PhD candidate in the Binational Artistic Phd Program at HfK Bremen (University of the arts Bremen) in cooperation with PhDArts at Universiteit Leiden and KABK in The Hague (NL)
Henrik Nieratschker studied Digital Media and Fine Arts at the University of Arts Bremen and Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art in London.
Situated between art and design, Henrik's practice amalgamates research activities, narratives and fictions, and modes of prototyping, to negotiate sociopolitical and cultural tendencies through the lens of digital and emerging technologies. Henrik’s artistic output ranges from objects, images, and video to software and hardware, which come together in physical-visual, multimedia installations.
Henrik’s work has been awarded and exhibited internationally, including a Core77 Design Award; and exhibitions at Victoria & Albert Museum and London Design Festival, London, UK; Science Gallery, Dublin, IE; and 3331 Arts Chiyoda, Tokyo, JP. Henrik has worked as a lecturer and researcher at the Kyoto Institute of Technology and the University of Arts Bremen, where Henrik currently holds a fellowship.
Henrik is cofounder of collective Research and Waves, exploring modes of research and collaboration across the boundaries of art, curating, and cultural organizing.
henriknieratschker.earth
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
-2022
Narrating the Gaps, Künstlerhaus / Bremen / Germany
Halbe Halbe, Dauerwelle & GAK, Bremen / Germany
-2021
SurpriseSurprise, Künstlerhaus / Bremen / Germany
i can't hear you ∞, Changing Room / Berlin / Germany
–2020
RAW[0.6,Y,0.75] & Attune Platform Release ∞, Changing Room / Berlin / Germany
YouFab Awards Exhibition, QWS / Tokyo / Japan
–2019
RAW[0.4,Y,0.75] Transparencies ∞, Feldfuenf / Berlin / Germany
RAW[0.4,Y,0.75]beta Transparencies: Prelude II ∞, Feldfuenf / Berlin / Germany
–2018
Design Questions 3, Kyoto Design Lab Gallery - 3331 Arts Chiyoda / Tokyo / Japan
–2017
Water, Copeland Gallery / London Design Festival / London / UK
–2016
Heal the World, Neues Museum Weserburg / Bremen / Germany
Ethnography in the Expanded Field, Parsons / New York / USA
FLATLANDS, GAK / Bremen / Germany
–2015
African Robots ∞, Machines Room / London / UK
What is Luxury?, Victoria & Albert Museum / London / UK
LifeLogging Lab, Science Gallery / Dublin / Ireland
–2014
Buy, buy, buy, put it down!, Hockney Gallery / London / UK
Next Brave New World, Arebyte Gallery / London / UK
Show RCA 2014, Royal College of Art / London / UK
EDUCATION
2015-2016
@University of Arts, Bremen / Germany
Master Studies Fine Arts (Time-Based Media)
2012-2014
@Royal College of Art, London / UK
MFA Design Interactions
2009-2012
@University of Arts, Bremen / Germany
BA Digital Media
AWARDS / SCHOLARSHIPS
YouFab Global Creative Award 2019, Finalist
Lumen Prize 2017, 3D/Sculpture Category, Longlist
Core 77 Design Award 2015, Speculative Concepts Category
Output Design Award 2013, Honorary Mention
Output Design Award 2012, Honorary Mention
Digital Media Award 2012, University of Arts / Bremen / Germany
Digital Media Award 2011, University of Arts / Bremen / Germany, Honorary Mention
2012-2016
Scholarship, Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes (German National Merit Foundation - Art & Design)
2021-NOW
Scholarship, Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes (German National Merit Foundation - Doctoral Studies)
PUBLICATIONS
Nieratschker, Henrik. “Complexity Takeover: A Manifesto of 22+1 Questions (Or No Manifesto at All).“ In Nevertheless. 17 Manifestos Issue No 2, edited by Andrea Sick, 77-78. Hamburg: Textem Verlag, 2018.
Nieratschker, Henrik. “Minusplusplus.“ In The 3D Additivist Cookbook, edited by Daniel Rourke and Moreshin Allahyari, 48-51. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2017.
