed her intervention. The art gallery would probably never have noticed the hack. During the current call, the gallery of the present adorned itself in particular with the high female participation of two thirds of the 280 participants. None of the women should receive a prize, but the jurors (Uwe M. Schneede, Rainer Wörtmann, Dellbrügge & deMoll, Valie Export and Dieter Daniels) use the bogus participation to emphasize to the public how up-to-date and close the new exhibition hall is to the present Art happening. The poor quality of the "HTML junk" was probably noticed, but not questioned further.

Net.art generator

The generator, which was used in the work Female Extension to produce 127 net art projects, has been accessible to every user as an independent work since 1999. For the work net.art generator , the artist commissioned the programmers Ryan Johnston, Luka Frelih, Barbara Thoens and Ralf Prehn to develop different software solutions that differ in their search structure and the complexity of the results. The artist ironizes the general idea of ​​net art as website art by declaring websites to be art that are created from randomly compiled image and text material on the internet. Everyone can become a network artist here, true to the motto “Smart artist makes the machine do the work”: the machines do the real work. The motto of the website suggests to the user that he can become a net artist. But that is only partially true: By saving the collaged art, the amused user accumulates art that Sollfrank exhibits under her name. Due to this fact, Ute Vorkoeper extends the motto of the website: "A smart artist orders programs which make the user do the work".

MuseumShop

The MuseumShop is an agency that produces and sells high-quality reproductions of some selected works from the collection of the Märkisches Museum Witten. In its financially strained situation, the Märkisches Museum, which has neither a database nor its own homepage, is dependent on making its own resources available in the long term, such as B. rights and property positions in the artistic works are to be evaluated. In this project Sollfrank explores the connection between practical museum work and protected copyrights. "This results in a variety of contradictions between private and public interests, which the" MuseumShop "project will take to extremes with artistic means."

This Is Not By Me

In THIS IS NOT BY ME is an exhibition project that consists of six different works by the artist. Within this work cycle, Sollfrank deals with questions about authorship, originality and intellectual property in art. From 2006 to 2007 the solo exhibition was shown in three different exhibition rooms on three different continents (Hildesheim / Europe; Manila / Asia; New York City / USA) with different copyright laws. In this work Sollfrank takes up the problem of copyright in the digital medium and intensifies it. She has been following the discourse on copyright on an artistic level since 1997, including with the work Net.art Generator.

THIS IS NOT BY ME consists of six works:

1. Legal Perspective , video installation with four monitors, plug.in, Basel, 2005 Sollfrank generates Andy Warhol's famous "Flowers" with the help of the net.art generator and wants to exhibit them. Parallel to the images shown, four different lawyers give lectures on the subject of copyright on four monitors. The question is who is the legitimate author of a picture collaged by the net.art generator and whether he is allowed to exhibit it or even sell it. The four experts all come to different conclusions in the end. In fact, Sollfrank was not allowed to exhibit her "Flowers" because the head of plug.in feared legal consequences. Only the video installation could therefore be shown in Basel.

2. copyright © cornelia sollfrank 2004 , video, 45 min. On the video copyright © cornelia sollfrank 2004, Sollfrank reads a text she wrote with the same title. The text deals with the automatically generated "flowers" and the question of the authorship of this picture. In the discussion that followed, Sollfrank listed several possible authors. First of all, the computer program would be entitled to the author's title, since it produces the image. The programmer who wrote the code of the program could also file claims. Likewise, the user of the software, he enters the search criteria and is thus also significantly involved in the creation of the image. The actual author who created and published the motif can also claim to be the author. In the last place, Sollfrank names the person who came up with the idea for the net.art generator. This problem of authorship cannot be solved.

