Monochrom

In the early 1990s, Johannes Grenzfurthner was an active member of several BBS message boards.^[13] He used his online connections to create a zine or alternative magazine that dealt with art, technology and subversive cultures, and was influenced by US magazines like Mondo 2000.^[14][15] Grenzfurthner's motivations were to react to the emerging conservatism in cyber-cultures of the early 1990s^[16] and to combine his political background in the Austrian punk and antifa movement with discussion of new technologies and the cultures they create.^[17][18] Franz Ablinger joined Grenzfurthner and they became the publication's core team.^[19]
The first issue was released in 1993. Over the years the publication featured many interviews and essays, for example by Bruce Sterling, HR Giger, Richard Kadrey, Arthur Kroker, Negativland, Kathy Acker, Michael Marrak, DJ Spooky, Geert Lovink, Lars Gustafsson, Tony Serra, Friedrich Kittler, Jörg Buttgereit, Eric Drexler, Terry Pratchett, Jack Sargeant and Bob Black,^[20] in its specific experimental layout style.^[21]

In 1995 the group decided to cover new artistic practices^[22][23][24] and started experimenting with different media: performances, computer games, robots, puppet theater, musical, short films, pranks, conferences, online activism.

In 1995 we decided that we didn't want to constrain ourselves to just one media format (the "fanzine"). We knew that we wanted to create statements, create viral information. So a quest for the best "Weapon of Mass Distribution" started, a search for the best transportation mode for a certain politics of philosophical ideas. This was the Cambrian Explosion of monochrom. We wanted to experiment, try stuff, find new forms of telling our stories. But, to be clear, it was (and still is) not about keeping the pace, of staying up-to-date, or (even worse) staying "fresh". The emergence of new media (and therefore artistic) formats is certainly interesting. But etching information into copper plates is just as exciting. We think that the perpetual return of 'the new', to cite Walter Benjamin, is nothing to write home about – except perhaps for the slave-drivers in the fashion industry. We've never been interested in the new just in itself, but in the accidental occurrence. In the moment where things don't tally, where productive confusion arises.^[18]

All the other core team members joined between 1995 and 2006.

Grenzfurthner is the group's artistic director. He defines Monochrom's artistic and activist approach as 'Context hacking'^[25] or 'Urban Hacking'.^[26]

The group monochrom refers to its working method as "Context Hacking", thus referencing the hacker culture, which propagates a creative and emancipatory approach to the technologies of the digital age, and in this way turns against the continuation into the digital age of centuries-old technological enslavement perpetrated through knowledge and hierarchies of experts. ... Context hacking transfers the hackers' objectives and methods to the network of social relationships in which artistic production occurs, and upon which it is dependent. ... One of context hackers' central ambitions is to bring the factions of counterculture, which have veered off along widely diverging trajectories, back together again.^[6]

From its very foundation, the group defined itself as a movement, culture^[18] (referring to Iain M. Banks's sci-fi series) and "open field of experimentation".^[2] Monochrom supported and supports various artists, activists, researchers and communities with an online publishing platform, a print publishing service (edition mono),^[27] and organizes in-person meetings, screenings, radio shows, debate circles, conferences, online platforms.^[28] It is fundamental for the group's core members to combine artistic and educational endeavors with community work^[29] (cf. social practice).

Some collaborations have been rather short-lived (for example the publication of a 1993 fringe science paper^[30] by Jakob Segal, projects with the Billboard Liberation Front and Ubermorgen or the administration of Dorkbot Vienna^[31]), some have been going for many years and decades (for example with Michael Marrak, Cory Doctorow, Jon Lebkowsky, Fritz Ostermayer, V. Vale, eSeL, Scott Beale/Laughing Squid, Machine Project, Emmanuel Goldstein, Jason Scott, Jonathan Mann, Jasmin Hagendorfer and the Porn Film Festival Vienna), Michael Zeltner, Anouk Wipprecht, VSL Lindabrunn).

