Annie Abrahams
Born in 1954, Hilvarenbeek, Pays Bas
Lives in France since 1987
a[at]bram[dot]org
http://www.bram.org

Download cv.pdf  with images in English (2Mo)
Download cv.pdf  only text in English (166 Ko)

Doctorat in Biologie university of Utrecht 1978
Diploma of the Art school of Arnhem 1985
Annie Abrahams also makes video, installation and performance pieces.
More information on http://aabrahams.wordpress.com .
She teached at the university of Montpellier in the arts department. 2002-2005

Annie Abrahams is an internationally regarded pioneer of networked performance art who obtained a doctorate in biology from the University of Utrecht in 1978 and a degree from the art school of Arnhem in 1986. Her artistic work, that uses video as well as performance and the internet, questions the possibilities and limits of communication and more specifically its modes in networked environments.
She has performed and shown work extensively in France, including at the Pompidou Centre, Paris, and in many international galleries including among others Espai d'Art Contemporani de Castelló, Spain; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Furtherfield gallery, London and the Armenian Center for Contemporary Experimental Art, Yerevan; festivals such as the Moscow Film Festival; the International Film Festival of Rotterdam and Stuttgarter Film Winter, and on online platforms such as Rhizome.org and Turbulence.

Annie Abrahams was born as a farmer's daughter in a small village in the Netherlands in 1954. When she is going to high school for the first time, she stays mute for three days, the time necessary to learn to express herself otherwise than in the local dialect. Having obtained a doctoral in biology in 1980 she leaves her post as an assistant researcher at the university because her colleagues didn't appreciate she read Dostojevski in her spare time. Annie is teaching biology at high school and obtains a diploma in painting at the art school in 1986. In 1987, with a two years grant from the Dutch government for young artists she is going to live in France, where she stays until now.
There she learns to use a computer to help her to construct and to keep trace of the installations she makes with her paintings on complexity. Annie Abrahams shows her computer drawings for the first time in her show "Possibilités" in l'espace Forum in Nice, France in 1992. When in 1996 she creates a 'meeting place' in a show in Nijmegen, Annie uses the computer to be present from a distance. Since than she produces net specific work and starts "Being Human" (low tech mood mutators / not immersive 1996 - 2007) her most important web work, that explores ways of interpersonal relations on the net. This work concentrates on the possibilities and limitations of communication on the net and has been shown in various international new media and video festivals and shows. (Skopje, Mexico City, Tallinn, Seoul, Atlanta, Montreal, Athens, Clermont Ferrand, Tokyo, Bristol, Seattle, Split, Rotterdam, San Fransisco etc.) Lately her work evolved into Internet related research pieces among which Huis Clos / No Exit : a networked performance series investigating collaboration and relational dynamics in a dispersed group.  She often collaborates with other artists as for instance Nicolas Frespech, Antye Greie, Curt Cloninger, Mark River from MTAA and Igor Stromajer among others.

"When studying biology I had to observe a colony of monkeys in a zoo. I found this very interesting because I learned something about human communities by watching the apes. In a certain way I watch the internet with the same appetite and interest. I consider it to be a universe where I can observe some aspects of human attitudes and behaviour without interfering. (for instance in ViolenceS http://bram.org/indexviolence.html )
I am also interested in providing a situation in which the visitors, by leaving a personal trace, collaborate in revealing a collective voice, participate in the emergence of a staggering beginning for a language of the multitude. I am convinced these collections contain a revelation of actual tendencies in society (our contemporary being) and procure us a kind of cartography of the other. (I am looking for ways to introduce the web-created-text objects in real space, to inseminate these collections with physical energy, I want to give "flesh and bones" to what exist as potential in a computer and what appears as only light on a screen)
On the web I am also experimenting with the possibilities of making visitor behaviour (by clicking, choosing, participating, the visitor reveals the work of the artist) the content of an esthetical contemplation (see Separation , Painsong, Karaoke)." " Interview with Annie Abrahams" by Béatrice Bonfanti 2005.

2000 txt Fr Interview with Annie Abrahams par Bertrand Gauguet in Archée.
2003 txt Fr Eng Pavu.com interviews anniea for P2P
2005 txt Eng "Interview with Annie Abrahams" by Béatrice Bonfanti for weblogart.
2006 txt Fr Entretien avec Annie Abrahams pour une mémoire.
2008 video Fr "Rencontre avec Annie Abrahams", Video interview with Charles Prémont for Le Lien MULTIMÉDIA.
2008 radio Eng Radio interview Annie Abrahams by Ida Hiršenfelder http://www.radiostudent.si/article.php?sid=17354081215_Annie_Abrahams_intervju_01.mp3
2009 video Fr Derrière l’écran : Entrevue avec Annie Abrahams  10 min.  Paule Macrous Patric Mondou.
2009 video Fr Entretien avec Annie Abrahams. Annie Abrahams présente son film "The Big Kiss" lors d'un regard croisée avec Agnés de Cayeux dans le cadre des RIAM 06 à Marseille.
2009 txt Eng Coming Out of One's Bubble interview with Annie Abrahams and Albertine Meunier by Cyril Thomas.
2009 video Fr Quelle question l’art internet pose-t-il aux arts de la scène ? Entretien vidéo for Espace Sondes, Centre National des Ecritures du Spectacle La Chartreuse.
2009 txt Fr SORTIR DE SA BULLE : ENTRETIEN CROISÉ ENTRE ANNIE ABRAHAMS ET ALBERTINE MEUNIER par Cyril Thomas.
2010 txt Eng Artistic Textual and Performative Paths in New Media Correlations: An Interview with Annie Abrahams by Evelin Stermitz.
2010 txt Eng "If not you not me - catalogue essay", Ruth Catlow, Catalogue txt for the show in HTTP gallery, London.
2010 txt Eng "Annie Abrahams and life in networks" by Maria Chatzichristodoulou [aka Maria X], Lecturer in Theatre and Performance – School of Arts and New Media -The University of Hull @ Scarborough, for Digimag 54.
2010 txt Fr "qui suis-je? Annie Abrahams (1999)" Review, article, Cyril Thomas, Magazine electronique du CIAC no 37.
2010 txt Fr "La vie dans les réseaux d'Annie Abrahams", by Maria Chatzichristodoulou [aka Maria X] for Digimag 54 translated in French for Poptronics.
2010 txt Eng "ANNIE ABRAHAMS, ALLERGIC TO UTOPIAS", Interview by Maria Chatzichristodoulou for Digimag 58.
2011 txt Fr "Conversation avec Annie Abrahams", livre avec Manuel Fadat 60 pages.
2011 txt Fr "| Interview | Annie Abrahams |" Entretien par Aleksandra Smilek pour Paris-art.com.
2011 video Eng Reportage made for “Simeio Art” by Evi Tsirigotaki and Philippe Vu for the Greek public television  NET .