3. I DON'T KNOW , video interview with Andy Warhol, 14 min., 1968/2006 The first two parts of the work do not lead to a clear binding result with regard to the question of who is the author of the "Flowers" produced by the net.art generator. As a consequence, Sollfrank asked one of the possible authors. In a fictitious interview, the artist asked Andy Warhol about his "Flowers" and their further use. Both artists discuss authorship and intellectual property in art. Ultimately, Sollfrank asks Warhol whether she can use his "Flowers" in her work. Warhol agrees with this.

4. PRINTS and wall-paintings , Mag: net Gallery, Manila, Kunstverein, Hildesheim, 2006 Sollfrank exhibits the generated “Flowers” ​​as printed pictures.

5. Expanded Original This part of the work explores new methods that can avoid complicated and controversial recognition procedures for works of art. A new method would be particularly useful for images that theoretically can always be produced in the same quality. This part of the work is still being worked on.

6. Hue and Cry , video, 4 min. This video shows the generated “flowers” ​​as they run through the entire color spectrum.

All works are based on a discussion with Andy Warhol. Both Warhol's motifs ("Flowers") and working methods, as well as himself as an interviewee in person, are part of the work cycle. Warhol worked with existing popular motifs from advertising and the media. Warhol hardly ever took part in the production of his pictures; the screen printing process meant that it was not absolutely necessary for him to produce the paintings himself. This work was done in his workshop by his assistants. Shortly before his death, Warhol dealt with the medium of the computer and the idea of ​​large screen prints of digital images. Here Sollfrank continues Warhol's experiment in which she uses the computer as a tool and the Internet as an inexhaustible store of materials. The exhibition project is part of Sollfrank's promotion. The work THIS IS NOT BY ME will be a practical example.

Exhibitions and other works

2019 :

  • Writing the History of the Future. The zkm collection, Stuttgart, DE.
  • Automat und Mensch, Galerie Kate Vass, Zurich, CH.
  • Bayerischer Rundfunk "Nachtstudio", September 24, 2019 ("Total Digital or Postdigital")

2018 :

  • City of Women Festival, Esslingen, DE.
  • Torque Festival for Production Art, Stuttgart, DE.
  • TopTens. 24h Ubu Screening, SHADOW LIBRARIES, Onassis Cultural Center, Athens, GR.

2017 :

  • commons lab, Studio XX, Montreal, CAN.
  • Multiple future. Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions, Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, JP.

2016 :

  • in_SUBJECT, Taipei Digital Arts Festival, Taipei, TW.
  • À la recherche de l'information perdue. Performance, Bergen Kunsthall Landmark, Bergen, NO.
  • Hacking Social Reality. Stage play with Kevin Rittberger (director, Theater Basel), Basel, CH.

2015 :

  • Porn to Pizza - Domestic Clichés, DAM Galerie, Berlin, DE.
  • Hipsters and hamsters. On the consumer aesthetics of the mobile phone, Museum for Applied Arts, Frankfurt, DE.

2014 :

  • Public Library - Rethinking the infrastructures of knowledge production, Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart, DE.
  • Coded After Ada Lovelace, Hannah McLure Center, Neon Festival for Digital Culture, Dundee, UK.

2013 :

  • Tools of Distorted Creativity, 'transmediale' 2013, House of World Cultures, Berlin, DE.
  • Curated by Law, Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, DE.
  • re.act.feminism # 2 - a performing archive. Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, ​​ES.

2012 :

  • Sound Art. Sound as a Medium of Art, ZKM Media Museum, Karlsruhe, DE.
  • Megacool 4.0. Youth and Art, Künstlerhaus, Vienna, A.
  • re.act.feminism # 2 - a performing archive, Wyspa Institute of Art in Gdańsk, PL.
  • International Biennial of Contemporary Graphic Art, Novosibirsk State Art Museum, Novosibirsk, RU.
  • This is not by me, Visual Research Center, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee, UK.

2011 :

  • the art of hacking, Netherland's Media Art Institute, Amsterdam, NL /
  • reverse, Gallery 'Z', Bratislava, SLO.
  • Identités précaires, Musée Jeu de Paume, Paris, F.

