Cornelia Sollfrank (born 1960) is a German digital artist, she was an early pioneer of Net Art and Cyberfeminism in the 1990s.
Life and work
Cornelia Sollfrank was born in 1960, in Feilershammer, Germany. Sollfrank studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich (1987–1990) and fine art at the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg (1990–1994) and she completed a PhD in 2012 at University of Dundee.
In 1997, Sollfrank hacked the "world's first" net art competition, Extension, organized by the Hamburg Art Museum in Germany. Her work, titled Female Extension (1997) involved the creation of 289 computer-generated websites created by combing the Internet and combining fragments of HTML into exquisite corpse-like websites. Each website was submitted under the name of a different artificial female artist name and profile. No women were awarded prizes, but press releases distributed by Sollfrank received widespread attention for her intervention, overshadowing the gallery's own awards.
Cornelia Sollfrank founded the organization Old Boys Network (1997–2001). In 1997, Old Boys Network organized the Cyberfeminist International at documenta x in Kassel, Germany. Old Boys Network published First Cyberfeminist International in 1998 followed by next Cyberfeminist International in 1999. Closely associated with Cyberfeminism, Sollfrank has expressed reservations that it limits the perception of her work as "women's issues".
She has a history organizing and participating in digital protests. Solfrank has also founded the artist groups frauen-und-technik (Women and Technique) and -Innen ("Inside", but also a suffix for feminine plurals in German). Women Hackers (1999) was an essay on hackers, focusing on the lack of recognition of female hackers. Sollfrank is a member of the Chaos Computer Club, Europe's largest association of hackers.
In 2004, Cornelia Sollfrank's monograph titled net.art generator was published by Verlag für moderne Kunst Nürnberg.
Early life and education
Cornelia Sollfrank was born in 1960, in Feilershammer, Germany. From 1987 to 1990, Sollfrank studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, and then during the years 1990 to 1994, she took the program Fine Art at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg. Besides her study in diverse academic fields of art, Sollfrank also worked as a product manager for Philips Media from 1995 to 1996 in order to gain personal experience in the field of media. Since 1998, Sollfrank has focused on writing and exploring issues regarding the relationship among media, art and gender, and has worked as an educator at a variety of universities. In 2012, along with the publication of her PhD thesis titled Performing the Paradoxes of Intellectual Property, Sollfrank completed her doctor degree's practice-led research at the University of Dundee (UK).
From the mid-1990s, as Sollfrank probed the worldwide communication networks and mass media, she then transformed her traditional artistic strategies and art forms into the digital medium, and her works began to be closely related to the concerns of cyberfeminism, the interaction of feminism and art in the age of the Internet, and relationship between gender politics and the Internet.
Career and activities
Cornelia Sollfrank (born 1960) is a German digital artist, conceptual artist, interdisciplinary researcher and university lecturer whose works mainly apply digital media and the internet as new ways of artistic practices to explore issues regarding mass media and network culture as new forms of (political) organization and communication structures, authorship, copyright and intellectual property, critical internet culture, feminism and techno-feminism.
Sollfrank is committed to activities related to cyberfeminism, she is one of the founding members of the worldwide cyberfeminist network Old Boys Network, and initiated and ran the network during the year 1997 to 2001. She also co-organized three international conferences on cyberfeminism which took place respectively in 1997, 1999, and 2001. In the year 1998 and 1999, she participated in co-editing the First Cyberfeminist International and the Next Cyberfeminist International.
As an early pioneer of Net Art and Cyberfeminism, Sollfrank also has experiences of organizing and participating in digital protests, she puts emphasis on issues of marginalization and the lack of recognition of female hackers in both mainstream and alternative cyborg communities. She is one of the members of the Chaos Computer Club, which is the largest association of hackers in Europe.