Manu Luksch

Manu Luksch (born 1970) is an Austrian intermedia artist and filmmaker who is known for her wide-ranging critical practice that interrogates sociopolitical, legal, and technological infrastructure through interdisciplinary collaboration, the creation of participatory tools and platforms, and the instigation of novel processes. Specific works address the regulation of public space, the construction of independent media infrastructure, and widespread corporate data surveillance.

Through the 2000s, a major focus of Luksch's research was the data trace – the digital shadows cast by humans in networked space in the course of daily activities. More recently, this focus has broadened to include algorithmic management as deployed in 'smart city' contexts. Although her work is found in museums and galleries, it is also manifest in academic, activist and other non-art contexts. Luksch is perhaps best known for two film works, Faceless (2007) and Dreams Rewired (2015, as codirector).

Education Luksch initially studied at University of Fribourg in Switzerland and holds MA degrees in History from the University of Vienna and in Fine Arts and Education from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She traveled as a Foreign Scholar to the Faculty of Fine Arts at Chulalongkorn University in 1993, and to Chiang Mai University in 1994.

Early career While a student at the Academy of Fine Arts, Luksch worked with film director Peter Greenaway on his exhibition 100 Objects to represent the World (Hofburg, Vienna, 1992) as photographer and production assistant, and on the subsequent exhibition The Stairs: Munich Projection. In 1996, Luksch was appointed director of Medienlabor München, a position she held until 1998. In 1998, Luksch co-curated Art Servers Unlimited together with media theoretician Armin Medosch, the first conference to focus on a range of noncommercial initiatives to support the blend of creative, experimental, socio-cultural, artistic, critical use of the internet, hosted at the ICA London.

Filmography

3rd Quarterly Report (2016) Dreams Rewired (2015) Unknown Territories (2014) Architekturbureau Lichtpause / Blue-Sky Blueprint (2011)

Make It Snow! Make It Snow! Make It Snow! (2008) Mapping CCTV Around Whitehall (2008) Faceless (2007)

Virtual Borders (2004) Broadbandit Highway (2001) Art Servers Unlimited (1998) So Oder Anders (1996)

Publications

Luksch, Manu. Signature or Right Thumbprint, Goethe Institute Bangkok, 1994. Luksch, Manu & Medosch, Armin. Art Servers Unlimited, ASU, 1998. Luksch, Manu & Medosch, Armin. ‘Apropos Art Servers Unlimited’. New Media Culture in Europe, edited by F. Boyd, Uitgeverij De Balie and the Virtual Platform, 1999. Luksch, Manu. ‘Virtual Borders or Digital Divide?’ net.congestion.reader, edited by Geet Lovink, De Balie, 2009. Luksch, Manu & Medosch, Armin. ‘Luksch & Medosch’. net.art 2.0. Neue Materialien zur Netkunst, by T. Baumgärtel, Verlag für moderne Kunst, 2001. Luksch, Manu & Patel, Mukul. ‘Wearable Computing and Wireless Networks.’ Cumulus: Value in design: disabling disablement, enabling enablement edited by Y. Sotamaa, University of Art and Design Helsinki, 2003. Luksch, Manu & Patel, Mukul. ‘ambientTV.NET: You Call It Art’. The Alternative Media Handbook, edited by K. Coyer, T. Dowmunt & A. Fountain, Routledge, 2007 Luksch, Manu & Patel, Mukul. ‘Chasing the data shadow. A filmmaker’s close-up encounter with the Data Protection Act’Ars Electronica: Goodbye Privacy, edited by Gerfried Stocker & Christine Schöpf, Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2007 also available online in Variant, no. 31 (2008). Luksch, Manu & Patel, Mukul, eds. Ambient Information Systems, AIS, 2009. Luksch, Manu. ‘From social fact to science fiction. The incident in the incidental.’ n.paradoxa, Vol. 22, 2008. Luksch, Manu. ‘Moonwalk in EchtZeit.’ Raum in den Künsten. Konstruktion - Bewegung - Politik, edited by Avanessian, Armen & Franck Hofmann, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2010. Gürses, Seda; Luksch, Manu & Teran, Michelle. ‘A Trialogue on Interventions in Surveillance Space: Seda Gürses in conversation with Michelle Teran and Manu Luksch.’ Surveillance & Society, Vol. 7, No 2, 2010 Luksch, Manu. ‘Alltagslabor Function Creep’. Interventionen. Grenzüberschreitungen in Ästhetik, Politik und Ökonmie, edited by D. Hartmann, I. Lemke, & J. Nitsche, München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2012. Luksch, Manu. ‘From the cellar to the cloud: the network-archive as locus of power’. Lost and Living (in) Archives, edited by A. Dekker, Valiz, 2017

Awards and appointments

Outstanding Artist Award for Media Art, Republic of Austria (2023) Roberta Denning Visiting Artist, Stanford University (2021) Marianne von Willemer Prize for Digital Art, Ars Electronica Center (2012) Olympics Commission, muf Art & Architecture / London Thames Gateway (2012) ELEVATE Award, Graz (2015) New Approaches, FLAMIN/Film London (2015-16) Best Feature Documentary, Moscow International Film Festival (2016) Best Feature Documentary Soundtrack, DOK.FEST Munich (2016) Visiting Fellow, Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London (2016-19) Open Society Fellowship, Open Society Foundations (2017) Several Arts Council England and Innovative Film Austria awards since 2001

Collections Works by Luksch are held in the

Collection de Centre Georges Pompidou BFI National Archive Core Collection, Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences