Johannes Grenzfurthner

Johannes Grenzfurthner
Johannes Grenzfurthner at Museumsquartier, Vienna (2011)
Born	1975 Vienna
Occupation	Artist, filmmaker, writer, actor, curator, theatre director, lecturer
Nationality	Austrian
Citizenship	Austria
Spouse	Anna Grenzfurthner (m. 2016)
Signature
Website
grenzfurthner.com

Johannes Grenzfurthner (German: [joˈhanəs ˈgrɛntsfʊrtnə]; born 1975 in Vienna) is an award-winning Austrian artist, filmmaker, writer, actor, curator, theatre director and lecturer. 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 film, technology, political activism, contemporary art, performance art, humour, philosophy, sexuality, critical theory, robotics, postmodernism, media theory, cultural studies, popular culture studies, science fiction, and the debate about intellectual property.

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

In the early 1990s, Johannes Grenzfurthner was an active member of several BBS message boards. 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. Grenzfurthner's motivation was to react to the emerging conservativism in cyber-cultures of the early 1990s, and to combine his political background in the Austrian punk and antifa movement with discussion of new technologies and the cultures they create. 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, in its specific experimental layout style. In 1995 the group decided to cover new artistic practices and started experimenting with different media: computer games, robots, puppet theater, musical, short films, pranks, conferences, online activism, which Grenzfurthner calls 'Urban Hacking' or more specific: 'Context hacking', a term that Grenzfurthner coined.