Inke Arns, PhD, curator, since 2005 Artistic Director, and since 2017 Director of HMKV Hartware MedienKunstVerein in Dortmund, Germany (www.hmkv.de). She has worked internationally as an independent curator, writer and theorist specializing in media art, net cultures, and Eastern Europe since 1993. She lived in Paris (1982–86), graduated from highschool in West-Berlin in 1988, studied Russian literature, Eastern European studies, political science, and art history in Berlin and Amsterdam (1988–96) and in 2004 obtained her PhD from the Humboldt University in Berlin, with a thesis focusing on a paradigmatic shift in the way artists reflected the historical avant-garde and the notion of utopia in visual and media art projects of the 1980s and 1990s in (ex-)Yugoslavia and Russia.

She curated exhibitions at home and abroad, a.o. at the Bauhaus (Dessau), Moderna galerija (Ljubljana), Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin), Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum (Hagen), Museum of Contemporary Art (Belgrade), HMKV (Dortmund), Centre for Contemporary Arts – CCA (Glasgow), KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin), Videotage (Hong Kong), Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina (Novi Sad), Centre for Contemporary Art Zamek Ujazdowski (Warsaw), Contemporary Art Centre CAC (Vilnius), La Panacée (Montpellier), Jeu de Paume (Paris), Autocenter (Berlin), Kunsthall Charlottenborg (Kopenhagen), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Muzeum Sztuki (Łodz), NCCA (Yekaterinburg), La Gaîté Lyrique (Paris), BOZAR (Brussels), MU (Eindhoven), exportdrvo (Rijeka).

International exhibitions include, e.g. IRWIN: Retroprinciple 1983-2003 (2003-04), What is Modern Art? (Group Show) (2006), The Wonderful World of irational.org (2006-12), History Will Repeat Itself (2007-08), Anna Kournikova … Art in the Age of Intellectual Property (2008), “Awake are only the Spirits” – On Ghosts and their Media (2009), Building Memory (2009-10), Arctic Perspective (2010), Barbara Breitenfellner: Traum einer Ausstellung (2011), The Oil Show (2011), Artur Zmijewski: Democracies (2012), Suzanne Treister: HEXEN 2.0 (2012), Francis Hunger: History has left the Building (2012), Sounds Like Silence (John Cage – 4’33” – Silence today / 1912 – 1952 – 2012) (2012), His Master’s Voice: On Voice and Language (2013-15), INDUSTRIAL (Research) (2013), Evil Clowns (2014), Whistleblowers & Vigilantes (2016), The World Without Us (2016), Dan Perjovschi: The Hard/er Drawing (2016), alien matter (transmediale, 2017), The Brutalism Appreciation Society (2017), Afro-Tech and the Future of Re-Invention (2017), The Border (2017-19), The Storming of the Winter Palace – Forensics of an Image (2017), Computer Grrrls (2018), The Alt-Right Complex (2019), The 12th Time Zone (2019), Artists & Agents – Performance Art and Secret Services (2019), The Sea is Glowing (2020), Technoshamanism (2021).

Awards: In 2021 HMKV’s exhibition Artists & Agents – Performance Art and Secret Services curated by Inke Arns, Kata Krasznahorkai and Sylvia Sasse received the “Exhibition of the Year 2020” prize by the German section of AICA (International Art Critics’ Association). In 2019, together with Igor Chubarov and Sylvia Sasse, Inke Arns was awarded the Justus Bier Award for Curators 2018 for the project The Storming of the Winter Palace. HMKV received the ADKV-ART COLOGNE Award for art associations 2017. In 2017, HMKV was nominated for the sixth time for this Award (after previous nominations in 2007, 2008, 2011, 2013, and 2014). In 2013 HMKV received an Honorable Mention in the framework of this Award. In 2013, HMKV’s exhibition Sounds Like Silence. John Cage – 4’33” – Silence Today was awarded the “Exceptional Exhibition of the Year 2012″ prize by the German section of AICA (International Art Critics’ Association). In 2011 HMKV received the JUMP Annual Sponsorship Award for Art Organisations funded by the Arts Foundation of North Rhine-Westphalia (Kunststiftung NRW).

Since 2021 Inke Arns holds the position of Visiting Professor at the Art Academy in Münster, Germany. She has been teaching at universities and art academies in Berlin, Leipzig, Zurich, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam (2000-2017), and has lectured and published internationally. Books include Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK) – eine Analyse ihrer künstlerischen Strategien im Kontext der 1980er Jahre in Jugoslawien (Museum Ostdeutsche Galerie, 2002), Netzkulturen (Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 2002), Objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear! Die Avantgarde im Rückspiegel (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 2004).

Member of ICOM; the ADKV Board of Directors, Berlin; Advisory Committee of the Net Art Anthology, Rhizome, New York; Board of Trustees of the Stiftung Choreographisches Zentrum NRW, PACT Zollverein Essen

(as of 7 June 2021)