2010 :

  • Cultures (s) of the Copy, Edith-Ruß-Haus für Medienkunst, Oldenburg, DE.
  • Dog is my co-pilot, Vejle, DK.
  • REVERSE, Art Museum, Omsk, RU.
  • Inter-Cool 3.0, HMKV Dortmund, DE.
  • Cultures (s) of the Copy, Goethe-Institut, Hong Kong, CN.
  • Old News, Center for Contemporary Art CCA, Lagos, NI.
  • Agents & Provocateurs, HMKV, Medienkunstverein, Dortmund, DE.

2009 :

  • Originals and other forgeries, solo exhibition, Edith Russ House for Media Art, Oldenburg, DE.
  • Unlimited Edition, Solo exhibition, Mejan Labs, Stockholm, Oslo, N.
  • Agents & Provocateurs, Institute of Contemporary Art - Dunaújváros, HU.
  • Stomach or head. How much theory does art need? hub: kunst.diskurs eV, EISFABRIK, Hannover, DE.
  • International Biennial of Contemporary Graphic Art, Novosibirsk State Art Museum, Novosibirsk, RU.

2008 :

  • Art machines machine art, Museum Tinguely, Basel, CH,
  • Anna Kournikova Deleted by Memeright Trusted System, Hartware MedienKunstVerein (HMKV), Phoenixhalle, Dortmund, DE.
  • re: act feminism, Akademie der Künste Berlin, DE.

2007 :

  • MuseumShop, solo exhibition, Märkisches Museum Witten, DE.
  • I DON'T KNOW, interview with Andy Warhol, video / installation (1968/2006), Shift Festival of Electronic Arts, Basel, CH.
  • Art machines machine art, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, DE.

2006 :

  • THIS IS NOT BY ME, solo exhibition, Kunstverein Hildesheim, DE.

2005 :

  • Warhol Flowers, sales show, HGKZ, Zurich, CH.
  • TammTamm - artists inform politicians, Hamburg, DE.

2004 :

  • have script, will destroy, Mostra Internacional de Film deDones, Barcelona, ​​ES.
  • Automatically generated authorship, radio play, series by ORF-Kunstradios, Vienna, AT.

2003 :

  • fem and - party & workshop, with musicians (electronic music), (Laurence Rassel and Maya Consuelo Sternel ), Melkweg Amsterdam in collaboration with next5minutes, Amsterdam, NL.
  • net.art generator, Collection for Contemporary Art of the Volksfürsorge, Le Royal Meridien, Hamburg, DE.

2002 :

  • net.art generator, GENERATOR, Spacex Gallery, Exeter, UK.
  • Guided tour through hackerland, performance, Chaos Communication Congress, Berlin, DE.

2001 :

  • Artist pictures, Mesaoo Wrede Gallery, Hamburg, DE.
  • networked reality, Solo Show, Galleri 21, Malmö, SE.
  • improved television, cyberfem spirit, Medienkunsthaus, Oldenburg, DE.

2000 :

  • Have Code-Will Destroy, 'Tenacity - Cultural Practices in the Age of Global Information- and Biotechnologies, Shedhalle, Zurich, CH.
  • Have Code-Will Destroy, UFO Strategies', Medienkunsthaus Oldenburg, DE.
  • Liquid Hacking Laboratory, Log-in, Kunstverein Nürnberg, DE.
  • Unauthorized Access, CrossFemale-Metaphors of the Female, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, DE.