Monochrom supports initiatives like the Radius Festival,^[32] Play:Vienna,^[33] the Buckminster Fuller Institute Austria,^[27] RE/Search, the Semantic Web Company^[34] and the Vienna hackerspace Metalab. For a couple of years, Monochrom ran the DIY project "Hackbus" in cooperation with David "Daddy D" Dempsey (of FM4)^[35]

Since 2007, Monochrom is the European correspondent for Boing Boing Video.^[36]

monochrom has produced a large body of work across performance, film, intervention, publishing, radio, installation, lectures, festival formats, digital art, and technology-based projects.^[41][42][43] Over the decades, the group's focus has shifted across media, making it difficult to summarize its approach through any single artistic formula.^[41]

Rather than pursuing a stable form, monochrom has operated as a transdisciplinary platform combining satire, political critique, fiction, research, and participatory formats to examine cultural, social, and technological systems.^[44] Its work has included manifestos and activist interventions, telepresence and robotics projects, conference and exhibition formats, television and theatre productions, software- and game-related works, participatory installations, publishing initiatives, and feature films.^[41][44] The group has initiated, curated, produced, and created hundreds of projects, often linking art with activism, media criticism, and philosophical reflection.^[41]

Among monochrom's best-known projects are Roboexotica, a Vienna-based festival for cocktail robotics founded in 1999, Arse Elektronika, a conference and festival series devoted to the relationship between sexuality and technology, the 2002 art hoax Georg Paul Thomann, and Soviet Unterzoegersdorf, a fictional Soviet enclave developed across games, theatre, performance, and film-related works.^{[45][46][47][48][49]}

Taken together, these projects have led commentators to describe monochrom as an evolving laboratory for context hacking, experimental storytelling, and critical cultural production.^[44]

• monochrom / magazine and yearbook series. Published in 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2010
• Stadt der Klage (Michael Marrak, 1997)
• Weg der Engel (Michael Marrak and Agus Chuadar, 1998)
• Who shot Immanence? (edited together with Thomas Edlinger and Fritz Ostermayer, 2002)
• Leutezeichnungen (edited together with Elffriede, 2003)
• Das Wesen der Tonalität (Othmar Steinbauer; edited by Guenther Friesinger, Helmut Neumann, Ursula Petrik, Dominik Sedivy, 2006)
• Quo Vadis, Logo?! (edited by Günther Friesinger and Johannes Grenzfurthner, 2006)
• Sonne Busen Hammer 16 (edited by Johannes Grenzfurthner, Günther Friesinger and Franz Ablinger, 2006)
• Als die Welt noch unterging (Frank Apunkt Schneider, 2007)
• VIPA (edited by Orhan Kipcak, 2007)
• Spektakel - Kunst - Gesellschaft (edited by Stephan Grigat, Johannes Grenzfurthner and Günther Friesinger, 2006)
• Sonne Busen Hammer 17 (edited by Johannes Grenzfurthner, Günther Friesinger and Fra21nz Ablinger, 2007)
• Roboexotica (edited by Günther Friesinger, Magnus Wurzer, Johannes Grenzfurthner, Franz Ablinger and Chris Veigl, 2008)
• Die Leiden der Neuen Musik (Ursula Petrik; edited by Guenther Friesinger, Helmut Neumann, Ursula Petrik, Dominik Sedivy, 2009)
• Do Androids Sleep with Electric Sheep? (edited by Johannes Grenzfurthner, Günther Friesinger, Daniel Fabry und Thomas Ballhausen, 2009)^[51]
• Of Intercourse and Intracourse – Sexuality, Biomodification and the Techno-Social Sphere (edited by Johannes Grenzfurthner, Günther Friesinger, Daniel Fabry, 2011)^[52]
• pr0nnovation? Pornography and Technological Innovation (edited by Johannes Grenzfurthner, Günther Friesinger and Daniel Fabry, 2008)^[53]
• Screw the System (edited by Johannes Grenzfurthner, Günther Friesinger, Daniel Fabry)^[54]
• Subvert Subversion. Politischer Widerstand als kulturelle Praxis (edited by Johannes Grenzfurthner, Günther Friesinger, 2020)^[55]
• The Wonderful World of Absence (edited by Günther Friesinger, Johannes Grenzfurthner, Daniel Fabry, 2011)
• Anima Ex Machina by Michael Marrak (edited by Günther Friesinger, Johannes Grenzfurthner, 2021)
• Femi und die Fische by Tommy Schmidt (edited by Günther Friesinger, Johannes Grenzfurthner, 2022)
• Roboexotica: Beautiful Failure (edited by Günther Friesinger, Johannes Grenzfurthner, Franz Ablinger, 2025)
• Sexponential! (edited by Johannes Grenzfurthner, Günther Friesinger, Jasmin Hagendorfer, 2025)^[56]

