Natalie Bookchin

1962–

Natalie Bookchin is an artist whose current work focuses on the intersection of art, the Internet, politics, and computer games. Her most recent project, Metapet, an online game commissioned by Creative Time in NY in association with HAMACA in Barcelona, was launched on May Day, 2003. In 1999–2000 Bookchin organized net.net.net, an eight-month series of lectures and workshops on art, activism, and the Internet at CalArts, MOCA in LA, and Laboratorio Cinematek in Tijuana. She is based in Los Angeles and teaches at CalArts.

Wikipedia entry

Introduction

Natalie Bookchin is an artist based in Brooklyn, New York. She is well known for her work in media. She was a 2001-2002 Guggenheim Fellow. Her work is exhibited at institutions including PS1, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona, KunstWerke, Berlin, the Generali Foundation, Vienna, the Walker Art Center, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Shedhale in Zurich. Her works are in a variety of forms – from online computer games, collaborative performances and "hacktivist" interventions, to interactive websites and widely distributed texts and manifestos. In her work, she explores some of the far-reaching consequences of Internet and digital technologies on a range of spheres, including aesthetics, labor, leisure, and politics. Much of Bookchin's later works amass excerpts from video blogs or YouTube found online. From 1998 to 2000 she was a member of the collective RTMark, and was involved in the gatt.org prank they organized spoofing the 1999 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade talks

She received a bachelor's degree from the State University of New York at Purchase in 1984 and a master's degree in photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1990. She participated in the Independent Study Program at Whitney Museum of American Art from 1991 to 1992.

In 2015, she was appointed to Associate Chair of the Visual Arts Department at the Rutgers Mason Gross School of the Arts. Prior to that she was serving as the co-Director of the Photography and Media Program in the Art School at California Institute of the Arts. She has also previously taught at the University of California, San Diego.

Bookchin's work The Intruder was included in the Chicago New Media 1973-1992 Exhibition, curated by jonCates The work combines a game-like structure with narrative elements, drawing upon a short story by Jorge Luis Borges, and is often discussed in the context of electronic literature.