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Annie Abrahams
Born in 1954, Hilvarenbeek, Pays Bas
Lives in France since 1987
Mail: bram.org[at]gmail[dot]com
bram.org

e-stranger.tumblr.com
vimeo.com/annieabrahams
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Download cvbio.pdf in English

12.4 Mo 22 pages with images - book .pdf

 
 

Doctoraal (M2) in Biologie university of Utrecht 1978
Diploma (MA2) of the Art school of Arnhem 1985
News http://aabrahams.wordpress.com.

Annie Abrahams has a doctoraal (M2) in biology from the University of Utrecht and a MA2 from the Academy of Fine Arts of Arnhem. In her work, using video, performance as well as the internet, she questions the possibilities and the limits of communication in general and more specifically investigates its modes under networked conditions. She is known worldwide for her net art and collective writing experiments and is an internationally regarded pioneer of networked performance art.
Abrahams develops what she calls an aesthetics of trust and attention and creates situations meant to reveal messy and sloppy sides of human behaviour, where she traps reality and so makes that reality available for thought.

She has performed and shown work extensively in France, including at the Jeu de Paume; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the CRAC, Sète; the Paris–Villette theater and in more than hunderd international galleries and museums including The Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb; the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, Asheville, North Carolina; the Espai d’Art Contemporani de Castelló, Spain; the New Musem, New York; the Armenian Center for Contemporary Experimental Art, Yerevan; Furtherfield gallery, London; Aksioma, Ljubljana, and NIMk, Amsterdam, in festivals such as the MoscowFilm Festival; the International Film Festival, Rotterdam and the Stuttgarter Filmwinter (1prize 2011), and on online platforms as Rhizome.org and Turbulence (NEA commission 2015). She was lead-performer in the ELO2017 conference Porto en nominated for the H3K Basel netbased award 2018. In 2019 Abrahams netart piece Being Human was included in LIMA's Digital Canon of the Netherlands (1960-2000), which led in 2023 to the publication of her book "Being Human . een bloemlezing . an anthology".

She teached at the university of Montpellier in the arts department. (2002-2005) Autumn 2005, she started provi&testi: meetings around art works to become, not yet finished, trespassing habits; and +++plus+++ editions. From november 2006 to january 2009 she curated the project “InstantS” and organized the “Breaking Solitude” and ”Double Bind” webperformance series on panoplie.org. In 2012 she co-organised the first Cyposium – online symposium on cyberformance,and published an article on webcam mediated communication and collaboration in JAR #2 (Journal of Artistic Research). In 2013 she started with Emmanuel Guez the project ReadingClub, an online venue for collaborative reading and writing performances. In 2014 she published two books: “from estranger to e- stranger” with CONA and Aksioma, Ljubljana; and “CyPosium – the book” published by LINK editions and la Panacée, co- edited with Helen Varley Jamieson. With Helen she also started in 2015 unaussprechbarlich a project on language learning and living in a country where one can't speak one's mother tongue. Distant Feelings, started in 2015 with Daniel Pinheiro and Lisa Parra, researches how it feels to share an interface with eyes closed and no talking. It developed into an yearly reconnection ritual. Started in 2018 with Daniel Pinheiro and Muriel Piqué, Distant Movements is a reseach and performance project on the possibility to experience dance in front of a screen with the eyes closed. Also in 2018 Annie Abrahams performed for the first time using VR. In the same year with Alix Desaubliaux and Pascale Barret she formed the 3G(enerations) group - experimenting with online conversation through performative challenges in the project Constallations. In 2020 Alice Lenay joined them. Utterings, started in 2020, is an online research and performance group (band) experimenting with utterings as communication. Since 2020 Abrahams also publishes poetry.