EVENTS / FESTIVALS / RESIDENCIES
Zu Gast bei Urbane Künste Ruhr, Haus der Geschichte des Ruhrgebiets / Bochum / Germany, Research Residency
Next Brave New World - Dinner Discussions, Arebyte Gallery + The Yard / London / UK, Evening Event with Food & Debate
Brighton Digital Festival 2014, Brighton / UK, Arts and Tech Commission
A Stroll Through A Fun Palace, Swiss Pavillion / Architecture Biennale / Venice / Italy, Short Term Residency
LECTURES / TALKS / WORKSHOPS
Designing Experiments Workshop, Kyoto Institute of Technology / Kyoto / Japan
California Dreaming, HfK / Bremen / Germany
Digital Futures: DeLuxe Edition, Victoria & Albert Museum / London / UK
Healthcare Futures, Kyoto Institute of Technology / Kyoto / Japan
Show RCA Industry Night Pechakucha, Royal College of Art / London / UK
Pechakucha, Tsinghua University / Beijing / China
Media Theory Talks, University of Arts / Bremen / Germany
(Sound) Installation
2022
Henrik Nieratschker's work Geschichtung 1: Am Deich 68-69 Bremen examines the parallels between the artistic, commercial, freelance, and salaried work performed under the roof. He brings together the current function as an artists' house with the building's previous uses for example as a spice and lumber shop in an autofictional narrative. His installation consists of an edited archival image and four objects whose arrangement references the image: a ladder, a sack truck, a platform cart, and a shelf. Attached to each of the objects is a panel on which Nieratschker collages/layers archival images, architectural plans, drawings, and texts from different phases of the building we are in. The texts on the panels, titled "Loading Dock / Laderampe" "Restaurant/Basement / Restaurant/Keller" "Attic / Unterm Dach" and "Gallery / Galerie", are narratives in which Nieratschker weaves together different temporal layers from the history of the Künstlerhaus. The German texts can be heard in four audio pieces at the objects. Visitors are invited to take the headphones hanging below the archival image and plug them into the headphone jacks located on the objects. In the stories heard there, a complex narrative of the building's use across time emerges, weaving together past, present, and future.
(Exhibition Text by Nadja Quante)
The work was commissioned by Kuenstlerhaus Bremen for the exhibition "Narrating the Gaps" on the occasion of the artist studio and gallery building's 30th anniversary in 2022.
*Installation views photographed by Fred Dott for Künstlerhaus Bremen.
Interactive Video Essay / Installation
2022
Based on the artist's personal experience as a package handler, the video essay / installation presents a personal, audio-visual archive of memories that illustrate the day-to-day of working in a shipping warehouse. The physical and computational environments of the warehouse are deconstructed, extrapolated, and partly reassembled in form and function to become a narrative device, speaking to the realities of (manual) labor in a digital condition.
The audience is invited to use this device, pick up the scanner themselves, and scan the barcodes on the packages in order to trigger one of the 27 recordings of fragmented, spoken memories that inhabit the empty space of the 3D-animated computer model of the warehouse seen in the video.
Performance (aprox. 8 min)
2022
The configuration of packages in the installation is renewed on several performative occasions during the time of the exhibition.
The performance takes place approximately 20-30 minutes after the opening of the exhibition each day, except for the last day of the exhibition, when the artist will have quit his job.
Ebook and Print-on-Demand Self-Publication
2019
Is democracy failing us?
The publication presents a short essay in interpretation of the press coverage of protests during the 2017 US presidential inauguration that poses this very question. In search of an answer, we encounter a collection of Wikipedia articles in the second half of the book, showcasing a wide variety of forms of government and social organisation. From Matriarchy to Technocracy to Despotism, engaging with the theories and histories of these -archies, -cracies and -isms might help us to identify ways to move forward with democracies in crisis.
Lecture Performance, Essay Draft, Transparent Backpack, Acrylic and Ink on Paper, Work Gloves, Scanning Device Holster
2018
... FROM A PERSPECTIVE OF NETWORKED AND STANDARDISED LABOUR
From the essay:
It all began as a mistake. In the summer and fall of 2018, I spent 6 months working as a package handler for one of the world's largest shipping companies. What started as an act of desperation, rents are rising and making art doesn't always pay off, soon became a sort of undercover mission. As I was loading, moving and sorting packages, I became fascinated with the complex interplay of the workers, their powered equipment and an ever-present corporate technobureaucracy. The shipping warehouse is a stage on which a common state of our technologised society becomes visible in its showings of raw consumption and digitally enhanced, physical labour. The scenes of interpersonal, post digital, micro and macroeconomical tragedy and comedy I have witnessed will continue to take shape within my work for the coming year or more, but for today I will highlight 3 of them in search for definitions of the term Transparency.
A small collection of objects illustrates the key points of the essay in a tangible and immediate way.
Fictional Company
2015/16
Minusplusplus is a fictional Silicon Valley start-up, developing products which reflect upon the shortcomings of a technologically induced "better world" promised by the Californian ideology that is spreading from Silicon Valley around the globe. The company is run as a multi-platform art and research project, appropriating advertisement and corporate language to engage with overlooked cultural, social, and political roles of (digital) technology and works towards prototyping alternatives in the space between art, technology, activism and
startup culture.
Minusplusplus comes fluidly into existence through installations, lectures, artistic experiments and design prototypes, as well as its online presence.
Visit: Minusplusplus Official Website
*Installation views photographed by Franziska von den Driesch.