People and Technology: The Vienna Media Art Prize goes to Johanna Bruckner

Artist Johanna Bruckner receives the Vienna Media Art Prize 2022. In her work, she deals with aspects of a post-human society. The award will be presented in May 2023.

Vienna. The Vienna Media Art Prize has been awarded annually since 2014 for outstanding achievements in the field of media art – this time the prize goes to Johanna Bruckner. Thus, the city’s Department of Culture honors the ongoing creativity and media artwork of internationally successful Viennese. It is the first to look to increase the prize’s endowment: this year the prize money has been increased from 5,000 to 10,000 euros.

In her multimedia performances, videos, and installations, Bruckner negotiates aspects of posthuman society and human bodies that, like cyborgs, increasingly merge with technology or degrade into digital.

Benefit from the body through modern technologies

With her work, the artist provides “a critical examination of the ever-increasing use of our bodies by new technologies—whether in the context of big data, medical assessments, or the manipulation of genetic material and its capitalist exploitation,” the jury explains the importance of Bruckner’s artistic examination on the subject.

Jury continued: “Against a backdrop of the increasing decay of human agency, her work is an attempt to explore new paradoxes and possibilities for social cohesion.”

National and international exhibitions

Bruckner was born in Vienna in 1984. She studied fine arts, cultural studies and social anthropology in Vienna, Berlin, New York, Stockholm and Hamburg. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally, including at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (2020), ZKM, Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe (2020) and Berlinische Galerie, Museum of Modern Art (2022).

On May 15, 2023, the award will be presented to the artist in a ceremony by the current City Councilor for Culture and Science, Veronica Kaup-Hassler (SPÖ). At the same time, the Vienna City Prizes and the Ernst Krenck Prize are awarded. The latter went to the Viennese composer Matthias Kranepeter this year.

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