Published articles / texts :
Diffracting New Materialisms Emerging Methods in Artistic Research and Higher Education, edited by Annouchka Bayley, JJ Chan, pages 189-208 Chapter 9: Diffractive Thinking, Reading, Writing and Playing: The Methodology of Constallations(s), Annie Abrahams, Alix Desaubliaux, Pascale Barret & Alice Lenay. ISBN13: 9783031186066. 2023.
bam & une,deuil, multilingual animated poetry, in IIliterature, Kirill Azernyy, 2022.
stof / poussière / dust, poem for BE LIKE BODY—OBSOLETE #4 (performance, publcation) by Suzon Fuks, 2021.
de huid tintelt a (multi-lingual) poem, in WEEKBLADEN #56 back to the future, 2021.
Performing Alchorithms? 2021, in the Institute of Unnecessary Research founded by Anna Dimitriu.
Escaping a Father’s Dream 2021, poem in PØST poésie contemporaine / contemporary poetry issue #8.
with/in languages – a pretty pathetic ENG, avec et dans les langues – un assez pathétique FR, The Creative Web of Languages / Le réseau créatif des langu.ages, Hybrid 07 | 2021, ISSN électronique 2276-3538.
#PEAE Participative Ethology in Artificial Environments, Annie Abrahams, Electronic Book Review, May 3, 2020.
Distant Feeling(s), Annie Abrahams & Daniel Pinheiro, " Video Vortex* Reader III, Edited by Geert Lovink and Andreas Treske, INC reader #14, Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam 2020.
Why is the use of videoconferencing so exhausting? An analysis on the demands. Video essay, Abrahams, A., Pinheiro, D., Carrasco, M., Zea, D., La Porta, T., de Manuel, A., … Varin, M. (2020). Embodiment and Social Distancing: Projects. Journal of Embodied Research, 3(2), 4 (27:52). DOI: http://doi.org/10.16995/jer.67
L’Agency Art ou une Éthologie Participative dans des Environnements Artificiels ?, LINKs séries 1-2. ISSN  2592-6756. 2019.
The machinic author” Artist’s Statement: The Reading Club, Abrahams, Annie and Guez, Emmanuel 2019, Journal of Creative Writing Studies: Vol. 4: Iss.1, Article 8. ISSN: 2474-2937.
Preconditions for Online Participation PAIC, 2019.
Learn together what it means to be connected CyPosium – The Book, 2014, ISBN 9781291988925.
Trapped to Reveal – On webcam mediated communication and collaboration. Annie Abrahams, Jar #2 ISSN 2235-0225, 2012.

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, using a custom-made computer program called DOEK, 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 then she produces net specific work and starts "Being Human" (low tech mood mutators / not immersive 1996 - 2007) her most important web work, that explores 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.) 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, and Angry Women.  Lately Abrahams continues investigating the role of empathy, things, the voice, absence and presence in online communication and the concept of "being with" in projects as besides, On Object Agency with the choreographer and theorician Martina Ruhsam and DistantFeeling(s) with Daniel Pinheiro and Lisa Parra.

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.

I want to know how they function, not by them telling me, but by me almost forcing them to reveal an instance of their ‘hidden code’ in public. I want us to go beyond self-representation and the control that this requires. Am I really forcing them to do this?… No I am not. What happens is that the situation in itself that is, the telematic performance interface, the protocols, the flaws in the streaming connections rewrites the conditions of communication in a way that makes this revelation possible, if not inevitable. Annie Abrahams. Allergic to Utopias, Interview by Maria Chatzichristodoulou fir digicult, 2010.

We perform experimenting thinking together using words and things and the affects transferred via our voices. We experiment performing thinking together, We think performing experiments together, We experiment thinking performance, We experiment performing thought together using words and things and the affects transferred via our voices... Extracted from besides, what are we doing? Notes on besides,... by Annie Abrahams 03/2016.pdf 

Want to know more on how I practice the relation art/science in my performance art, the role of its audience, what means intimacy in networked performances and to be a female artist. Read this interview done by Maria Chatzichristodoulou in 2010.  It is still actual!

