Biographies New Professors (term 04/05)

Martin Beck, born in Bludenz, Vorarlberg, in 1963, studied at Innsbruck University, the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and the College of Applied Arts Vienna, lives and works in New York. Exhibitions and projects at the Grazer Kunstverein, the Neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst, Berlin, the Contemporary Art Center, Moscow, the Kunstverein Munich, the Mass MoCA, North Adams, the Weatherspoon Museum, Greensboro, the spot and the Pamela Auchincloss Gallery in New York, a.o. Beck is the author of half modern, half something else (Vienna: Montage 2003) and, together with Julie Ault, Outdoor Systems, indoor distribution (Berlin: NGBK 2000), as well as of Critical Condition: Ausgewählte Texte im Dialog (Essen: Kokerei Zollverein 2003); he is a regular contributor to the magazine springerin. Together with Julie Ault, Beck has also developed exhibition designs, e.g. for the International Center of Photography in New York and the exhibition "X-Screen" in Vienna's Museum moderner Kunst.

Sabeth Buchmann is an art historian and art critic. Regular publications, e.g. in the magazine "Texte zur Kunst"; doctoral thesis about the impact of new technologies on the reevaluation of the concept of production in Conceptual Art (forthcoming). Since 1997, lectureships, assistances, guest and stand-in professorships at several academies and universities; since March 2004, Professor for the History of Modern and Post-Modern Art at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Research project about avant-garde, film, and biopolitics at the Jan van Eyck Academy (together with Helmut Draxler and Stephan Geene).

Harun Farocki, born in Novy Jicin in today's Czech Republic in 1944, studied at the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie (DFFB) in West Berlin from 1966 to 1968. For more than thirty years, Harun Farocki has been producing films about life in the Federal Republic of Germany and about pictures of it published by the media. His comprehensive oeuvre includes three feature films, practically orientated educational films, outlines of a political criticism of the media, essayistic film experiments, film historical works, as well as documentaries for TV and the cinema. Farocki's manifold work evidences the filmmaker's explicitly political understanding of himself and its changes that reflect fundamental social and intellectual developments.

Chantal Mouffe is a professor of Political Theory at the University of Westminster in London. She has taught and researched at numerous universities in Europe and the USA and is a member of the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris.
Publications: Gramsci and Marxist Theory (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London 1979), Dimensions of Radical Democracy. Pluralism, Citizenship, Community (Verso, London 1992), Deconstruction and Pragmatism (Routledge, London 1996), The Challenge of Carl Schmitt (Verso, London 1999), The Return of the Political (Verso, London 1993), The Democratic Paradox (Verso, London 2000).

Manfred Pernice, born in Hildesheim in 1963, lives in Berlin. He studied graphic arts and painting at the College of Fine Arts in Braunschweig from 1984 to 1987 before he went to Berlin to study sculpture at the Hochschule der Künste for five years. In 1994, Manfred Pernice became a master-class student there. In 1997, he was granted a scholarship by the city of Bremerhaven, and he was awarded another scholarship by the Berlin Senatsverwaltung für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kultur. Pernice has presented his works in solo exhibitions at A+J in London, the Anton Kern Gallery in New York, the Stella Lohaus Gallery in Antwerp, a.o. At the moment, the Galerie nächst St. Stephan shows the exhibition "U5."

Eyal Weizman is an architect, author, and curator, who presently lives in London. When he studied at the Architectural Association, he worked on various projects with Zvi Hecker in Berlin. In 1999, he founded an office of his own together with Rafi Segal and built the Ashdod Museum of Art in Tel Aviv, a.o. Weizman is the author of the study "Land Grab" for the "human-rights organization B'tselem," which, for the first time, investigated architectural planning measures in the course of the Israeli occupation and the violation of human rights involved. This resulted in a series of publications and exhibitions in New York, Berlin, Rotterdam, San Francisco, Malmö, and other places. Weizman has taught architecture at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, at the College of Technology in Haifa, and at the London Bartlett School of Architecture.