Johannes Grenzfurthner

Early life and monochrom

Grenzfurthner was born in Vienna and grew up in Stockerau, Lower Austria. As a child, he read books about science and science fiction, played computer games and made films with his father's video camera.^[3][4] At thirteen, he acquired his first modem and joined FidoNet and other bulletin board systems, through which he met science-fiction enthusiasts outside Stockerau. One of them was Franz Ablinger, with whom he founded monochrom in 1993 as a fanzine devoted to cyberculture, politics, art and science fiction.^[1][5][6]

The magazine grew out of Grenzfurthner's interest in the political dimension of cyberpunk and his involvement in punk and anti-fascist politics. He conceived it as a left-wing European counterpoint to the market-liberal technological utopianism he associated with parts of American cyberculture and with what Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron termed the Californian Ideology.^[5][6][7] The publication mixed political and theoretical writing with science fiction, underground culture and experimental visual design.^[5][8]

In 1995, monochrom began moving beyond print. Rather than remaining tied to a single medium, the group chose the form that best suited each project; its work came to include performances, theatre, films, computer games, installations, conferences, public interventions and political activism.^[5][6][1] The collective came to call this transdisciplinary method "context hacking", applying ideas from hacker culture to social, cultural and institutional settings.^[9][10] Grenzfurthner described the search for the appropriate format as finding the best "weapon of mass distribution" for an idea.^[5][6] After he moved to Vienna in the late 1990s and further members joined, monochrom developed from a magazine into an art collective working across performance, media art, theatre, film and publishing.^[1]

Grenzfurthner's upbringing later became material for the stage programme Schicksalsjahre eines Nerds and the autobiographical documentary Traceroute. Both return to his childhood in Stockerau and his entry into networked subculture, approaching nerd culture with a mixture of affection and criticism.^{[11][4][12][13]}

Artistic and curatorial work

Much of Grenzfurthner's artistic work has been produced with monochrom. The collective has presented work at the Vienna Secession, the São Paulo Art Biennial, Transmediale, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver, the Werkleitz Biennale and MUSA in Vienna.^{[14][15][16][17]}

Grenzfurthner subsequently presented context hacking in lectures and workshops.^[18] In 2013, he co-edited the volume Context Hacking: How to Mess with Art, Media, Law and the Market.^[19]

Grenzfurthner curates Arse Elektronika, a festival about sexuality and technology. It was first held in San Francisco and has also taken place in Linz and Vienna.^[1] He co-organises Roboexotica in Vienna with Günther Friesinger.^[20] The festival is devoted to cocktail robots.^[21]

Film

Grenzfurthner made his feature-film debut with the fantasy comedy Die Gstettensaga: The Rise of Echsenfriedl (2014).^[1]

Grenzfurthner followed with two documentary features. Traceroute (2016) is an autobiographical road documentary built around a journey across the United States and conversations about the changing place of nerd culture.^[22] Glossary of Broken Dreams (2018) is an essay film about political concepts including capitalism, identity and freedom of expression.^[23]

Masking Threshold, an experimental horror film, screened at Fantastic Fest in 2021.^[24] The Los Angeles Times included it in a 2022 Halloween guide to ten new horror films.^[25] Razzennest screened in Fantastic Fest's Burnt Ends programme in 2022.^[26]

The documentary Hacking at Leaves premiered at the Diagonale in 2024.^[27][28] After the film did not receive commercial distribution, he released it through the Internet Archive in August 2025.^[29]

Solvent premiered at the Slash Filmfestival in Vienna on 26 September 2024 and screened at the Diagonale in 2025.^[30][2] Grenzfurthner shot the film at his grandparents' former farmhouse in Unterzögersdorf.^[1]

In 2026, his science-fiction project You Were Never Here was selected for the Frontières International Co-Production Market at the Fantasia International Film Festival.^[31][32]

Writing for ORF, Pia Reiser grouped Masking Threshold, Razzennest and Solvent as a trilogy connected by their use of horror and sound.^[33] In 2025, ORF film critic Christian Fuchs included Grenzfurthner in what he called the "Austrian New Wave", a loosely defined group of filmmakers working across arthouse, documentary, experimental and genre cinema.^[34]

Writing and teaching

Grenzfurthner has edited books on media art, political theory, cultural jamming, sexuality and technology. They include Urban Hacking: Cultural Jamming Strategies in the Risky Spaces of Modernity (2010), Context Hacking: How to Mess with Art, Media, Law and the Market (2013), and Arse Elektronika: Sexponential! (2025).^[35][19][36]

He teaches transmedia art at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and communication theory at Leuphana University Lüneburg.^[37][38][39] He has also taught at FH Joanneum and the University of Arts Linz.^[40][41]

He is a regular contributor to an Austrian news magazine Profil.^[42]