2023 txt Eng Pandemic Genres: Processing the COVID-19 Pandemic through Electronic Literature, Anna Nacher, Søren Bro Pold and Scott Rettberg, Hyperrhiz 26.
2023 txt Ned Wie is de schepper van digitale kunst?, Tonya Sudiono, recensie NRC, 9/11.
2022 txt Eng Distant Feeling(s)#9, essay Chloé Galibert-Laîné, VideoEssay Gallery, Filmexplorer, CH.
2021 txt Eng An Experience of Angry Women, Shelly Quick, Magdalena website.
2021 txt Eng Pandemic Exchange: How Artists Experience the COVID-19 Crisis, Theory on Demand #41, ed Josephine Bosma, INC Amsterdam, ISBN PaperBack: 978-94-02302-74-8.
2020 txt Eng Revisiting the net artist’s Flash poem Separation / Séparation, Ania Szremski, 4Columns, New York. 05.
2020 txt Ned De kunst van het online ontroeren, Alex Burghoorn, De Volkskrant, 06/04
2018 txt Eng Disentangling the Entanglements. Randall Packer, thirdspacenetwork.
2018 txt Eng Unlocking Proprietorial Art Systems interview: with Artists, Gretta Louw, Antonio Roberts & Annie Abrahams., Marc Garrett, Furtherfield.
2017 txt Eng Reading as Writing, Coding as Public Performance, Daniel Temkin / esoteric.codes.
2017 txt Eng Addictive Behaviours: Interview with Artist Annie Abrahams by Marc Garrett and Ruth Catlo for Furtherfield.
2017 txt Eng The Laboratory of Networked Behavior, Randall Packer, Third Space Network.
2015 txt Eng Choose your muse interview: Annie Abrahams by Marc Garrett for Furtherfield.
2015 txt Fr Annie Abrahams, Le principe d'incertitude, Gaspard Bébié-Valérian, MCD #78 Page 12-13.
2014 txt Si Annie Abrahams: Jezik v svetu med realnim in virtualnim 29. oktober 2014 Pina Gabrijan.
2014 txt Si Potrpe�ljivost in pozornost (Patience and Attention), DEVNIK Nov 3, Mojca Pišek.
2014 txt Si V performanse vlo�im tisto, ?esar ne razumem Interview Annie Abrahams Tanja Lesni?ar – Pu?ko,Dnevnik 17/04.
2014 txt Eng Opening up a new zone for what formerly was called net art, Jasmina Zaloznik. Octobre 2014.
2014 txt Eng Igor Štromajer & Annie Abrahams by Gretta Louw, BOMB Magazine April 21st 2014.
2013 txt Fr Annie Abrahams : le web est un théâtre, Delphine Neimon, The Artchemists.
2013 txt Fr Avec le Reading Club, la lecture n’est pas un impenséEntretien de Emmanuel Guez et Annie Abrahams par Annick Rivoire, poptronics<.
2013 txt Fr Entretien avec Annie Abrahams (page 20 – 33) INFRA 02  Editions Macrosonges
2012 txt Eng Annie Abrahams interview by Alessandro Ludovico, Neural 43, Autummn 2012, Networked Tangibility, ISSN 2037-108X.
2012 vidéo Fr https://youtu.be/xuX0YmGd-3Q montage de On Collaboration CRAC Sète.
2012 vidéo Fr https://youtu.be/9K_9kOtq1Iw Training for a Better World, Entretien Exposition solo CRAC Sète.
2012 txt Eng Today I conversed with, Interviewed by Filippo Lorenzin 20/05
2012 txt Fr Ita Being Human /Tweet-intervista a Annie AbrahamsTweet Intervista by Simona Polvani.
2011 vidéo Fr INTERVIEW DE LA BOITE # 28 - ANNIE ABRAHAMS C'est à Sète (intime -personnel)
2011 video Eng Reportage made for “Simeio Art” by Evi Tsirigotaki and Philippe Vu for the Greek public television  NET
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.
2010 txt Eng Ita ANNIE ABRAHAMS, ALLERGIC TO UTOPIAS, Interview by Maria Chatzichristodoulou for Digimag 58.
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 Ita 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", de Maria Chatzichristodoulou [aka Maria X] pour Digimag 54 traduit en Ffrançais pour Poptronics.
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
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.
2008 video Fr Rencontre avec Annie Abrahams", Video interviewavec Charles Prémont pourLe Lien MULTIMÉDIA.
2008 radio Ang Radio interview Annie Abrahams by Ida Hiršenfelder http://www.radiostudent.si/article.php?sid=17354081215_Annie_Abrahams_intervju_01.mp3
2006 txt Fr Entretien avec Annie Abrahams pour une mémoire.
2005 txt Eng "Interview with Annie Abrahams" by Béatrice Bonfanti for weblogart.
2003 txt Fr Ang Pavu.com interviews anniea for P2P.
2000 txt Fr Entretien avec Annie Abrahams par Bertrand Gauguet dans Archée .

 
 

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