• To Live and Survive (2025) – directed by Matthias Jaklitsch
• Solvent (2024) – directed by Johannes Grenzfurthner
• Hacking at Leaves (2024) – directed by Johannes Grenzfurthner
• Razzennest (2022) – directed by Johannes Grenzfurthner
• Transform! (2022) – directed by Marie-Christin Rissinger
• Masking Threshold (2021) – directed by Johannes Grenzfurthner
• Avenues (2021) - directed by Sushant Chaudhary
• Glossary of Broken Dreams (2018) – directed by Johannes Grenzfurthner
• Traceroute (2016) – directed by Johannes Grenzfurthner
• Die Gstettensaga: The Rise of Echsenfriedl (2014) – directed by Johannes Grenzfurthner
• Kiki and Bubu: Rated R Us (2011) - directed by Johannes Grenzfurthner

• Arad-II, Art Basel Miami Beach / USA (2005)^[57]
• Die waren früher auch mal besser: monochrom (1993-2013) / Austria (2013)^[58]
• Dilettanten. Forum Stadtpark, Graz / Austria - Steiermärkisches Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz / Austria - Steirischer Herbst 2002, Graz / Austria (2002)^[59]
• Junge Szene 98. Vereinigung Bildender Künstler, Wiener Secession, Vienna / Austria (1998)^[60]
• MEDIA FORUM/Moscow International Film Festival / Moscow / Russia (2008)^[61]
• Neoist World Congress. Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna / Austria (1997)^[62]
• Roboexotica (Festival for Cocktail Robotics, Vienna, 1999-)^[63][64]
• Robotronika. Public Netbase t0 Media~Space!, Institut für neue Kulturtechnologien, Vienna / Austria (1998)^[65]
• Seriell Produziertes. Diagonale (Austrian Film Festival), Graz / Austria (2000)^[66]
• techno(sexual) bodies / videotage / Hong Kong / China (2010)^[67]
• The Influencers, Center for Contemporary Culture / Barcelona / Spain (2008)^[68]
• The Thomann Project. São Paulo Art Biennial, São Paulo / Brazil (2002)^[69]
• Unterspiel, Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver / Canada (2005)^[70]
• world-information.org. Museum of Contemporary Art, Brussels / Belgium (2000) and Belgrad / Serbia (2003)^[71]

• 1st prize of 'E55' (Vienna/Berlin) 1999.^[72]
• aniMotion Award Honorary Mention (Sibiu, Romania) for Interactive Tales for Monochrom's "Soviet Unterzoegersdorf/Sector 1/The Adventure Game" (2007).^[73]
• Art Award of FWF Austrian Science Fund (2013).^[74]
• Coca-Cola Light Art Edition (2006).^[75]
• Media Forum/Moscow International Film Festival, Jury Special Mention (Moscow, Russia) for Monochrom's "The Void's Foaming Ebb", (2008).^[61]
• Nestroy Theatre Prize (Vienna) 2005 (together with 'The Great Television Swindle' by maschek and 'Freundschaft' by Steinhauer and Henning) for Udo 77 (2004).^[76]
• Official Honoree for NetArt and Personal Blog/Culture in The 2009 Webby Awards, International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (2009).^[77]
• Videomedeja Awards Special Mention, Novi Sad, Serbia for Net/Software Category for Monochrom's "Soviet Unterzoegersdorf/Sector 1/The Adventure Game" (2006).^[78]

List of projects by monochrom