1999 :

  • Net.art generator

1998 :

  • The New Woman, NEID Show, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin
  • First Cyberfeminist International, reader presentation, Ars Electronica, Linz, AT

1997 :

  • Female extension
  • Hybrid WorkSpace , documenta X, Kassel (project of the Old Boys Network)

1996 :

  • New Media - Old Roles, intervention at the CeBit computer fair, Hanover (project of the "-innen plus" group)
  • Reality check, net.art event as part of the 'Skin Laboratory' project, Hamburg
  • Remote Viewing, Ars Electronica, Linz, AT

1994 :

  • information art, performance, University of Fine Arts, Hamburg

1993 :

  • Narcissism in the media using the example of television, performance, producer gallery Kunstitut, Stuttgart (project of the group "-innen")
  • The New Woman, postcard campaign

1992 :

  • Penis envy games, contribution to documenta IX (art television with van-Gogh TV), Kassel (project of the group "women and technology")

Fonts

literature

  • Cornelia Sollfrank (ed.): The beautiful warriors - technofeminist practice in the 21st century, transversal texts, 2018 ISBN 978-3-903046-16-0
  • Felix Stalder: "Passing on what doesn't belong to you. Interview with Cornelia Sollfrank." in: springerin , "Kritische Netzpraxis", Volume XXI, Issue 1 - Winter 2015.
  • Matthias Weiß: net art - its systematization and interpretation based on individual examples VDG Verlag, Weimar 2009, ISBN 978-3-89739-642-5 , pages 266–282.
  • Wencke Artschwager: / Cornelia_Sollfrank. in: Shortguide | Short guide Net.art . Hamburg 2008, pages 52-61.
  • Matthias Weiß: The Gütersloh net art book. Kultursekretariat NRW, Gütersloh 2004, ISBN 3-937828-07-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Sollfrank, Cornelia: Success strategies and self-boycott. How do I escape the art market and become a successful artist at the same time ?, http://www.obn.org/inhalt_index.html (last accessed February 4, 2008)
  2. ↑ Oldenburg, Helene von, What is Cyberfeminism ?, http://www.obn.org/reading_room/writings/html/statistics.html . Further texts on the subject of cyber feminism cf. http://obn.org./
  3. ↑ In 1999 the next Cyberfeminist International conference took place in Rotterdam. http://www.obn.org/nCI/ (last accessed February 4, 2008) In 2001 the conference very Cyberfeminist International was organized by OBN. http://www.obn.org/obn_pro/vCI/start.html (last accessed February 4, 2008). For further texts and readers of the conferences cf. http://www.obn.org/inhalt_index.html .
  4. ↑ See: Curriculum Vitae, in: http://artwarez.org/cv.0.html (last accessed June 4, 2012)
  5. ↑ Linz between Ars Electronica and Capital of Culture - Cornelia Sollfrank in conversation, in: Kulturrisse 03/2005 ( Memento from January 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ kuenstlerbund.de: Full members of the German Association of Artists since it was founded in 1903 / Sollfrank, Cornelia ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on March 7, 2016)  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kuenstlerbund.de
  7. ↑ kuenstlerbund.de: Publications: 2001 | Art report 1'01 ( Memento of the original from March 9, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on March 7, 2016)  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kuenstlerbund.de
  8. ↑ The beautiful warriors. Technofeminist Practice in the 21st Century
  9. ^ Creating Commons
  10. ↑ Cramer, Florian: Social Hacking, revisited, in: http://cramer.pleintekst.nl/essays/social_hacking_revisited_sollfrank/social_hacking_revisited_sollfrank-deutsch.pdf (last accessed September 24, 2009)
  11. ↑ http://www.artnet.de/magazine/features/quest/quest01-11-07.asp .
  12. ↑ Sollfrank in an interview with Tilla Telemann on the hack campaign Female Extension, cf. http://www.artwarez.org/femext/content/interview.html .
  13. ↑ Cf. u. a. http://www.artwarez.org/femext/
  14. ↑ Ute Vorkoeper: Programmed seduction. Cornelia Sollfrank's net art generators test the author's model. ( Memento of December 10, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) (last accessed February 4, 2008).
  15. ↑ Description of the exhibition on knotenpunkte.de
personal data
SURNAME Sollfrank, Cornelia
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German hacker, cyber / technofeminist, theorist, concept and network artist
DATE OF BIRTH 1960
PLACE OF BIRTH Feilershammer , Trabitz