Corinna Kirsch

Corinna Kirsch is a social historian of postwar and contemporary art and design focused on conceptual and intermedia practices of the 1960s and their afterlives in present-day forms of digital media. Her research investigates the stakes of making work engaged with technological materials and vocabularies at moments of perceived historical crisis or transformation. Further specializations and interests include environmental history, cybernetics, new materialisms, and disability studies. Overall, her work as a scholar, curator, and educator is united by an ongoing interest in the material analysis of “socio-technical imaginaries,” which has led to publications that have addressed computation and climate change within aesthetic contexts.

For her PhD, she completed a dissertation on the conceptual artist Les Levine, “Les Levine: Disposable Art, Technology, and Media, 1964–1971,” the first to be published on the artist in the English language. Forthcoming publications include “The Disposables: Critical Plastic for Art Reform” (Art Journal), “Hot Software: Towards a Thermopolitics of Art and Technology” (Leonardo), and  “Who Is Able to Scan the White Cube? QR Codes, Disability, and Museums” (Precog). Along with Becca Uliasz, she is guest editing a special issue on data-driven technology, art, and climate for Media-N, the journal of the New Media Caucus of the College Art Association.

B.A., University of Texas at Austin; M.A., School of the Art Institute of Chicago; Ph.D., Stony Brook University, the State University of New York